Future-making dilemmas and new turning points in sustainability transitions scholarship

Abstract

Current conceptions of ‘development’ prioritising plural versions of progress, embracing uncertainties and advocating substantial ethical commitments in future-making herald three turning points in Sustainability Transitions (ST) scholarship. That is, a rigorous theorisation of desirable ST futures requires: (i) uncovering uneven geographies of sociotechnical transitions; (ii) interrogating the overstated confidence in conscious governance mechanisms; and (iii) re-assessing normative theories of just futures by which the ‘desirable’ is defined, governed, negotiated and contested. However, due to their overly deterministic and ‘technicism’ orientation, normative theories of just futures reinforce the fetishism of western-framed socio-ecological normative orders, which downplay unruly global inequalities in carbon emissions, geographical political economy issues and ethical concerns about the production of ‘low-carbon spaces’ in the ‘needy’ Global South. A geographical perspective embracing relational interactions between geographical political economy, infrastructure configurations and situational ethics in socio-technical transitions in a comparative sense may ‘tie the loose ends’ of ST scholarship. This contribution examines the ethical dimensions of ST with a focus on Africa. Since ST is locked in and patterned along Western epistemologies and ideals, I discuss ‘epistemic injustice lock-ins’ and Eurocentric development orthodoxies that have escaped scrutiny or blurred robust planning of ST futures in Africa.