Societal Transitions to Sustainability: The Prefigurative Politics of Present Transformation

This open access book responds to the need for rapid and transformative societal change towards a sustainable future. The editorial introduction and conclusion bookend 27 case chapters about urban sites of experimentation and contestation, spaces of conviviality and politics, sectoral movements, and cross-sectoral and transdisciplinary transitions. These short case chapters address the prefigurative politics of present transformations based on wide-ranging empirical and conceptual analyses. They span societal transitions in and across sectors such as energy, food, and transport. Three key insights concern the multi-scalar nature of prefiguration, its entanglement with boundary transgression, and the multiple temporalities of prefigurative politics in the present.

Siddharth Sareen is Research Professor at the Fridtjof Nansen Institute in Oslo. He is an award-winning environmental social scientist with a background in development studies, political ecology, and human geography. He works on the governance of energy transitions at multiple scales in and across sectors such as solar energy, electricity grids, urban transport, and forestry. Sareen has held research positions at institutions in seven countries and supervised over 50 postgraduates. He engages actively in research policy and developing the next generation of social scientists to inform, engage with, and enact more inclusive and just energy futures.

Sirkku Juhola is Full Professor of urban environmental policy at the Ecosystems and Environment Research Program at the University of Helsinki and leads the multidisciplinary research group Urban Environmental Policy. She holds degrees from the University of East Anglia and University of Sussex in international relations and development, and has worked at the United Nations University in Tokyo. She is a contributing author of the IPCC 6th Assessment Report, a lead author in the Third Assessment Report on Climate Change and Cities, and a member of the Finnish Climate Change Panel.