Conclusion: What Social Agency for System Change?

Les Levidow

Techno-market fixes carry beneficent promises to decarbonize economies in ways avoiding societal disruption and conflict. But the problem runs more deeply: they justify institutional change along neoliberal anti-democratic lines, supposedly in order to realize the techno-optimistic promises. Often a mobilized counter-public has stimulated public controversy and promoted alternative solutions. Exemplifying eco-localization, some local agendas would incur lighter resource burdens, enhance socio-economic equity, involve grassroots innovation, localize production-consumption circuits, assign political responsibility and devise appropriate sociotechnical means. Such transformative mobilizations undermine climate fixes and go beyond them. More effective strategies can emerge from Participatory Action Research, whereby researchers and practitioners jointly define the problems that warrant research. In the case studies here, knowledge exchange with political activists helped to sharpen action-research questions for a systemic perspective on false solutions versus alternatives. As many cases here illustrate, technical designs and standards always facilitate one social order rather than other, thus warranting political struggle. This big picture can help to identify and facilitate an effective social agency for transformative mobilizations, as steps towards system change.

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7: Conclusion: What Social Agency for System Change?