Hans Mommaas

Triggering transitions towards sustainable development of the Dutch agricultural sector: TransForum’s approach

TransForum is an innovation program which aims to make a substantial contribution to the transition towards more sustainable development of the Dutch agricultural sector. This article describes the scientific foundation and architecture of this program. TransForum operates on the basis of five working hypotheses which together constitute one integrated analytical framework. These hypotheses are: (1) sustainable development is a dynamic system property; (2) sustainable development needs system innovation; (3) system innovation is a non-linear learning process; (4) system innovation requires active participation of relevant key players from knowledge institutes, governmental bodies, civil society organisations and the business community; (5) the program requires transdisciplinary collaboration of all players. TransForum identifies three new innovation strategies: (1) vital clusters; (2) regional development; (3) international agro-food networks; as alternatives to the current arrangements. Innovative projects are organised in these innovation strategies. The aim of the scientific program is threefold: (1) it addresses research questions raised in the innovative projects; (2) it investigates the need for system-innovations and the way in which they can be realized; (3) it designs research projects to test the 5 main working hypotheses of the program. The scientific program is organised in four themes following a cyclic innovation process which is constantly monitored. The cycle starts with people’s preferences and images, followed by studies on which inventions are required to achieve a successful innovation. Subsequently, it is investigated how to organize new innovations and transitions and finally, how citizen/consumers behaviour and preferences mobilizes sustainable development, closing the loop.

Spaces of Culture and Economy: Mapping the Cultural-Creative Cluster Landscape

From the 1980s, the stimulation, nourishing or even instrumental creation of culturalcreative clusters has become an important component of both cultural and economic public policy at both the urban and regional level. Cultural functions, from the ‘classical’ performing and visual arts to more contemporary multi-media, leisure and/or design activities, are grouped together in a variety of spatial forms: in new building complexes, renovated industrial and harbour buildings, in quarters and districts. Together, they form part of a broader cultural turn in both urban planning and regional development strategies. However, cultural-creative clustering strategies have often been based on notions not usually made explicit. In particular, there was a fragmented understanding of the role of culture and creativity in the new service economy, and in relation to that, of the economic transformation of cities and regions. This went together with an under-exploration of the transformations the cultural realm itself was going through, from a rather hierarchical and canonical reality, to something much more open and horizontal, but also more commercial. What did this imply for notions of artistic professionalism, the cultural resourcing of artistic creativity, the composition of critical audiences, artistic role models, and the reputation of creative careers? As a consequence, complex questions about the role of culture and the arts in the future economy and in future cities and regions have been left underexplored, thus resulting in the lumping together of different models of artistic, cultural, urban and industrial development. One possible result of this was that the cultural-creative clustering agenda either got stuck in former ‘artisanal’ models of creative communities or was hijacked by more economically oriented industry, ICT, innovation or real estate policy agendas (cf. Cunningham 2004; O’Connor 2007). In either case, an embryonic Chapter 4 Spaces of Culture and Economy: Mapping the Cultural-Creative Cluster Landscape

Leisure, Lifestyle, and the New Middle Class

This article assesses differentiation in leisure patterns within the upper middle class based on job sector (i.e., civil servant, private sector employee, or self-employed). Combining three Dutch data sets covering the 1990–2000 period (n = 3415), significant job sector differences were found for 47 of the 98 leisure items studied. The results demonstrate that leisure participation is not structured by a single, externally legitimated hierarchy ranging from highbrow to lowbrow culture, but rather by more ambiguous patterns of leisure participation based on a narrative of personal enrichment and the self. Differences between the leisure patterns of people working in different sectors remained mostly stable during the 1990s.

European leisure studies at the crossroads? A history of leisure research in Europe

In this contribution, a generalized picture is given of the history of leisure research in Europe. It is based on a comparative study of the history of leisure research in six European countries: Spain, Poland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom (Mommaas, Van der Poel, Bramham, & Henry, 1996a). Across Europe, leisure research has been dominated by sociological perspectives and concerns. Sociology has very much acted as a mediator of collective, public concerns, dealing with issues of enlightenment/civilization and cultural participation/welfare. However, from the late 1970s onward, the collective, educational project of free time has lost much of its former significance. On one side, there is now much more academic attention to issues of time, consumption, play, and pleasure. However, at the same time, these issues have become disconnected from former collective concerns of leisure and/or free time. This leads to two interrelated questions: Are leisure studies still in need of a unif...

Transforum system innovation towards sustainable food. A review

Innovations in the agri-food sector are needed to create a sustainable food supply. Sustainable food supply requires unexpectedly that densely populated regions remain food producers. A Dutch innovation program has aimed at showing the way forward through creating a number of practice and scientific projects. Generic lessons from the scientific projects in this program are likely to be of interest to agricultural innovation in other densely populated regions in the world. Based on the executed scientific projects, generic lessons across the whole innovation program are derived. We found that the agricultural sector requires evolutionary rather than revolutionary changes to reshaping institutions. Measuring sustainability is possible against benchmarks and requires stakeholder agreement on sustainability values. Results show the importance of multiple social views and multiple stakeholder involvement in agricultural innovation. Findings call for flexible goal rather than process-oriented management of innovation. Findings also emphasise the essential role of profit in anchoring sustainable development in business. The results agree with concepts of evolutionary innovation. We conclude that there is no single best solution to making the agri-food sector more sustainable densely populated areas, but that the combination of a range of solutions and approaches is likely to provide the best way forward.

Organizing innovations and transitions

This chapter concentrates on the interaction between developmental dynamics in the different action experiments, aimed at exploring new more sustainable agricultural business models, and changes in the wider institutional environment. Which (mis)fits can be identified? What has to be done to enable agro innovation to more effectively be managed in a rapidly globalizing and urbanizing environment? Based on a loose theoretical framework, consisting of notions of the network society, transition theory and urban regime theory, we come to the conclusion that we need a new conceptual/strategic story line, with the developmental coalitions related, enabling a productive fit between a ‘transitionalizing’ landscape of agriculture on one side and a highly urbanizing metropolitan environment on the other.