Rafael Ziegler

Innovations in Doing and Being: Capability Innovations at the Intersection of Schumpeterian Political Economy and Human Development

Abstract This paper seeks to contribute to a conceptual perspective with which to approach the evaluations and explanation of social entrepreneurs as agents of social change. First, it discusses the capability approach as a comprehensive normative framework with which to articulate ‘the social’ in a way that deals with the triple challenge of specifying ‘the social’ in a context of conflicts of interests, value diversity and exclusive public spheres. Second, the paper proposes two explanatory hypotheses of innovation for social change: (a) social innovation as the carrying out of new combinations of capabilities; (b) social entrepreneurs as characterized by their capacity to imagine and carry out new combinations of capabilities. The combination of capabilities suggests a subset of human development where ethics meets innovation: a capability innovation pathway at the crossroads of long-term, societal perspectives on change (human development, Schumpeterian economic development) where innovation is social and capability advancement entrepreneurial.

The quality of sustainability science : a philosophical perspective

Abstract Sustainability science does not fit easily with established criteria of the quality of science. Making explicit and justifying four features of sustainability science—normativity, inclusion of nonscientists, urgency, and cooperation of natural and social scientists—can promote deep and comprehensive questioning. In particular, because the inclusion of nonscientists into sustainability science has become a dogma, re-examining the epistemic, normative, and political reasons for inclusion is important for the quality of sustainability science. These reasons include providing a range of perspectives and helping to craft and implement policy in real-world social and ethical situations. To be included effectively, nonscientists must be understood within this demanding context rather than employed merely to satisfy a dogma. We situate our discussion in this article against a foundational controversy of sustainability science: the weak versus strong sustainability debate. According to our analysis, comprehensive consideration of the features of normativity, inclusion of nonscientists, urgency, and cooperation of natural and social scientists suggests a convincing case for strong sustainability.

Characteristics, emerging needs, and challenges of transdisciplinary sustainability science: experiences from the German Social-Ecological Research Program

Transdisciplinary sustainability science (TSS) is a prominent way of scientifically contributing to the solution of sustainability problems. Little is known, however, about the practice of scientists in TSS, especially those early in their career. Our objectives were to identify these practices and to outline the needs and challenges for early career scientists in TSS. Three major challenges were identified: (1) TSS demands openness to a plurality of research designs, theories, and methods, while also requiring shared, explicit, and recursive use of TSS characteristics; (2) researchers in TSS teams must make decisions about trade-offs between achievements of societal and scientific impact, acknowledging that focusing on the time-consuming former aspect is difficult to integrate into a scientific career path; and (3) although generalist researchers are increasingly becoming involved in such TSS research projects, supporting the integration of social, natural, and engineering sciences, specialized knowledge is also required.

Political Perception and Ensemble of Macro Objectives and Measures: The Paradox of the Index for Sustainable Economic Welfare

Macroeconomic measures and objectives inform and structure political perception in large systems of governance. Herman Daly and John Cobb attack the objective and measure of economic growth in For the Common Good . However, their attack is paradoxical: 1) they are in favour of strong sustainability, but construct with the ISEW an index of weak sustainability, and 2) they describe humans as persons-in-community, but propose an index based on personal consumption. While the ISEW has attracted much attention, the same cannot be said about the person-in-community ontology developed at length and prominently in their work. This essay therefore aims to reconstruct Daly and Cobbs criticism of growth from the person-in-community approach. It defends the ISEW as a debunking index that is motivated by the person-in-community approach and the economy-ecology scale problem, and that also engages in the politics of scale. But this does not mean that the ISEW is also a measure of sustainable economic welfare. Critics expecting this kind of sustainability index are likely to see contradictions, but not the critical role the ISEW can play for democratic accountability. Understanding the latter makes it possible to see the ISEW as a step in the evolution of political perception and action. Accordingly the essay is also intended as a contribution to the understanding of this role in a situation where sustainability indices continue to be calculated, and renewed efforts at the measurement of welfare and happiness are made.

Introduction: Voices, Preconditions, Contexts

Social entrepreneurship has become a source of hope, but we are like water-tap users who know little about the origin of the source. Social entrepreneurship is said to be made of ideas that are tried out rather than proclaimed, ideas that are pushed through by initiatives belonging to individuals rather than multinational mega-organisations, ideas that are proposed in languages that are culturally diverse and not necessarily professionally polished, ideas that speak of pervasive social inequalities and exclusions, of ecological problems and risks, and ideas that do not speak of these issues as inevitable predicaments but as challenges that call for societal transformations. Who or what makes all this possible? Social entrepreneurs are said to have innovative solutions to pressing social problems; they are characterised as ambitious and persistent; they are said not to rely on business and government for the realisation of their ideas, and to aim at wide-scale, systemic change.1 These social entrepreneurs are promoted by support organisations, the media, companies and policy-makers. They have become increasingly familiar, branded and politicised actors. How has this happened? What kind of impact do social entrepreneurs seek? What impact do social entrepreneurs have? And, is it possible not only to learn about social entrepreneurs, but also to become one? This anthology offers extended discussions of these questions – except for the last one. Oscar Wilde quipped that ‘the best things in life cannot be taught’. Whether social entrepreneurship belongs to the ‘best things in life’ is no doubt a question of individual judgment. But the obstacle to ‘teaching’ social entrepreneurship is not this question of taste: the frequent claim that people are ‘born’ as social entrepreneurs is. Social entrepreneur Orlando Rincón Bonilla says: ‘It’s genetic. You can walk into a room full

Tackling Marginalisation through Social Innovation? Examining the EU Social Innovation Policy Agenda from a Capabilities Perspective

Abstract This paper demonstrates that the capabilities approach offers a number of conceptual and evaluative benefits for understanding social innovation and—in particular, its capacity to tackle marginalisation. Focusing on the substantive freedoms and achieved functionings of individuals introduces a multidimensional, plural appreciation of disadvantage, but also of the strategies to overcome it. In light of this, and the institutional embeddedness of marginalisation, effective social innovation capable of tackling marginalisation depends on (a) the participation of marginalised individuals in (b) a process that addresses the social structuration of their disadvantage. In spite of the high-level ideals endorsed by the European Union (EU), social innovation tends to be supported through EU policy instruments as a means towards the maintenance of prevailing institutions, networks and cognitive ends. This belies the transformative potential of social innovation emphasised in EU policy documentation and neglects the social structuration processes from which social needs and societal challenges arise. One strategy of displacing institutional dominance is to incorporate groups marginalised from multiple institutional and cognitive centres into the policy design and implementation process. This incorporates multiple value sets into the policy-making process to promote social innovation that is grounded in the doings and beings that all individuals have reason to value.

Justice and innovation – towards principles for creating a fair space for innovation

Innovation plays an ambivalent yet important role in modern society. A general conception of innovation, based on research in innovation studies from economics and sociology, specifies this role not just as a matter of entrepreneurs in pursuit of private gain in markets, but rather in terms of a network of actors who carry out a new idea. Via a critical discussion of Rawls’ theory of justice as fairness that addresses its shortcomings with a view to the non-economic dimension of innovation, this paper identifies the double role innovation plays for justice: to contribute to the long-term stability of society and to find ideas that specifically improve the benefits for the least advantaged in the present. Within this framework, a principle of contribution taking into account both the input of entrepreneurs and of investors should orient the process, not least so as to reduce the inegalitarian tendencies of the innovation process and to create funds for justice investments.

The politics of operationalisation: sustainable development and the eco-space approach

Operationalisation is a phenomenon of the political culture of large-scale democracies, and yet its politics have received little direct attention. The politics of operationalisation is explored via a critical examination of the operationalisation of sustainable development in the form of eco-space approaches. This brings to the fore the normative, political and epistemological dimensions of this operationalisation and the risks associated with them. Based on this discussion, the role of the operationalisation of sustainable development in large-scale democracies is situated in terms of democratic accountability.

Social innovation as a collaborative concept

The rise of social innovation expresses a discontent with innovation as we know it, and its ability to deliver just and sustainable outcomes. Yet, social innovation is also notoriously vague as a concept, thereby putting into doubt whether the concept offers any real improvements or alternatives. This paper issues an invitation to think about social innovation as a collaborative concept. The conceptual framework shows collaboration, rather than contestation, to offer a space for the working together of different perspectives and actors. The collaborative concept frame welcomes and seeks to explain a diversity of uses. Singling out key features of social innovation as a collaborative concept, it seeks to contribute to an emerging practice that makes different contributions part of a progressive conversation about social innovation, the evaluative ideas associated with it and the evidence from policies and projects. Identifying transformative, taxonomical and transitional–sceptical uses of social innovation, the paper highlights the importance of analysing the evaluative aspects of the multisectoral reconfigurations associated with social innovation so as to keep track of its role for justice and sustainability.

Toilet Monuments: An Investigation of Innovation for Human Development

The article reviews the role of capability innovations, defined as the carrying out of new combinations of capabilities, in human development. Drawing on a recognized social innovation in sanitation—the ikotoilets of Kenyas Ecotact—the article makes a threefold argument. Firstly, indirect conversion factors are an important element in the success or failure of an innovation. In our sanitation case study, these factors help to explain why the public toilets in urban centres are a success story and those in the slums a story of difficulty. Secondly, not to take into account direct and indirect conversion factors is to commit explanatory commodity fetishism. Goods are taken as given. However, they are the product of human design, including options for capability impact, and this accordingly needs to be taken into account. Thirdly, applying the capabilities approach to innovation suggests that it is fruitful to distinguish analytically two different scaling strategies regarding the replication of capability innovations, which the article calls ‘the lab’ and ‘the family’ strategies.