Elsevier

Environmental Science & Policy

Volume 92, February 2019, Pages 133-140
Environmental Science & Policy

Reinterpreting urban institutions for sustainability: How epistemic networks shape knowledge and logics

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2018.11.018Get rights and content

Highlights

  • A shift to a low-carbon society is contingent on the work of institutional actors.

  • Actors can draw on multiple logics or value systems, reinforced by knowledge networks.

  • The article presents case studies of institutional change in three English cities.

  • Epistemic networks may inspire, legitimise, facilitate, challenge and limit change.

Abstract

Long term urban resilience demands a transition to a low-carbon society but poses a dilemma: the institutions that stabilise and perpetuate sociotechnical systems must become agents of radical change. The possibility of alternative futures challenges the logics and values central to institutional identity.

‘Sustainability transitions’ thus raise questions of institutional reinterpretation. The extent of such reinterpretation hinges on the everyday ‘institutional work’ of actors who bring diverse understandings to bear on their roles and responsibilities. These understandings derive not only from actors’ professional roles but also from their engagement in wider epistemic networks.

Based on case studies of three urban organisations in northern England, this paper examines the impact and influence of epistemic networks in validating or challenging approaches to sustainability transitions. The research found such networking a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for institutional reinterpretation. Epistemic networks serve five functions: they inspire, legitimise and facilitate potential transitions, and challenge slow progress - but they can also limit transitions. From these findings, it is argued that epistemic networks are central to the identification and development of nascent ‘transition arenas’ (Loorbach, 2010) where more sustainable, and ultimately more resilient, futures may be tested and trialled.

Introduction

The challenge of ‘carbon lock-in’ (Unruh, 2000) provides a leitmotif in the long history of environmental policy and practice. Every proposed’ sustainability transition’ (Grin et al., 2010) must grapple with embedded technologies and social practices that form sites of resistance. The vision of a ‘low carbon economy and society’ (Urry, 2011) becomes occluded by continued political and social commitments to carbon-intensive practices such as air travel and shipping.

In the context of carbon-lock in, aspirations towards ‘sustainable cities’ (Flint and Raco, 2012) and long-term ‘urban resilience’ (Holling, 1973; Beilin and Wilkinson, 2015; Meerow et al., 2016) become sites of contest and struggle. Apparently straightforward routes to decarbonisation or ecological modernisation (Jänicke, 2008) twist and turn back on themselves. Institutions and organisations that should facilitate transformation can become stumblingblocks. Social-ecological change thus necessitates institutional change.

This article examines how institutional change can take place, embedding the policy and practice shifts needed to create adaptive and resilient cities in which the human and more-than-human worlds can co-evolve (Alberti, 2016). It focuses on how the knowledge required to reorient society can permeate organisations subject to long-established ‘institutional logics’ (Friedland and Alford, 1991). Based on a study of urban organisations in three English cities, it highlights the role of extra-organisational epistemic networks (Haas, 1992) and delineates the functions such networks serve in advancing or impeding sustainability transitions.

Decarbonisation is examined here as an initial stage in a quest for sustainability and for long term resilience. Sustainability is seen as encompassing, but by no means limited to, decarbonisation (Smith et al., 2005; Bulkeley et al., 2010; Grin et al., 2010). Urban resilience is seen as encompassing, but not limited to, sustainability. Without sustainable approaches to urban life, including decarbonisation, cities are unlikely to be resilient in an era of climate change (Folke et al., 2010; Muñoz-Erickson et al., 2017); this requires ‘a shift in both science and planning paradigms’ incorporating both resilience and transformation (Alberti, 2016, p. 49). I unpack this positioning further in section 2.

In drawing on institutional studies (Powell and DiMaggio, 1991; Lowndes and Roberts, 2013) I refer to institutions both as the ‘rules of the game’ in society (North, 1990) but more specifically as ‘institutional orders’ (Thornton et al., 2012) governing particular domains of social life and generating their own logics and values. These domains cover formal organisations, trans-organisational networks, and individuals. For clarity I refer henceforth to individuals as actors, constituted bodies (such as a university) as organisations, and to the domains within which organisations are situated as institutions.

The article proceeds in six stages. First, it sets the scene, briefly explaining the linkages between transitions, sustainability and resilience. Next it outlines the importance of interpretation and reinterpretation in institutional change. Change, it is argued, is highly contingent on actors’ situated knowledge and their responses to dilemma or crisis (Bevir and Rhodes, 2005). Third, it introduces the three case studies and research methods. Fourth, findings from the three case studies are presented, showing how actors’ situated knowledge can be deployed as a resource for change. In the fifth section I outline five characteristics of epistemic networks that are pertinent to sustainability transitions and the (contested) quest for resilience. Finally, I consider whether such networks are a necessary or sufficient condition for change, and underline the institutionally contingent nature of discussions of resilience or transition.

Section snippets

Decarbonisation, sustainability transitions, and urban resilience

The ‘urban’ matters because of the intensification of human life in cities, turning cities into ‘coupled human-natural systems’ (Alberti, 2016), but also because the sociotechnical systems that contribute to carbon lock-in and to potential decarbonisation are situated, managed and often designed in cities (Hallegatte and Corfee-Morlot, 2011). Urban organisations’ impacts on carbon consumption extend far beyond the organisations themselves and may facilitate or limit efforts at an institutional

An institutional perspective

This article explores the processes of institutional change required to advance’ sustainability transitions’ by focusing on organisations sited at the urban interface of policy and practice. It examines the changes in logics and values required at an institutional scale (Thornton et al., 2012) and the contested and changing knowledges that inform actors’ decisions. It deploys the concept of epistemic communities (Haas, 1992) to examine the importance of boundary-spanning knowledge networks in

Case studies and research methods

An interpretive case study approach was adopted (Baert, 2003; Alvesson and Sköldberg, 2009) in order to uncover, examine and critique the construction of meanings and possible futures implicit and explicit within the organisations studied. Zilber (2002) places the construction of meanings by actors at the heart of institutional change and reinterpretation. Interpretation provides an opportunity to advance new possibilities, ‘to illuminate what was previously unquestioned or taken for granted’

Complementary and competing knowledge: resources for change

The notion of multiple logics, discussed above, focuses attention on dilemmas as resources for change. Such dilemmas pivot on questions of legitimacy and appropriateness: given conflicting options, which is the right way forward? In deciding these questions actors draw on different sources of knowledge, which may be embedded in official guidance or instances of ‘best practice’ (Bulkeley, 2006) or in locally generated ‘community knowledge’ (Nursey-Bray et al., 2014) but is unlikely to be

Discussion: how knowledge resources are used

In selecting and presenting relevant information, epistemic networks also act as interpretive communities, solidifying meanings and generating shared understandings of policy priorities. Such processes, previous studies suggest, are fluid, contested and without predictable outcomes. Because they straddle the ‘knowledge-governance gap’ (Nursey-Bray et al., 2014), they involve establishing social meanings as well as agreed facts (Jasanoff, 2010); their expertise needs to be understood as

Conclusion

The functioning of epistemic networks and their influence on, and vulnerability to, established institutional logics can shed light on Meerow’s question (2016): ‘resilience for whom, what, when, where, and why?’ Not only must we ask how resilience is defined and in whose interests, but what kind of resilience may emerge from the institutional logics and institutional work evident in particular settings. The notion of an urban system (Alberti, 2016) must be qualified by acknowledgement of the

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful for the helpful comments of the guest editors and two anonymous reviewers. This research was funded through a doctoral studentship awarded by the Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research, Sheffield Hallam University, supported by Professor Peter Wells and Dr Will Eadson.

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