CONSIDERING TIME IN CONVERSATIONS AROUND JUST TRANSITIONS
This research addresses a paradox: Sustainability scientists sugge
st that rates of change between fast, non-linear environmental changes, and accompanying social changes are ‘out of sync’ (Shrivastava et al., 2020). It is said that cultural and value changes have to occur within a generation, rather than over generations, via advancing ‘new ways of learning’ (ibid). However, new ways of learning in this short time (i.e. one generation) are seen to be problematic if not impossible, because it ‘takes time to engage over different stakeholder epistemologies’ (ibid). But, just transitions, if they are to be democratic and inclusive, necessarily require people’s participation and meaning making in and across diverse epistemic communities. This presents as a learning-centred paradox that requires methodology development, transgressive learning and meaningful skills development cf. Lotz-Sisitka et al. 2017; Rosenberg et al., 2020) i.e. ‘time [ixhesha] for justice’. Importantly, learning new ways of working and living requires the time needed for ‘destabilising categorical or stabilized knowledge in order to turn it into possibility knowledge’, a complex process that involves putting ‘inert stabilizing knowledge into movement’, with power to catalyse significant shifts and transformations in activity, a process that requires development of new meaning(s), instrumentalities or cultural tools that may as yet not be in existence (Engeström, 2007: 275).
This British Academy funded project involves multiple partners across the globe, coming together in collaborative meetings to re-think time in the context of just transitions.
The South African based meeting in October 2023 held conversations that were centred on various aspects of time and just transitions in South Africa, which struggles with the realities of the past in the present, nevertheless with a promise of just transitioning to offer possibilities for a just, inclusive future in the world’s most unequal society.
Time and Just Transitions, the South African Meeting Report
Last Modified: Tue, 30 Apr 2024 12:37:31 SAST