Erik Paredis

The circular economy, dominated by capitalocentric, technocentric, and eco‐modernist discourses, risks perpetuating systemic injustice because of its limited consideration of the social and of what is possible. In this article, we examine how social justice can be embedded into circular business models (CBMs)—key drivers of the circular economy transition—within and beyond capitalist enterprises, traditionally the focus of CBM literature. Building on a systematic literature review of 55 articles and informed by a diverse economies framework, we constructed an inventory of interventions that can help firms uphold recognition, procedural, and distributive justice. Our analysis of these interventions, based on the extent to which they are embedded into business models (justice as an add‐on vs. justice as a design principle) and deviate from the dominant capitalist paradigm, reveals a typology of strategies that firms implicitly adopt to push just outcomes at the system level. This article also describes structural conditions that debunk the assumption that firm‐level justice interventions automatically translate to desirable system‐level outcomes (i.e., addressing systemic injustice). Analyzing CBMs through a combined diverse economies and social justice framework encourages us to recognize a greater diversity of economic and enterprise activity as legitimate, question the extent to which enterprises can achieve systemic change under a capitalist system, and (re)ignite a connection between micro and macrolevels of analysis called for in the strategic management literature.

Environmental problems are usually not tackled with path-departing policies but rather with incrementally adjusted or unchanged policies. One way to address incremental change is the policy feedback approach, which initially focussed on self-reinforcing feedback and path-dependency. Today, self-undermining feedback is also increasingly being studied, centring on agency and change. However, it is unclear precisely how actors use power in policy feedback processes. Therefore, this study applied a power perspective and the policy arrangement approach to a case study of the reorientation towards a circular economy in Dutch wastewater policy between 2008 and 2018, which resulted in incremental instead of fundamental policy change. Here it was observed that self-undermining feedback was generated from 2008 onwards but the balance quickly shifted back to self-reinforcing feedback, indicating that the analysed power struggles led to incremental change. These dynamics resemble a shift from the so-called paths and forks (i.e. fork in the road) towards the boomerang pattern (i.e. returning to its original position) of policy change. The patterns are explained by focussing on powerful actors that resist change through the use of incremental reforms, the ongoing struggles of these actors in facilitating self-reinforcing feedback and the role of interpretation in using feedback as a resource. Overall, this study provides a nuanced understanding of incremental change by directing attention to the power struggles of actors in policy feedback processes. For practitioners, the study emphasises the importance of power struggles in enabling a circular economy.

COVID-19 reaffirms that we are living out the consequences of the Anthropocene. In terms of education this affirmation has considerable implications: we must overcome the profound divisions between the fields of Natural Sciences and the Social Sciences while at the same time recognizing the political character of educational and scientific practices.Sustainability is an idea that potentially embodies the elements that respond to these two challenges, but only distancing ourselves from a technocratic-instrumental approximation and assuming a political approach to the idea. Post-normal science provides an adequate framework for this because the emerging problems present democratic challenges that demand other academic and educational treatment.Our intention with this text is to contribute didactic material that incentivizes the introduction of this conceptual debate into the classroom setting. Far from proposing a confrontation between the dominant mode of thought, in this paper we propose an argument that seeks to untangle the basic components of our thesis and show the arbitrariness of all the theoretical constructions that result from that. We hope, in this way, to contribute to a transdisciplinary environmental and sustainability education that consists in uncovering the political dimension of this issue, to repoliticize education, transcend the division between relativism and objectivism and, encourage theoretical positioning without determinisms.

Recently, calls have increased for a paradigm shift or transition towards resource recovery and a circular economy in the Dutch wastewater system. However, we have observed diverging interpretations on the nature of the transition. This reflects the political environment of sustainability transitions: political struggle emerges over the definition of problems, futures and strategies to be used. In order to help clarify the emerging debate and identify political choices, we conducted a discourse analysis. We identified three discourses that reveal some of the political choices to be made. One discourse is becoming dominant and focusses on optimising the large-scale infrastructure, market development and legislative changes. The discourse draws on the existing infrastructure and current political-economic institutions, which gives it an advantage in becoming dominant. Our findings also suggest that this discourse shapes a transition pathway that is characterised by lock-in effects and, at most, incremental changes instead of a fundamental shift in the established Dutch wastewater system.

‘Sustainability’ and ‘transition’ are popular and often-used concepts. However, this omnipresence also leads to a diversity of interpretations and misunderstandings about their meaning. This chapter examines four common misunderstandings about sustainable development and sustainability transitions: (1) ‘Sustainability is about ecological concerns’; (2) ‘We need a waterproof and objective definition of sustainability’; (3) ‘Every change leads to a transition’; and (4) ‘We can easily plan and manage sustainability transitions’. The authors argue that sustainability is neither an objective standard nor an arbitrary concept, and that it is a broad political notion (entailing much more than only environmental concerns). Through a brief introduction to the multi-level perspective on sustainability transitions, they also indicate that building a more sustainable world is a very complex process that requires fundamental changes in socio-technical regimes. Transitions go hand in hand with resistance, power struggles and questions of legitimacy. Consequently, attempts at governing sustainability transitions are also messy and deeply political.

This article elaborates an explanatory framework for the role of consumption practices in transitions to (enhanced) sustainability in the food system. To develop an applied practice approach we combine the concept of ‘practice’ with that of ‘niche/regime’, adopted from contemporary sociology and transitions theory, respectively. This re-combination adds to the field of applied consumption research and describes consumption beyond the boundaries of individualist and structuralist models, as well as integrates a conceptualization of the a-linear reproduction of aligning and competing consumer practices. We illustrate the methodology by showing its application drawing on data of a niche in the Belgian food system. Elaborating on the social practice model based on Giddens ((1984) The Constitution of Society. Cambridge: Polity Press), Bourdieu ((1976) Outline of a Theory of Practice. New York: Cambridge University Press) and Spaargaren and Van Vliet ((2000) Lifestyles, consumption and the environment: The ecological modernisation of domestic consumption. Environmental Politics 9(1): 50–76), we designate a three-tiered framework that endeavours to describe consumption practices in terms of everyday routines and habits, integrating an agency perspective with a dual perspective on structure. Consumer interviews and focus groups combined with a system analysis of the context of the alternative food practice allowed a schematization of what it implies to be a carrier of the niche practice. The practice schematizations of this niche are then considered vis-à-vis a schematization of the regime practice. The comparison shows two essential aspects: it points out that (1) although qualitative and systemic differences are found between niche and mainstream practices, in both cases the perception of the carriers (i.e. consumers) on what they need to do is to an equal extent normalized, and (2) empirical results indicate that central conceptions in the contemporary food consumption discourse, such as convenience, can in real life be redrawn by entirely different sets of interconnected routines. We reflect on the methodology and give suggestions as to how consumption governance could orientate towards practices as complementary to the traditional focus on individual consumer behaviour and consumer norm targets.