Transition coalitions: toward a theory of transformative just transitions

ABSTRACT

From its origins in the labor and environmental justice movements in the United States, the concept of a just transition has travelled globally as a frame to infuse concerns of justice in public responses to escalating environmental crises. However, important gaps remain in terms of understanding the potential of transition efforts to be transformative in shifting the political economic structures that cause, sustain, and deepen injustices. This article asks: what does critical sociological theory of power and social change offer for understanding the features of transformative transition coalitions as compared to those that reinforce environmental, social, and economic inequality? To this purpose, I apply insights from Antonio Gramsci and Karl Polanyi, contemporary scholars who use their theory, and environmental justice scholars to identify the means and form of transformative just transition coalitions. I identify two respective conditions of transformative coalitions: strategic power and embedded relations. Through this lens, I describe four transition coalition types: status quo, impeded, disembedded, and transformative, and discuss related examples.

KEYWORDS:

• Just transition
• sociological marxism
• Gramsci
• Polanyi
• environmental justice

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Phaedra Pezzullo and the three anonymous reviewers for their excellent input. I would also like to thank the presenters and organizers of the Just Transition Research Collaborative’s workshop on ‘Cities in Transition.’ I am also grateful for the opportunity to learn from Michelle Gabrieloff-Parish, Manuela Sifuentes, and Phaedra Pezzullo as part of the Just Transition Collaborative. Any mistakes remain my own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Leaders of this effort included Michelle Gabrieloff-Parish, Manuela Sifuentes, Phaedra Pezzullo, Magnolia Landa-Posas, Neda Kikhia, Tim Beal, Angela Maria Ortiz Roa, Katie Doyle Meyers, and Brett KenCairn, among many others.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

David Ciplet

David Ciplet is an assistant professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. He is co-director of the University of Colorado Boulder Just Transition Collaborative, which works for social justice in the transition to a sustainable economy. His research focuses on inequality, justice, and social change in environmental governance. He is lead author of Power in a Warming World: The New Global Politics of Climate Change and the Remaking of Environmental Inequality (MIT Press, 2015). He has co-authored articles in journals such as Global Environmental Change, Nature Climate Change, and Global Environmental Politics.