How can local initiatives bring about systemic change? The mechanisms underlying societal transition and transformation processes, a crucial concern globally, are still among the least understood topics in the social sciences. This stems from a major weakness compared with the life sciences or physics: A lack of methodologies and instruments for robust systemic analysis. The Socioscope: A Pioneering Methodology for Understanding Societal Transitions project aims to change this.
Building on their initial project, Socioscope Alpha: A Proof of Concept for Research on Societal Change, the research team aims to better understand societal transformation by developing a pioneering methodology based on local initiatives toward greater sustainability in food production, transportation and consumption. Using the domain of food as a kind of model organism, the researchers will collect high-quality data on local food initiatives from across continents and follow how they are embedded in the wider context, thus forming a bridge between the societal micro level and the macro level. Their goal is to discern patterns and social mechanisms within the collected data, working toward a theory of social change. This research will not only provide detailed insights into transitional processes in the context of food but also open the path to analyzing societal transitions in other domains through the generalizability of their approach.
The Socioscope project is being led by Helga Nowotny at the Complexity Science Hub of Vienna, Austria, and Saadi Lahlou at the Paris Institute for Advanced Study, France.
