Socio-technical transitions in farming: key concepts - Transition Pathways towards Sustainability in Agriculture: Case Studies from Europe - page 24

sympathetic to the proposals of the niche, and are symptomatic of the heterogeneity and
dissent within a regime).
The territorial focus in FarmPath has been selected for two reasons. First, farming is
necessarily spatially embedded and thus affected by the nature of those spatial conditions.
These include natural conditions (soils, agri-ecosystem, climate etc.) as well as social and
cultural networks, values and traditions. As such, what constitutes sustainable practices will
necessarily be site-specific and cannot be defined in a 'one size fits all' approach. Second,
the focus on regional-level transitions allows us to 'zoom in' on the processes of
'anchoring' and 'linking', processes through which the niche actors interact with the
regime, and may initiate radical changes. The analytical focus is therefore on these
processes: how niche actors take advantage of complexity and unpredictable change; the
power issues involved in achieving change; the (re-)negotiation of the definition of
sustainability; and the strategies to bring about changes in institutions.
Fig. 2.2. The landscape puts pressure on the regime(s) to address a persistent problem,
and this pressure can present opportunities for the niche to 'take off'. To represent the
'anchoring' and 'linking' activities of the niche, it is helpful to conceptualize an area of
overlap between the regime and a niche. This is where niche actors link to 'hybrid actors'. In
this figure, the innovation by the niche also links two previously separate regimes (e.g.
agriculture and energy). (Source: authors).
Complexity: riding the dynamics
Transitions may sometimes be seen in a mechanistic way, as a set of factors or conditions
that - if they all work together - will cause a desired change. The underlying implication is
that transition processes can be steered or engineered to a certain extent. Thus, even if
guidelines derived from transition studies are not deterministic, recommendations, methods,
and techniques are still often presumed to have real effects which can be used to attain
certain objectives and solve certain problems. This, in effect, is a form of social engineering
(Duineveld et al. , 2009).
However, there will always be differences between the situation that is analyzed and
the situations for which recommendations are drawn. There will be different actors, each of
whom will argue for a specific problem definition, favour different means to address the
problem or prefer some outcomes over others. With every step taken by niche actors,