Social Learning for Energy Transition—A Literature Review

With increasing concerns regarding environmental sustainability, energy transition has emerged as a vital subtopic in transition studies. Such socio-technical transition requires social learning, which, however, is poorly conceptualized and explained in transition research. This paper overviews transition research on social learning. It attempts to portray how social learning has been studied in the context of energy transition and how research could be advanced. Due to the underdevelopment of the field, this paper employs a narrative review method. The review indicates two clusters of studies, which portray both direct and indirect links concerning the phenomena. The overview reveals that social learning is a force in energy transition and may occur at different levels of analysis, i.e., micro, meso, and macro, as well as different orders of learning. The author proposes to develop the academic research on the topic through quantitative and mixed-methods research as well as contributions and insights from disciplines other than sociology and political science. Some relevant topics for further inquiry can be clustered around: orders of social learning and their antecedents in energy transition; boundary-spanning roles in social learning in the context of energy transition; social learning triggered by stories about energy transition; and other theoretical underpinnings of energy transition research on social learning.

Social Obstetrics as Niche-Development in Addressing Health Inequities

We apply a transition research perspective to the Dutch obstetric care system to analyze historic, current, and future shifts and find ways to overcome persistent health inequities. We present social obstetrics as an emerging niche that addresses perinatal health inequities by acknowledging their multifaceted origins and fostering collaborations across the medical, social, and public health sectors. We conducted desk research, in-depth semi-structured expert interviews, and interactive group sessions with change-inclined professionals that are relevant for the implementation of social obstetrics in six Dutch municipalities. The outcomes are synthesized in a historical narrative and perspectives on current obstacles and future systemic shifts. We argue that social obstetrics can be considered a sustainable addition to what is already present, instead of a disruptive transformation of the current system. Social obstetrics is innovative as it connects various societal systems and offers a framework for cross-sectoral collaboration. These collaborations, in turn, can be the starting point for the transformation of the obstetric care system as well as other relevant societal systems.

Land Use Transitions: Progress, Challenges and Prospects

The study of land use transition has generally become an important breakthrough point to deeply understand the human-land interaction and reveal major socio-economic development issues and related environmental effects. Attempting to provide scientific support for sustainable land use and environmental management, this review systematically analyzes the overall picture, development trends, key fields and hot topics of land use transition research in the past two decades from a comprehensive perspective, which incorporates two complementary parts including the systematic quantitative literature review (based on CiteSpace) and the traditional literature review. The results reveal that: a. current research presents three characteristics, i.e., focusing on complex social issues, driven by realistic demand, and research branches becoming clearer and more systematic; b. there are four key fields and hot topics in land use transition research, i.e., i. theories and hypothesis of land use transition; ii. measuring land use transition; iii. the impacts of land use transition on “social-economic-ecological” system; iv. drivers and regulation of land use transition. However, challenges remain, current land use transition research is still to some extent fragmented, and it should be enriched by integrating with land system science. The dominant morphology biased should be redressed by underlining the recessive morphology transition process. Meanwhile, new techniques and methods are necessary to observe, track, monitor and model the recessive attributes. Finally, distant drivers of land use transition should not be ignored in this rapidly globalizing world.