SHARED GREEN DEAL: Social sciences & Humanities for Achieving a Responsible, Equitable and Desirable GREEN DEAL

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Publications

Publication . Beers, PJ; van Bellen, Laura; Carraça, João; Girardi, André; Gritti, Valentina; Hebinck, Aniek; Kiewik, Jorrit; Mourato, João; Nieboer, Symke; Silvestri, Giorgia; Truninger, Monica

The SHARED GREEN DEAL project aims to drive behavioural, social, and cultural change across Europe in alignment with the Green Deal. This report focuses on transforming industrial food systems that contribute to various crises, including hunger, poverty, obesity, environmental degradation, and biodiversity loss. Through ‘experiments’ in four different European regions, the study explores the potential of the transition management arena approach in finding pathways to more sustainable and just food systems. The arena approach is a collaborative, multi-actor process designed to develop transition narratives that link systemic challenges with local actions, fostering sustainability transitions.

2025Other

Open access

The Meso Multiple in energy and climate research: how different social sciences treat the in-betweenness between the micro and macro

Publication . Foulds, Chris; Truninger, Monica; Aggeli, Aggeliki; Crowther, Ami; Robison, Rosie

The traditional choice of either focussing on individualism (the ‘micro’) or holism (the ‘macro’) when consid ering social change, is seen as an increasingly unhelpful dualism. As such, the ‘meso’, occupying or connecting the space between the micro and macro, is being increasingly invoked in Social Science research on energy and climate. This paper reviews how different Social Science fields (on energy and climate) theoretically approach the meso. We found four different versions of the meso being enacted. The Micro-leaning and Macro-leaning versions of the meso work in this middle ground, but are pulled towards their ontological roots in the micro or macro respectively. We illustrate these by discussing: how the Pro-environmental Behaviour field's meso work is grounded in individualistic assumptions; and, how the Transitions field's meso work focuses on ideas of system organisation. In contrast, we found our other two versions of the meso to lean much less towards the micro or macro. These are the Implicit-meso and Explicit-meso versions, which sit resolutely in the middle ground, but differ in their presentation. The Implicit-meso is illustrated by the Social Practices field, which uses a unit of analysis that accounts for both micro and macro, but yet is neither micro nor macro; and, the Explicit-meso is illustrated by the Scale and Place field, which has established a consistent theoretical unit that enables a bridge between micro and macro thinking. We call for more transparent and reflexive discussion from researchers on the version(s) of the meso that they are enacting.

2025Journal article

Open access