ABSTRACT
Tim O’Riordian (2014) notes that transitions to sustainability are difficult to conceptualize, problematic to research and are potentially biased by informal and formal power relations. He argues that:
efforts to transform societies into sustainability require a degree of ambivalence, depend upon fresh approaches to action-based research, focus on people and their empathies and aspirations, and probe the ways in which governing institutions can be adjusted toward greater support and flexibility. Most important will be the shifts in conception of institutional blockages and innovative transformations which are as yet limited in both the theoretical and applied research literature.
