ABSTRACT
This chapter explores why citizens-led social innovations are emerging today, thanks to the activism of a new generation of “doers” – ordinary women and men who are suspicious both of the market and of centralized, State-led solutions, and are too impatient to wait for solutions to come from above or from elsewhere. It argues that this generation has learned two lessons from past experiences: first, despite all the warnings from scientists, which started in the late 1950s already, our societies have remained on an unsustainable course; second, attempts to change the direction of progress by political action – by demonstrating on the streets, by joining political parties, or by union action – have proven futile, despite all the rhetorical pledges to move to more sustainable development pathways and some marginal progress on the ground. The civic engagement of the new activists is the result of these two disappointments.
