Posicionamentos dos atores em transições para a sustentabilidade: mudanças nas práticas discursivas

Abstract

The actors’ role has received increasing attention in the transitions literature, especially in the Multi-Level Perspective (MLP) studies. In this literature, there has been a growing interest in adopting the strong structuration theory (SST) to analyze the relationship between agency and structure. However, to our knowledge, no longitudinal research on sustainability transitions systematically employed SST and MLP to investigate how multiple actors draw on the structure to act. To fill this gap, we propose a matrix that associates MLP and SST to investigate actors’ positioning about socio-technical transitions over time. We suggest the concept of positioning – “a point of view adopted and held to” – to label the intention of bridging the analytical dimension of the SST (structural context and actors’ habitus, knowledge, and actions) and the MLP (socio-technical landscape, socio-technical regime, and socio-technical niche). The longitudinal investigation of positionings offers a way of studying transitions without losing sight of individual actors, which are critical to understanding why and how transitions happen (or not). To investigate how the agents’ actions depend on how these agents perceive the structure, we conduct an empirical case study involving the sustainability transition to zero deforestation (ZD) in the global soybean sector. We focus on the Soy Moratorium ZD commitment at the Amazon biome and the attempt at a Cerrado Moratorium ZD commitment at the Cerrado Biome. We applied the matrix proposed to investigate, over time, the positionings of six of the main actors involved in these ZD initiatives. We are primarily interested in the actors’ discursive practices and the discursive battle in the sector. The data used was collected from around ten years of publications, on Twitter, by the six actors. In general, research on discursive struggles in sociotechnical transitions focuses on the discourse instead of the actors themselves. It means this literature analyzes, in an aggregated way, what was said instead of investigating the actors individually. In this way, aspects of the relationship between what was said and the specificities of each actor, such as mission, values, interests, and historical and social contexts, are not considered. However, directing attention to individual actors can shed light on (i) how discourses are created and adopted, (ii) how different discourses are related to the evolution of transitions and their contexts – more structural factors – and (iii) how the subjective perception of the actors concerning these structural changes takes place. As one of the results, we found that, over time, some actors did not adopt positioning exclusively in favor or counter the transition, as is usually the case in transitions research. We suggest that the positioning change can be understood through two dimensions concerning the relationship between agency and structure. First is the agent’s perception of legitimate arguments to defend their ideals — favorable or contrary — concerning the new practice or technology. Second, the agent’s perception of how this new practice or technology can influence their interests. Based on these two dimensions, we propose a typology of actors to analyze how flexible an actor is about its positioning.