Are social innovation paradigms incommensurable?
The purpose of this paper is to examine how social innovation can be socially and politically constructed to defend or attack neoliberal hegemony, to accept or reject the technocratic governance of that hegemony and how it can be used to limit or liberate the social and political capacities of citizens. Montgomery (2016)
“social innovation is never neutral but always political and socially constructed’’ (Nicholls and Murdock 2012, p. 4)
By the article title, is it possible to assume that:
- there are paradigms of social innovation, it means two or more;
- the question is to know if those paradigms are able to be mesured or compared (incommensurability);
The concept of social innovation still rest undefined, but is possible to distinguish two diferent factions who are fundamentally opposed in it's most basic assumptions.
There are two diffent paradigms under contruction about what is social innovation, and by paradigms, the author choose the concise position of Thomas Kuhn. Kuhn still says that to begin with paradigmatichal investigation, any study must locate the responsible groups, it means, indentify the emerging schools of analysis of social innovation.
So, Montgomery identify two developing schools of social innovations, exposed in the following table:
Tecnocratic
|
Democratic
| |
Knowledge construction
|
Expert
|
Community
|
Effects
|
Despoliticing
|
Politicising
|
Power distribution
|
Vertical
|
Horizontal
|
Paradigms of social innovation. Montgomery (2016)
The technocratic paradigm of social innovation is easily identified as a subgroup of neoliberalism. The second school is the democratic paradigm of social innovation, and the subgroup, this time, is not so easy to identify, and the reason, acconding to the autor, is a fragmentated inheritance, the scientific community, this time, is hard to be constructed.
Acconding to Kuhn (1962), the adherents of each school of social innovation are defined by their own paradigm, they practices, and their trades in diferent worlds, they see diferent things when they analyse the same problems. If the different paradigms operate in different worlds, the fully understanding requires a conversation, or a paradigm shift, that only occours in a very specific period called by Kuhn as scientific revolutions.
Technocratic Social Innovation
– The neoliberal paradigm
In order to understand the technocratic social innovation, is necessary first to understand its relationship to neoliberalism: its considered an exemple of flanking mechanism to maintain the neoliberal hegemony on periods of crises. The social innovation is positioned in between the civil society and the state, in a clear demonstration of the fundamental issues of the neoliberal project to define the role of the state in the economy.
The technocratic social innovation is used as a roll-out iniciative, to complement the roll back policies of the neoliberal hegemony, configuring, also, part of a broader political project to reengineer the state. The term 'social' is used within a commodified frame: in association with concepts as market competition, supply and demand and public finances efficiency. The social entrepreneur is a common identifier of the technocratic adherents, part of the neoliberal discourse: the heroic personality brought by Schumpeter's theory.
– Technocratic governance
The hegemonic paradigm seeks for the main- tenance of its power structure, and the technocratic social innovation appears as a soluction to the financial crisis. It is a soft privatization aproach for the welfare state services, that runs under principles, as the efficiency, necessity and empowerment. It also recast the role of the citizen as a consumer of public services within a commodified framework, while, based on the pretext of austerity mesurements due financial crisis, proceeds the disappearance of the public owned institutions.
The new and innovative institutions, born under the efficiency, necessity and empowerment, are now reinforcing the vertical distributions of power in society, whilst reduces the potential resistance of individuals against the hegemonic ideology. As the technocratic paradigm of social innovation, represented by the character of the entrepreneur, is consider the acceptable face of neoliberalism, the social term in it loses its meaning against the neoliberal project.
– Socio-political Capacities
The technocratic paradigm of social innovation in literature, have the Shumpeter concept of creative destruction as its pinefunding, what makes necessary an attempt to an parallel interpretation of the sócio-polical concept of empowerment. The neoliberal understanting of empowerment concept is basically instrumentalist, proposing the developement of a competitive self driven by the market, who also persuit an efficiency increase.
Schumpeter has a elitarian perspective, who drives not just the creative destruction concept, but all his theory, witch includes the ideas of one theory of democracy. This theory of democracy applies the logic of market competition to the political field, resulting em a elitist theory of democracy. The are no possibilities to reconcile Schumpeter theory with any sense of socio-political empowerment, becose it's based in the preservation of the neoliberal logic and its vertical power distribuitions.
Democratic Social Innovation
- The Counter-Hegemonic Paradigm
The hegemonic paradigm is the neoliberal which also has the power over the market-based society. The paradigmatical struggle is about the power distribution, and othen solutions to the human needs, that does not follow the market. More than that, a new reallity, where the market logic is not the center of decisions but it is understood as a support mechanism to enhance the human existence, should be sought.
A democratic paradigm of social inovation is a opposition hegemonic logic, leaded by those who reject the market racionale, but doesen't really oppose the economy as it seems. This school will seek to meet human needs, raise participation and working for the empowerment of marginalized groups. This paradigm of social inovation, with democratic approuch, can be decribed as an creative tranformation of social relations, since the empowerment is achievid when the socio-political capacities are increased.
- The Rejection of Technocratic Governance
The neoliberal agenda was able to reconfigure the structure of many states legitimating governance in crisis scenarios. Governance is usually presented as an form of civil society empowerment: but there is nothing related to the concept, but instead it acts in favor of the market, the profit and the competition.
- Socio-political Capacities
Find a point of interaction between the paradigms of social innovation is hard, but not impossible. The hegemonic hold the power position, as the democratic acts in order to challenge this position. Is in the politics, which essence is the discensus, that is possible the paradigmatical interaction. The partition of sensible is never complete in the neoliberalism, the excluded can't be seen nor heard, but are this outsiders who makes new forms of participation possible.
The technocratic paradigm of social innovation is a form to depoliticize the spaces in society, as a constrast to the democratic paradigm, which seeks to give voice to excluded in spaces of discensus, where politics are fundamental to construct a new reality.
Montgomery, T. Voluntas (2016) 27: 1979. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-016-9688-1
