Post-Sustainability, Regenerative Cultures, and Governance Scale-Up: Transformational Learning Cases of Sociocracy 3.0 in Portugal

Abstract

Communities of practice and local transition experiences have been developed in recent decades. However, it has had a relatively marginal role of an experimental and fragmentary type. There are indeed networks (transition network and GEN), but their relationship is still outsiders vis-à-vis the established society and formal governance. On the other hand, these communities, as social entrepreneurship, have a relatively high “mortality rate,” making hard scale-up governance analyses and proposals. The current pandemic moment may or may not be a turning point in this situation, being one of the motivations of this chapter. Another motivation is the set of concepts that have emerged from criticism and overcoming the paradigm of sustainability: post-sustainability and regenerative cultures. Starting from these concepts and a triangular logic between university, governance, and communities of practices, we seek to learn from those who have already learned, through learning case studies for sustained social transformation. The research that the chapter embodies has an interdisciplinary basis and a direct partnership with actors with experience in using Sociocracy 3.0 (S3) as a social tool, enabling place-based learning. The main objective of this chapter is to discuss the possibilities of scale-up of S3, presenting a set of good practices in the application of this tool in Portugal. The chapter begins by discussing central concepts related to social transformation and transition: post-sustainability; regenerative cultures; S3; scale-up governance; and transformational learning cases. The following is a genealogy of sociocracy from the classic concept to practices as a system of self-organization. Built on collaborative citizen science research, we relate individual life story with the genealogy of social innovation, stating the relevance of the individual on these transition processes. In a collaborative way, the first typology of S3 in Portugal was done, and specifically, eight case studies are then presented, seeking to characterize elements of regeneration and scale-up governance. The contribution of this chapter is to place these communities of practice as true partners for social entrepreneurship of regeneration, creating possibilities for scale-up in a strong articulation with local governments for a better transition management.