Paper long abstract:

Social innovations are often distinguished from technological innovations in particular and from social change in general. But from an STS perspective, they are inseparably tied into the socio-technical innovations dynamics of modern societies. My presentation will trace the interdependencies of social and technical innovations with questions of social change in modern societies by looking how social innovations are increasingly employed as a mode and means of societal change.

As a mode of societal change, social innovations have been used as political instruments to counter social unrest and tension, for instance the introduction of social security laws at the end of the 19th century in Germany. They indicate an active manipulation of societal structures - either to initiate transformative change, but sometimes also to maintain the status quo with only minimal adaptations. And as a mode of social change, social innovations have become increasingly prominent in the last decades. As a means of societal change, the mechanisms of social innovations are increasingly seen as novel forms of governance where the established solutions of markets or bureaucracies fail. In contrast to top down political reform, social innovations are conceived as local and bottom up participation processes that help to manage the complexities of modern societies. As such, they have a limited scope and can hardly be scaled up to regional, national or even European levels.