Maldonado-Mariscal Karina
Department of Social Sciences, Social Research Center (sfs), TU Dortmund University, Dortmund, Germany.
Front Sociol. 2023 Oct 27;8:1247293. doi: 10.3389/fsoc.2023.1247293. eCollection 2023.
This article provides a comprehensive review of social innovation and grassroots innovation over the last 5 years, offering a detailed analysis of both concepts. This study explores the integration of grassroots innovation and social innovation based on an extensive literature review. It examines five dimensions within the literature: key fields, disciplines, actors, geographical areas and theoretical frameworks. Despite significant research in recent decades, there is a notable gap of literature devoted to grassroots innovation and its position within discourse of social innovation. This paper explores the differences and similarities between the concepts of social innovation and grassroots innovation in order to better understand the use of both concepts, the cases in which they are used and possible complementarities. The main findings of the literature on combining the concepts of social innovation and grassroots innovation focus on social enterprises, while research on grassroots innovation as a stand-alone concept focuses on community-led initiatives, civil society organisations, cooperatives and local leaders. Geographically, India plays a very important role in grassroots and social innovation research, followed by Brazil and Spain. In terms of theoretical approach, the combination of social innovation and grassroots innovation has a strong sociological focus, emphasising theories of social practice, collective action, solidarity and community. In contrast, the theoretical frameworks of grassroots innovation are more anchored in power relations and socio-technical transitions, including, for example, resistance to innovation. Grassroots innovation offers practical insights into understanding innovation through the lenses of grassroots and community-based social change. Similarly, social innovation can contribute to the debate on grassroots innovations by understanding not only the agency of actors, but also the innovation ecosystem, actors and types of innovation. Further empirical research on the understanding and application of both concepts in the global North and South in academic discourse offers great potential, therefore potential research questions have been raised here for further investigation.
本文对过去5年的社会创新和基层创新进行了全面回顾，对这两个概念进行了详细分析。本研究在广泛的文献综述基础上，探讨了基层创新与社会创新的融合。它考察了文献中的五个维度：关键领域、学科、行为主体、地理区域和理论框架。尽管近几十年来有大量研究，但专门针对基层创新及其在社会创新话语中的地位的文献存在显著空白。本文探讨了社会创新和基层创新概念之间的异同，以便更好地理解这两个概念的用法、使用它们的案例以及可能的互补性。关于将社会创新和基层创新概念相结合的文献的主要发现集中在社会企业，而将基层创新作为一个独立概念的研究则集中在社区主导的倡议、民间社会组织、合作社和地方领导人。在地理上，印度在基层和社会创新研究中发挥着非常重要的作用，其次是巴西和西班牙。在理论方法方面，社会创新和基层创新的结合具有很强的社会学重点，强调社会实践、集体行动、团结和社区的理论。相比之下，基层创新的理论框架更多地扎根于权力关系和社会技术转型，例如包括对创新的抵制。基层创新为通过基层和基于社区的社会变革视角理解创新提供了实际见解。同样，社会创新不仅可以通过理解行为主体的能动性，还可以通过理解创新生态系统、行为主体和创新类型，为关于基层创新的辩论做出贡献。在学术话语中，对这两个概念在全球北方和南方的理解和应用进行进一步的实证研究具有很大潜力，因此本文提出了潜在的研究问题以供进一步调查。
