Socioecological conditions
What social, political-economic, and ecological conditions inhibit or encourage action toward sustainability in agriculture?
Research Project 2023-2027
Just Transitions in Agri-Food Systems: Acceptance and Resistance to Actions for Sustainable Transformations in Rural Areas
Climate transitions in agriculture are never only technical.
This project investigates how sustainable transformation in agri-food systems is shaped by inequality, power, capability, and place, with a focus on why some stakeholders can participate in climate action while others resist or are pushed to the margins.
About
Why this project matters
Rural regions are already experiencing climate change, economic pressure, and contested transition policies. Farmers and other agri-food stakeholders are central to climate action, yet the conditions for participating in transformation are highly uneven.
The project uses a just transition lens to examine who is able to engage in sustainability transformations, who bears the costs, who benefits, and what social and ecological conditions make more inclusive outcomes possible.
Core focus
Acceptance of, resistance to, and participation in sustainable transformations in agri-food production systems.
Research Questions
What conditions support just and sustainable transformation?
The research questions focus on how climate action in agriculture is conditioned by social power, ecological vulnerability, and uneven capacities to participate in transformation.
Inequality and capability
How do unequal resources, power relations, and differing capacities shape participation in climate transformation?
Acceptance and resistance
Why do some actors support climate-related changes in agri-food systems while others oppose them or cannot take part?
Transferable lessons
Which ideas, policies, and forms of organization can travel across contexts to strengthen just transition in rural areas?
Comparative Approach
Comparing agri-food transformations across two Global North contexts
The project combines interdisciplinary theory with comparative case study research to examine how sustainable transformation in agri-food systems unfolds under different Global North conditions. It brings together environmental justice, political economy, and sustainability science to analyze how environmentally significant actions are shaped by social institutions, power relations, and ecological pressures.
Sweden
Sweden provides a case for examining how climate action, rural development, food production, and environmental governance intersect within a Global North welfare-state context. It offers an opportunity to study how different actors respond to pressures for sustainability transformation in agri-food systems, and how questions of justice, participation, and uneven capacity shape those responses.
United States
The United States provides a contrasting Global North case in which agri-food transformations unfold through different political, economic, and institutional conditions. It allows the project to explore how climate-related pressures, rural inequality, and contested transition pathways influence stakeholder acceptance, resistance, and the possibilities for more just and sustainable change.
Theoretical grounding
The project develops just transition as an analytical framework for agri-food systems by combining environmental justice, political economy, and sustainability science.
Empirical strategy
Comparative case study research combines literature review, policy analysis, statistics, interviews, fieldwork, and historically grounded interpretation.
Expected contribution
The project aims to clarify how more effective and inclusive climate action can emerge in rural agri-food systems, and where the main barriers remain.
Project Team
Collaborative and comparative
Principal Investigator
Stefano B. Longo
Stefano B. Longo is Professor in the Department of Sociology and Work Science at the University of Gothenburg. His research examines global development processes, the social drivers of ecological change, and interactions between social and biophysical systems, with a strong emphasis on political economy, sustainable development, and food systems.
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Co-Principal Investigator
Ellinor Isgren
Ellinor Isgren is Senior Lecturer at the School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg, and a researcher at LUCSUS. Her work focuses on agriculture, development, and sustainability, especially in smallholder contexts and in relation to social and political mobilization in rural areas.
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Co-Principal Investigator
Michael Carolan
Michael Carolan is Professor of Sociology at Colorado State University, where he also serves as Food Systems and Food Security Specialist. His expertise spans environmental sociology, food systems and agriculture, agricultural and environmental policy, and the sociology of technology and scientific knowledge.
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PhD Student
Kalle Blomberg
Kalle Blomberg is a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology and Work Science at the University of Gothenburg.
View profilePublications
Selected publications from the project
2026
Justice, framing, and abnormal transition politics
Carolan, Michael. 2026. "Closed frames, open wounds: abnormal justice across energy and agrifood systems." Environmental Sociology. Published online February 24, 2026. https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2026.2637618
2025
Critical sustainability science and transformation research
Longo, Stefano B., Ellinor Isgren, and Michael Carolan. 2025. "Critical sustainability science: advancing sustainability transformations." Sustainability Science 20(5):1903-1917. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-025-01667-x
2025
Contested protein futures in agrifood systems
Carolan, Michael. 2025. "Sustainable protein transitions or transformations: contested agrifood frames across 'no cow' and 'clean cow' futures." Sustainability 17(6):2637. https://doi.org/10.3390/su17062637
Related Publications
Foundational work connected to this research
2021
A decent meal
Carolan, Michael. 2021. A Decent Meal: Building Empathy in a Divided America. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. https://www.sup.org/books/sociology/decent-meal
2021
Nutrient overloading in the Chesapeake Bay
Longo, Stefano B., Ellinor Isgren, and Brett Clark. 2021. "Nutrient Overloading in the Chesapeake Bay." Sociology of Development 7(4):416-440. https://doi.org/10.1525/sod.2020.0032
2021
Sociology for sustainability science
Longo, Stefano B., Ellinor Isgren, Brett Clark, Andrew K. Jorgenson, Anne Jerneck, Lennart Olsson, Orla M. Kelly, David Harnesk, and Richard York. 2021. "Sociology for Sustainability Science." Discover Sustainability 2(1):47. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43621-021-00056-5
2020
The rural problem
Carolan, Michael. 2020. "The Rural Problem: Justice in the Countryside." Rural Sociology 85(1):22-56. https://doi.org/10.1111/ruso.12278
2018
Between nature and modernity
Isgren, Ellinor. 2018. Between Nature and Modernity: Agroecology as an Alternative Development Pathway: The Case of Uganda. Lund: Lund University. https://portal.research.lu.se/en/publications/between-nature-and-modernity-agroecology-as-an-alternative-develo/
2015
The tragedy of the commodity
Longo, Stefano B., Rebecca Clausen, and Brett Clark. 2015. The Tragedy of the Commodity: Oceans, Fisheries, and Aquaculture. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/the-tragedy-of-the-commodity/9780813565774/