Und Aktion! – Konzeptualisierung der Rolle individuellen Akteurshandelns in sozio-technischen Transitionen am Beispiel der regionalen Energiewende im bayerischen Allgäu

The German “Energiewende” is one of the most ambitious societal transition projects in recent times. It causes fundamental political and economic changes in the energy system in Germany and the whole of Europe. These great societal and technological changes of the current energy regime are of particular interest for research on sustainability transitions. In this research strand, however, the role of individual agency for socio-technical transitions is hardly considered. What drives actors who decisively pushed the regional energy transition? Which strategies and types of action do they choose to foster the transition? How do individual strategies and actions depend on the socio-technical system environment and how does the socio-technical system environment react to the individual actions? To analyse these questions, we apply the Human-Environment Systems (HES) Framework (Scholz, 2011) for the first time to socio-technical systems. Based on an exemplary analysis of the regional energy transition in the Allgäu region in Germany, we propose an adaptation of the HES Framework for socio-technical systems. Finally, we reflect on how the adapted HES framework for socio-technical systems can contribute to a better understanding of individual agency in systemic transitions.