for: social tipping point, STP, social tipping point - misapplication, social tipping points - 4 application errors

title: Social tipping points everywhere?—Patterns and risks of overuse

date: Nov 17, 2022

abstract

• The last few years have witnessed an explosion of interest in the concept of social tipping points (STPs),
  • understood as nonlinear processes of transformative change in social systems.
• A growing body of interdisciplinary scholarship has been focusing in particular on social tipping related to climate change.
• In contrast with tipping point studies in the natural sciences–for example
  • climate tipping points and
  • ecological regime shifts–
• STPs are often conceptualized as desirable, offering potential solutions to pressing problems.
• Drawing on
  • a well-established definition for tipping points, and
  • a qualitative review of articles that explicitly treat social tipping points as potential solutions to climate change,
• this article identifies four deleterious patterns in the application of the STP concept in this recent wave of research on nonlinear social change:
  • (i) premature labeling,
  • (ii) not defining system boundaries and scales of analysis,
  • (iii) not providing evidence for all characteristics of tipping processes, and
  • (iv) not making use of existing social theories of change.
• Jointly, these patterns create a trend of overusing the concept.
• Recognizing and avoiding these patterns of “seeing the world through tipping point glasses” is important for
  • the quality of scientific knowledge generated in this young field of inquiry and for
  • future science-policy interactions related to climate change.
• Future research should seek to
  • identify empirical evidence for STPs while remaining open to the possibility that
    • many social change processes are not instances of tipping, or that
    • certain systems might not be prone to nonlinear change.