Transitions in-the-making
Towards a performative understanding of sustainability in Swedish aviation
Time: Fri 2025-10-17 13.00
Location: Kollegiesalen, Brinellvägen 8, Stockholm
Video link: https://kth-se.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Nam48OD4Q0edKJ40_-56uA
Language: English
Subject area: Industrial Economics and Management
Doctoral student: Emily Christley , Hållbarhet, Industriell dynamik & entreprenörskap
Opponent: Professor Tomas Moe Skjølsvold, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Department of Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture
Supervisor: Associate Professor Emrah Karakaya, Hållbarhet, Industriell dynamik & entreprenörskap; Professor Frauke Urban, Hållbarhet, Industriell dynamik & entreprenörskap
Abstract
Research on sustainability transitions offers valuable insights into systemic change across societal systems like energy, mobility, and buildings. These systems, heavily reliant on fossil fuels, now face mounting climate consequences and require fundamental reconfigurations in their modes of production, distribution, and consumption. Yet much of the research field treats sustainability as a pre-existing, stable endpoint, often defined through fixed goals, metrics, or policy targets, which risks obscuring the inherently contested and political nature of sustainability itself.
In response, this thesis advances a performative understanding of sustainability, viewing it not as a fixed target but as continuously enacted, negotiated, and contested through discursive and material practices. Swedish aviation provides a compelling case to explore this perspective. Whilst celebrated for its environmental leadership, Sweden ranks amongst the highest globally for per capita aviation emissions, highlighting deep tensions between global connectivity and climate responsibility.
Drawing on four papers, the thesis examines how competing understandings of sustainability are enacted and contested through transition efforts in Swedish aviation. Paper I reviews mitigation strategies and policy developments. Papers II and III explore how industry actors perform sustainability through narratives and technological innovation. Paper IV analyses the discursive conflict between the aviation industry and the flight-free movement, revealing deeper struggles over what sustainability should mean and require.
This thesis offers an empirical account of two competing discourse-coalitions—Green flying and Staying on the ground. Each advances divergent visions, narratives, and practices that shape the trajectory of aviation’s transition. Conceptually and methodologically, it advances a performative, narrative-oriented approach that foregrounds the politics of meaning-making in transitions. This perspective highlights the complexity of sustainability transitions and calls for more reflexive, pluralistic, and open-ended forms of governance—holding space for disagreement, fostering experimentation, and acknowledging that transitions are ever in-the-making.