A ‘correlative’ turn for transition studies on China

Abstract Understanding China is critical to understanding global sustainability transitions. Transitions theories within the Anglophone academic tradition are limited in uncovering the deep mechanisms of China's transition dynamics. Building upon Chinese epistemologies, this viewpoint calls for a ‘correlative’ turn for transition studies on China for the next decade. Through an illustrative case of entrepreneurial experimentation in China, we show how correlativeness is embedded in the logics of transition activities. A correlative epistemology might answer the important question of why transitions gain momentum in some places but not in others.