The Impact of Dissonance? A Valuation Perspective on Rural Social Innovation Processes

Abstract

Social innovation (SI) has been credited with fostering novel solutions to the socio-economic challenges many rural areas face. The quest for a substantiated understanding of its potential for regional development has spawned a rich literature on SI impact assessments. Yet, having been instrumental, these assessments harbour several ambiguities as they seek to unveil objective impacts in a results-oriented manner. First, SI processes take diverse directionalities, questioning the idea of them being ‘straightforward facts’ and giving leeway to a more constructivist understanding. Second, a results-oriented perspective tends to obscure social processes that initially contribute to the emergence of impacts. In response to such concerns, we suggest a valuation perspective that explores how SI impacts are constructed iteratively throughout the innovation process. To do so, we operationalise the notion of dissonance as a critical factor embedded in innovative activities in three instances: impulses, turning points, and lock-ins. This perspective allows us to study how value is experienced, assigned, and strategically attracted while shedding light on how SI processes and their impacts are co-constructed in valuation processes. The article uses empirical vignettes from selected case studies with SI initiatives in Northern Germany.