The role of political economy in framing and producing transformative adaptation

We show how transformative adaptation research can reproduce existing political-economic structures and processes. We review research on transformative adaptation to illustrate the need for a systematic understanding of the role of political-economic structures and processes in transformative adaptation. We argue that it is necessary for two reasons. First, we must be cognizant of the relationship between economic hegemony and efforts to understand and initiate transformative adaptation. We show that transformative adaptation should consider this economic backdrop because it may undermine the normative goals of transformation. Second, transformative adaptation should be conceptualized as a challenge to specific social structures and processes that support economic hegemony. If the goal of this research is to allow groups to adapt and overcome systematic inequity and marginalization, we must incorporate human agency in transformative adaptation to allow people to determine their own transformations.