The who, the what, and the how of social innovation in inner peripheries: A systematic literature review

This article is a systematic literature review on social innovation in inner peripheries. It investigates what actors (who), processes (how), and topics (what) emerge from the literature on SI in marginalized rural areas. The aim is to understand under what conditions social innovation can be interpreted as a resource in inner peripheries and, at the same time, if inner peripheries offer a fertile ground for social innovation to emerge and develop. A focus on the role of planning in social innovation initiatives is also provided with the objective to recognize whether and how the literature mentions it in supporting or hindering the emergence of social innovation in inner peripheries. Results from the literature review show that social innovation in inner peripheries is frequently promoted by social enterprises and public-private partnerships that work synergically with a wide array of public and private actors, within multi-level and multi-actor governance arenas where different scales, sectors, and actors are connected and combined. The topics covered by social innovation initiatives mainly refer to rural development, with a specific emphasis on farmland and forestry management. In this strain of literature, social innovation is often viewed as a vital component of rural development policies and a means to strengthen collaboration and social learning in lagging communities. Findings suggest that social innovation can be interpreted as a resource in inner peripheries when the effort of the public sector is channeled into multi-level ‘middle-ground’ spaces and positively combined with the external and internal input of actors, and sources of innovation. In the conclusion, we argue the need to advance a ‘context-sensitive’ conceptualization of social innovation able to tackle path-dependent dynamics and address the specific problems and challenges of inner peripheries, preventing the risk that unreflexive innovative initiatives ‘borrowed’ from urban areas exacerbate existing socio-spatial inequalities.