This book is for anyone who is passionate about social transformation and the potential to create a better world. By challenging established approaches to social innovation and connecting it with the pursuit of social justice, Interrupting Innovation showcases the countless ways educators, activists, students, artists, and change-makers of all kinds are creating the conditions for meaningful social transformations today. Practical, pragmatic and radical, the authors in this wide-ranging collection offer fresh insights into doing social innovation in expansive and unexpected ways. They elaborate on key concepts and present absorbing on-the-ground case examples to show how social innovation can be applied to vexing social questions, giving special attention to dismantling harmful and exclusive systems while eluding cooptation. This hopeful, passionate book brings together leading scholars and practitioners from social work, psychology, sociology, natural sciences, artmaking, and community practice to offer an original and bold contribution to this growing and influential field.

Melanie Panitch is an associate professor and executive director, Office of Social Innovation at Toronto Metropolitan University. As the John C. Eaton Chair of Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship, she co-designed a minor in social innovation and developed partnerships internationally. She spearheaded the Sanctuary Scholars initiative, providing access to postsecondary for students with precarious immigration status. An activist, advocate, researcher and educator with strong roots in the disability rights movement, she was the founding director of the School of Disability Studies at TMU. The exhibit she co-curated, Out from Under: Disability, History and Things to Remember, is in the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. She is the author of Mothers, Disability and Organization: Accidental Activists.

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Samantha Wehbi is a professor, School of Social Work at Toronto Metropolitan University. Her research and artistic-practice interests have focused on international issues and grassroots community activism and organizing in Canada and abroad, including Lebanon, her country of origin. Her work has explored the complexities of urban landscapes and issues of displacement, postcolonialism, translocality and social change. Her scholarship explores interdisciplinary intersections of art, community practice and pedagogy. Dr. Wehbi is the co-editor of Re-imagining Anti-oppression Social Work: Reflecting on Research and Re-imagining Anti-oppression Social Work: Reflecting on Practice.

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Jessica P. Machado is the programming and stakeholder engagement officer in the Office of Social Innovation at Toronto Metropolitan University. She has been creating and supporting social innovation initiatives in higher education for nearly ten years. She has created a funding program for student organizers and activists and supported the development of an access pathway to postsecondary education for people with precarious immigration status. She is a steward with her local union and is involved in grassroots community activism in gender-based and sexual violence. She is pursuing an M.Ed. in adult education and community development from the University of Toronto, and her work explores critical pedagogy through coalition-building activities and social movements.

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“While decades of neoliberal rule have cultivated widespread despair and a sense of powerlessness, Interrupting Innovation offers a much-needed counter-narrative that suggests that change is indeed possible, and that social innovation is an appropriate means to that end. The book draws on concrete empirical cases from the Canadian context to offer a fresh look at how social innovation creates desirable futures by detailing how creativity, power-sharing, community embeddedness, co-creation, and arts-based interventions can serve as vehicles for social justice and positive social transformation. A remarkably clear-eyed, comprehensive, and inspiring guide to what social innovation can achieve—in Canada and beyond—while also pointing to the ever-present danger of its dark side.”

Pascal Dey, professor, Bern University of Applied Sciences

“Interrupting Innovation takes the concept of social innovation in a new direction, calling for a broader perspective that does not limit social innovation to solving social problems through change within organizations. By introducing science, art, culture, social movements, dialogue, and their impact on societal change, by emphasizing the importance of social relations and their key role in social innovation, the editors and the authors ‘re-load social innovation’ to highlight the ‘social as innovation.’”

Marguerite Mendell, distinguished professor emerita, School of Community and Public Affairs, and director, Karl Polanyi Institute of Political Economy, Concordia University

“This book takes a fresh and important look at social innovation, with a focus on social justice, highlighting the need to challenge and change the systems that shape our communities and institutions. Through a variety of real-world examples from different fields, the authors show the importance of collective action and the power of working together as a community, not least in opening up new ways of thinking and acting. This book is a must read for both students and professionals, as it expands our understanding of social innovation and its potential to bring about real, lasting change.”

Michael Roy, professor of social innovation & sustainable organizations, Stirling Management School

“The field of social innovation often falters on the irrational exuberance behind the claims that it makes. Finally, along comes a collection that takes a more critical, grounded approach that fills the substance gap in a gentle and generous way at a time when the stakes couldn’t be higher. In a world on fire with multiple crises unfolding, Interrupting Innovation: Centring the Social is a critical intervention and a must read for students, professors, activists and non-profit organizations trying up the ante in bringing about transformative social change.”

Am Johal, director, Vancity Office of Community Engagement, and co-director, Community Engaged Research Initiative, Simon Fraser University