When co-creation meets the pluriverse: engaging diverse worlds in low-carbon transitions

This paper brings science and technology studies into dialogue with Latin-American anddecolonial scholarship to reconceptualise co-creation in low-carbon transitions as apluriversal practice. Drawing on improved ecological cookstove programmes in ruralMexico, it extends Thomas’s concept of ‘socio-technical adequacy’ through a Fit-Belong-Sustain framework for assessing how technologies align with diverse social worlds. Basedon documentary analysis and interviews with diverse stakeholders (from indigenous cooksto government officials), this paper examines several decades of efficient stove initiativesand their uneven outcomes. It demonstrates that top-down efforts to disseminate a singular‘optimal’ stove frequently failed to replace the traditional hearth. Meanwhile, manyhouseholds continued to practice fuel stacking, combining open fires with newlyintroduced stoves that were often redesigned in use, thereby undermining the anticipatedhealth and carbon benefits. In response, locally grounded co-creation practices haveemerged in which artisans, universities, non-governmental organisations and userscollaboratively adapt stove designs to better fit everyday cooking practices and sustainthemselves through community-based maintenance arrangements. Despite renewed interestfrom governments, the stove sector remains dominated by one-off programmes andfragmented maintenance efforts, with little guidance on how to consolidate pluralistic, self-sustaining design and production ecosystems attuned to local socio-economic conditions.Therefore, we argue for the diffusion of dialogical frameworks rather than the pursuit of‘inclusive’ but stabilised artefacts. Rather than treating traditional material cultures asbarriers to innovation, culturally sensitive co-creative design can better align low-carbontechnologies with plural ontologies and position communities as active agents in shapingtheir socio-material worlds.