How can we…? Connecting inventive social research with social and government innovation

This is an afterword to 'Inventing the Social', co-edited by Noortje Marres, Michael Guggenheim and Alex Wilkie, which offers a range of perspectives including sociology, architecture and design on research practices that intervene into social life.

The afterword connects inventive social research as discussed in this volume with developments in the fields of social design, social innovation and government innovation through which public policies, solutions and services are being constituted, researched, designed, developed and evaluated as they co-emerge in relation to social issues and policy agendas. The chapter identifies opportunities for inventive social research to reconfigure these events, narratives and practices and suggest some issues that result from using an inventive approach in relation to social innovation and to government experimentation.