The Tipping Point of the ‘tipping Point’ Metaphor: Agency Amd Process for Waves of Change

This paper asks how certain ideas become fashionable and what conditions underpin the innovation and diffusion of knowledge. It investigates the emergence of the „tipping point‟ metaphor, which has been widely used in academia and the media to describe, account for and/or predict a process or potential process of change or even cataclysmic occurrences in a range of contexts, including urban studies and climate change. Adopting an approach which combines citation, network and discursive analysis, we explore the usage of this term which has varied and contested meanings over time and argue that there are multiple access points to which innovation and knowledge diffuse in academic communities. We use the notion of wave-like phenomena to enhance our understanding of the emergence of this concept within and across academic disciplines.