Developing an understanding of these issues is the objective of the third general task of emancipatory social science: the theory of transformation. We can think of emancipatory social science as an account of a journey from the present to a possible future: the critique of society tells us why we want to leave the world in which we live; the theory of alternatives tells us where we want to go; and the theory of transformation tells us how to get from here to there. This involves a number of difficult, interconnected problems: a theory of the mechanisms of social reproduction which sustain existing structures of power and privilege; a theory of the contradictions, limits and gaps in such systems, which can open up space for strategies of social transformation; a theory of the developmental dynamics of the system that will change the conditions for such strategies over time; and, crucially, a theory of the strategies of transformation themselves.