The potential of social innovation to address intersecting social and spatial inequalities in regional territories is increasingly recognised. Against this background, the results in this article are based on a qualitative study of constellations of actors in peripheral rural regions engaged in socially innovative approaches to regional development. Empirically, the example of EPAM–a network of new young farmers across Portugal-is investigated using social topology methodology to demonstrate how social innovation spreads through rural regions. Data were collected and analysed across spatial scales to examine how images circulate ecologies of infrastructure–including EPAM- and traverse territorial boundaries. In this way, images as specific material-discursive configurations are shown to be agential in the performative spreading-out of social innovation.

To conceptualise these observations, the article is based on the assumption that social innovation has dual spatial properties. The first, an empirically legible and bounded object moving in space (regional). The second, an iterative trans-scalar process in which objects, bodies and spaces are performatively (re)made (process-relational). This assumption has implications on understanding diffusion dynamics in social innovation, specifically how does social innovation spread in a process-relational mode? Against this background, the primary aim of the article is to examine and elaborate the diffusion dynamics of social innovation in its process-relational mode in the case of EPAM. Applying social topology methodology with agential realist theoretical sensitivity is well suited to theoretically elaborate modes of spread in social innovation according to their spatial properties.

社会创新解决区域性社会和空间不平等的潜力越来越得到认可。在此背景下，本文的结果基于对周边农村地区参与区域发展社会创新方法的参与者群的定性研究。从经验上讲，EPAM 的例子——葡萄牙新的年轻农民网络——使用社会拓扑方法进行了调查，以展示社会创新如何在农村地区传播。跨空间尺度收集和分析数据，以检查图像如何传播基础设施生态——包括 EPAM 和穿越领土边界。这样，

为了将这些观察概念化，本文基于社会创新具有双重空间特性的假设。第一，根据经验清晰，有界物体移动在空间（区域）。第二个是迭代的跨标量过程，其中对象、物体和空间被表演（重新）制造（过程关系）。这个假设对理解社会创新中的扩散动态有影响，特别是社会创新如何以过程关系模式传播？在此背景下，本文的主要目的是在 EPAM 的情况下，研究和阐述社会创新在其过程关系模式中的扩散动态。应用具有代理现实主义理论敏感性的社会拓扑方法非常适合根据其空间特性在理论上详细阐述社会创新中的传播模式。