Giuseppe Feola

Social scientists have often studied grassroots initiatives in terms of prefiguration, generating important insights into the construction of alternatives to capitalism. However, the role of deconstructive processes, such as the refusal to engage with capitalist logics and relations, remains debated and undertheorized. This essay brings the theoretical perspectives of schismogenesis and unmaking capitalism into conversation with theorizations of refusal in prefiguration, allowing the advancement of a novel understanding of deconstructive processes in prefigurative grassroots initiatives. Building upon a conceptualization of grassroots initiatives as the production of social space, the essay makes three contributions to the debate on refusal and deconstruction in prefiguration. First, it contends that the prefiguration of alternatives to capitalism by grassroots initiatives is inherently entangled with and enabled by deconstructive processes of differentiation from capitalist cultural and sociomaterial configurations. Thus, deconstructive processes disable or weaken the influence of capitalism on prefigurative initiatives. Second, to comprehend fully and more accurately such disabling or weakening, scholars should rely on a conceptual repertoire that encompasses refusal, as well as other processes such as unlearning, sacrifice, and defamiliarization. Third, the essay contends that such deconstructive processes may enable, if not be preconditional for, prefiguration having liberating, protective, and affirmative functions.

This article analyses the efforts by the German Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) network to carry out political advocacy work as a strategy to strengthen the movement and induce change in the industrial agri-food system—a strategy which thus far has been omitted by studies on CSA. To address this gap, we build on the literature on social movements and advocacy groups. Drawing on experiences with political advocacy between 2018 and 2022, this article maps enabling factors and barriers for advocacy as well as the related internal debates and contestations. We find that the organisational structure of the network (or in some instances, the lack thereof) influences strategies and tactics, resources, emotions and group dynamics, and advocacy spaces. The study concludes that advocates should pay due attention to their movement’s organisational structure in relation to advocacy, including potential tensions around member participation in decision-making, responsibilities, and legitimacy of advocates. Attention should also be paid to the visibility and valorisation of advocacy work, and (mis-)matches between the internal structure and advocacy spaces.

This paper builds on social movement studies literature with the objective of contributing to a better understanding of how discourse can serve as a foundation for coalition building among grassroots organizations struggling for environmental sustainability and social justice in the city of Utrecht (the Netherlands). We analyze podcast recordings and webpages featuring 10 grassroots organizations and identify five signifiers that emerged as the most prominent: connection; diversity and inclusion; sustainability; awareness, learning, and knowledge; and Utrecht. For each signifier, we identify discourses giving distinct meanings to the signifier and articulated by one or more of the studied organizations. Our study makes an empirical and practical contribution to the discussions about the critical role of discourse in coalition formation at the local level. It is explorative of the prospects for coalition building which can be envisaged on the basis of an analysis of current discourses of distinct grassroots organizations. While our findings support and potentially strengthen the collaboration among grassroots organizations and movements in Utrecht, our theory-informed discussion of this case study offers practical insights into bottom-up civic initiatives in urban contexts elsewhere.

Grassroots initiatives (GIs) play a crucial role in driving sustainability transitions. They adopt different approaches to exert impact through multi‐stakeholder governance platforms, such as ‘scaling up’, ‘scaling through’ and ‘amplifying’. This paper argues that understanding how GIs achieve this impact requires viewing them as political actors and recognising multi‐stakeholder governance platforms as inherently political spaces. Analysing the history of two food policy councils (FPCs) as case studies, the paper develops and applies a conceptual framework that highlights the political agency and power of GIs in sustainability transitions leading to both sociotechnical and sociopolitical change. Drawing on the concept of ‘constituency’ from social movement studies, the study highlights the political power of GIs to impact sustainability transitions with democratising aims. The findings reveal that the political context—shaped by factors such as a history of collaboration, institutional proximity, and varying levels of competition between state authorities at distinct administrative levels —profoundly influences how FPCs function as political spaces and the approaches enacted by GIs to exercise political power and agency. The study underscores the need for future research to better account for the sociopolitical and cultural context, political power, agency, and different models of impact in sustainability transitions.

Sustainable food systems are essential for societies to be able to thrive within planetary boundaries. Multiple visions compete to cast light on the future of food production and consumption worldwide. However, it has become difficult for many to imagine pathways to just and sustainable food systems. To navigate this bloc, this essay explores food system sustainability from a degrowth perspective. Departing from socio-technical and socio-ecological readings of food systems’ unsustainability, degrowth builds on a critique of our dominant socio-economic system that pursues growth at all costs, resulting in human exploitation and environmental destruction. Thus the purpose of this essay is to sketch visions and pathways for post-growth food systems, stimulating readers to imagine and practice food systems – and other forms of society and economy more broadly – that ensure environmental justice and a good life for all within planetary boundaries.

This article analyzes how autonomous more-than-human political communities emerge in practice. We study an agro-ecosystem in the Catalan Sub-Pyrenees, where a peasant land use cooperative runs a regenerative farm. Through interviews and observations, we map and explore different more-than-human alliances, solidarities, and contradictory and conflictual relationships. We discuss the political practices through which this political community is constituted and reproduced, with a specific focus on multispecies care and the harm that it can bear. To complement these empirical insights, we embrace a speculative political ecology to further explore how specific practices of inclusion-exclusion, conflict-harm, and alliances-mutual aid (can) play out in more-than-human political communities. Finally, we discuss the possible types of autonomous political praxis in, for, and with more-than-human political communities in-against-and-beyond capitalism and the state. This article thus proposes an empirical account of more-than-human anarchisms in action, as well as collective and situated speculations on their potential for emancipatory, autonomous, and egalitarian more-than-human collective futures.

This study examines the strategies developed by Italian Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) initiatives to de-commodify, de-instrumentalise and de-monetise labour in their attempt to prefigure alternatives to dominant capitalist agri-food systems. To do so we answer the following research questions: What type of strategies do these CSA initiatives employ to that end? What insights can be gained as regards the potential and barriers to fuller and more accomplished post-capitalist labour management within CSA initiatives? Data were collected through a participatory action research project involving 16 Italian CSAs, participant observation in meetings of CSA initiatives and the Italian CSA Network, and official documents collection. Across the three crucial moments considered in this study, we observe substantial difficulties in realising post-capitalist labour management as the initiatives are constrained by external requirements (e.g., legislation) and also internally by members’ weakness in implementing the CSA model due to their remaining integrated in the capitalist system. These findings point to the importance for CSA initiatives of deepening the collective process of deliberate deconstruction of valuation logics and predefined roles, as well as legal frameworks to find ways to enable the realisation of post-capitalist labour management. In this regard, we also suggest that the Italian CSA Network could play a more active role in addressing some of the internal and external factors hindering the consolidation of CSA initiatives and the manifestation of their transformative role.

Policy action for sustainability transformation faces inherent and ever-present sources of conflict, pushback, and resistance (i.e., discord). However, conceptual frameworks and policy prescriptions for sustainability transformations often reflect an undue image of accord. This involves simplified assumptions about consensus, steering, friction, discreteness, and additiveness of policy action, conferring an unrealistic view of the potential to deliberately realize transformation. Instead, negotiating discord through continuously finding partial political settlements among divided actors needs to become a key focus of policy action for sustainability transformations. Doing so can help to navigate deeply political settings through imperfect but workable steps that loosen deadlock, generate momentum for further policy action, and avoid complete derailment of transformation agendas when discord arises.