Making the case for self-organisation: understanding how communities make sense of sustainability and climate change through collective action

Abstract

Understanding how community groups take on the challenge of climate change is key to understanding the capacity of society as a whole to adapt in the face of climate change in ways that acknowledge a broader need for a sustainable societal transition. In order to show this it is important to identify what distinguishes self-organised responses to the climate change challenge from other responses. Through critically evaluating the existing literature on self-organisation and on locally based responses to climate change, the paper clarifies what we mean by self-organised response and then demonstrates how the concept would enhance the scope of research about local-level responses to enhance societal sustainability. Furthermore, the article presents an agenda for identifying selforganised responses to climate change and distinguishing self-organised responses from other forms of 'community-led' response.

Online and On-Site Interactions within Alternative Food Networks: Sustainability Impact of Knowledge-Sharing Practices

“…This study contributes to social capital theory and a knowledge-based view by applying these two well-known theories to a new field such as that of FAs. Furthermore, due to the scarce number of quantitative studies investigating AFNs, our findings expand the literature by providing insight regarding knowledge-sharing practices for AFNs and self-organising communities [24][25][26]. These results may also be useful for practitioners, since they suggest that a digital platform, slightly different from traditional physical channels, plays a significant role in shaping customer behaviour [8,27,28].…”

“…Their analysis of AFNs has given empirical evidence of four ways through which members can deploy their consumption choices: (i) exerting their freedom of choice in a radical way; (ii) reconfiguring the way food is embodied into socio-technical practices; (iii) participating in food movements; and (iv) co-producing new systems of food provision, together with producers and other actors. Social embeddedness, trust and sense of togetherness have been found to be central components of SFSC [11,[39][40][41][42], contributing to an understanding of AFNs as a community-based self-organising group that can lead, through dynamic interactions, to sustainable transformation of societies [12,[24][25][26]43,44]. One of the main aims of AFNs is in fact to foster connectedness and community social cohesion [7], boosting greater feelings of self-realization, sense of belonging and sharedness among their members.…”