Abstract
Research has recently focused on various under-the-radar sustainability-oriented community initiatives to understand and support bottom-up dynamics of social-ecological change. While community initiatives vary widely, research on them tends towards an instrumental perspective: a will-to-upscale. While exploring possibilities for expanding (some of) the practices and impacts of sustainability-oriented projects and organizations, we argue for a more cautious approach to instrumentalising community initiatives. We develop our argument around four recurring issues we identify in the literature: (1) conceptual imprecisions; (2) privileging of novelties; (3) politics of urgency; and (4) outwards orientation. In response to these critiques, and leaning on geographical theories of scale, we outline our caution. At its core, this approach is a ‘literacy of scaling’ where scaling functions as a tactic subordinate to the community.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 506-513 |
Journal | Area |
Volume | 55 |
Issue number | 4 |
Early online date | 16 Jun 2023 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Dec 2023 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:The information, practices and views in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG).
Keywords
- amplification
- transformation
- tactics
- scale
- community