Giuseppe Feola presents @ GeoST Webinar series

19 May 2021. Giuseppe Feola gave an invited talk titled ‘Geographical perspectives on grassroots innovations: diffusion and place-making‘ at the Geography of Sustainability Transition Webinar Series. The talk was followed by an intervention of the discussant, Prof. Tim Schwanen of the University of Oxford.

The talk and Q&A can be viewed at this link.

Abstract

Sustainability transitions research has relatively recently recognized the added value of an explicitly geographical perspective on sustainability transitions (e.g., Truffer et al., 2015; Binz et al., 2020). But (how) does a geographical perspective help us better understand grassroots innovations, specifically? And what theoretical baggage should inform a geographical analysis of grassroots innovations? This talk discusses two geographical research foci on grassroots innovations: diffusion and place-making. Both foci can help answer important questions about the role and potential of grassroots innovations in sustainability transitions. However, a focus on place-making is particularly important: it shifts attention from ‘solutions’ to performances, and from ‘regimes’ to holistic understandings of space and place, and is thus particularly suited to answer the urgent calls for a critical turn in sustainability transitions research (Feola, 2020; Hopkins et al., 2020). Yet, to fully understand bottom-up processes of place-making in sustainability transitions, and to position them in relation to larger processes of capitalist development and de-colonization, we need to build on critical human geography scholarship, which has so far only marginally informed grassroots innovations research, and to possibly let go of the notion of grassroots innovations altogether.