Community initiatives and social innovation: pathways to degrowth transition

The project at a glance

Start date:

02 Jan 2019
Duration in months:

48
Funding:

University of Luxembourg, PhD funding
Principal Investigator(s):

Christian SCHULZ

About

The outburst of debates and talks about the current global socio-economic and ecological crisis has led to the proliferation of various community initiatives aiming to make our planet sustainable. Various scholars propose a degrowth transition that will help rethink our production, consumption and life patterns for the purposes of sustainability. Our research aims to understand the role of social innovation in the development and implementation process of community initiatives in regards to degrowth. To do this, we intend to make use of Participatory Action Research (PAR) methodology coupled with ethnography in order to investigate various community projects in a processual manner that will help us study what is being done rather than what should be done. Participant observation, interviews, surveys and focus groups will help us situate the concept of social innovation in the projects’ development process as well as understand its functions and roles in the degrowth transition process. As results, we aim to develop a new conceptual framework in relation to community initiatives and social innovation as well as get a better understanding of the social innovation concept in regards to transition movements.