Noel Longhurst

This paper highlights the hitherto unrecognised role of ‘alternative’ places in protecting different forms of sustainability innovation. The paper uses the concept of an alternative milieu to illustrate how a geographically localised concentration of countercultural practices, institutions and networks can create socio-cognitive ‘niche’ protection for sustainability experiments. An alternative milieu creates protection for the emergence of novelties by (i) creating ontological and epistemological multiplicity; (ii) sustaining productive spatial imaginaries; and (iii) supporting ontological security. These different dimensions of protection are explored with reference to an in-depth, empirical case study of Totnes in the United Kingdom. The paper concludes with some reflections on the theoretical implications of this research for the theorising of niche protection and for the geographies of innovation more generally, along with some recommendations for future areas of enquiry.

This paper introduces the concept of an alternative milieu in order to provide a more thorough account of the nature and development of ‘alternative’ places. It argues that such places have been generally neglected within geography, and that where they have been the object of research it is usually through a narrow conceptual lens. It is argued that the concept of an alternative milieu provides three analytical benefits. Firstly, it highlights the diversity of alterity within a given locality, a factor that is obscured by simplistic place images or narrower analytical frames. Secondly, it emphasises the significance of geographically fixed institutions in the formation of alternative places. Thirdly, it provides an anchor concept around which the processes that lead to the formation of alternative places can be orientated. The utility of the concept is illustrated through a case study of the emergence of an alternative milieu around the market town of Totnes in the United Kingdom.

This paper engages with the progressive politics of climate change and resource con- straint developed by the Transition ‘movement’ which looks to develop a positive local politics of the transition to a low carbon economy and society. At the heart of this politics is a vision of economic localisation rooted in a geographical imaginary of market towns with agricultural hinterlands. Consequently, the question of how the Transition model can be applied in urban settings has not been clear, leading to the implicit assumption that urban Transition initiatives are more complex and dif- ficult. In contrast, this paper argues that the plasticity of Transition politics means that, in some cases, an urban context might be more productive for the development of Transition initiatives because it allows for a greater diversity of political action as well as providing a density of networks and resources that can be critical for the sur- vival of grassroots interventions.

The sustainability transitions literature seeks to explain the conditions under which technological innovations can diffuse and disrupt existing socio-technical systems through the successful scaling up of experimental ‘niches’; but recent research on ‘grassroots innovations’ argues that civil society is a promising but under-researched site of innovation for sustainability, albeit one with very different characteristics to the market-based innovation normally considered in the literature. This paper aims to address that research gap by exploring the relevance of niche development theories in a civil society context. To do this, we examine a growing grassroots innovation – the international field of community currencies – which comprises a range of new socio-technical configurations of systems of exchange which have emerged from civil society over the last 30 years, intended to provide more environmentally and socially sustainable forms of money and finance. We draw on new empirical research from an international study of these initiatives comprising primary and secondary data and documentary sources, elite interviews and participant observation in the field. We describe the global diffusion of community currencies, and then conduct a niche analysis to evaluate the utility of niche theories for explaining the development of the community currency movement. We find that some niche-building processes identified in the existing literature are relevant in a grassroots context: the importance of building networks, managing expectations and the significance of external ‘landscape’ pressures, particularly at the level of national-type. However, our findings suggest that existing theories do not fully capture the complexity of this type of innovation: we find a diverse field addressing a range of societal systems (money, welfare, education, health, consumerism), and showing increasing fragmentation (as opposed to consolidation and standardisation); furthermore, there is little evidence of formalised learning taking place but this has not hampered movement growth. We conclude that grassroots innovations develop and diffuse in quite different ways to conventional innovations, and that niche theories require adaptation to the civil society context.

Parallel sustainable monetary systems are being developed by civil society groups and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), informed by ecological economics perspectives on development, value, economic scale and growth, and responding to the unsustainability of current global financial systems. These parallel systems of exchange (or community currencies) are designed to promote sustainable development by localising economic development, building social capital and substituting for material consumption, valuing work which is marginalised in conventional labour markets, and challenging the growth-based monetary system. However, this international movement towards community-based ecological economic practices, is under-researched. This paper presents new empirical evidence from the first international study of the scope and character of community currencies. It identifies the diversity, scale, geography and development trajectory of these initiatives, discusses the implications of these findings for efforts to achieve sustainable development, and identifies future research needs, to help harness the sustainability potential of these initiatives.

The multilevel perspective and social practice theory have emerged as competing approaches for understanding the complexity of sociotechnical change. The relationship between these two different camps has, on occasions, been antagonistic, but we argue that they are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, through empirical analysis of two different case studies of sustainability innovation, we show that analyses that adopt only one of these theoretical lenses risk blindness to critical innovation dynamics. In particular, we identify various points of intersection between regimes and practices that can serve to prevent (or potentially facilitate) sustainability transitions. We conclude by suggesting some possible directions for further research that place these crossovers and intersections at the centre of analyses.

This report explores the way in which interdisciplinarity unfolded within a muti-disciplinary consortium project that was seeking to develop transition pathways for the UK electricity system. The report suggests that within such complex institutional forms, interdisciplinarity unfolds in an uneven manner - with different depths at different points. It also argues that interdisciplinarity can be understood as a search for coherence. There are at least 4 dimensions of such coherence: 1) Linkage of different outputs 2) comprehension between participants 3) the credibility of outputs 4) philosophical coherence between disciplinary world views. The extent to which coherence is acheived depends on a number of factors, not least the production of interdisciplinary space, the development of a common language and the work of specific individuals such as 'translators' who work across disciplinary boundaries.

"In recent years there has been increasing academic interest in theorising and exploring the postcapitalist, interstitial economic spaces that exist within or beyond capitalism, typified by the work of J. K. Gibson-Graham. Such spaces, it is argued, represent not only sites of resistance but are spaces from which ‘alternative’ economic development strategies can proliferate. This thesis seeks to explore the conditions under which such ‘grassroots’ postcapitalist institutions might flourish. Some of the existing literature on postcapitalist institutions indicates that places with a reputation for countercultural activity might be productive sites for the emergence of grassroots postcapitalism. However, this thesis argues that such countercultural places are themselves an under-researched and under-theorised phenomenon.

To address these deficits this thesis develops a broader conception of the countercultural and explores the tendencies that have led to the case study area (Totnes, Devon) becoming a ‘New Age’ or ‘Alternative’ centre. It describes the processes that led to the formation of a self-sustaining localised countercultural milieu within the area. In particular, it identifies homophily, the desire to be amongst similar people, to be significant, previously unrecognised factor. It then explores the significance of postcapitalist institutions within the locality. Whilst the density of activity supports the hypothesis that such places are sites of postcapitalist activity, little evidence is found that the locality increases their economic viability. This argument is made through an exploration of the local organic marketscape.

The thesis also explores a paradox that emerged through the research: That those places which are productive for the emergence of new ideas and the shifting of ontological frames might not be the best places in which to also build collective community based entities. Thus it argues that there is a generally unrecognised relationship between some countercultural places and processes of social innovation, and it explores the spaces that support such innovation as well as the factors that undermine collective projects. Ultimately, the research did not find substantive evidence to support interstitial postcapitalist strategies or theories. However, it concludes with some reflections on how approaches to interstitial postcapitalism might be theoretically and practically strengthened.
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