Abstract
Multiple factors are involved in community change processes, yet understanding how factors interact to shape these complex social processed is limited. This has important implications for both research and sustainability practice. This study examines key social dynamics in establishing complex community change initiatives using an in-depth action-oriented transdisciplinary approach with a case study of the development of a community fridge. Four critical social dynamics were identified: reinforcing interpretations, reinforcing interconnections, re-alignment of identities, and quality social relations involving multiple normative facets converging and diverging in different ways as the process unfolded. Initially, this led to a degenerative dynamic that heightened tensions between actors; however, re-alignment with wider social identities and expressions of the underlying normative dimensions involved in the initiative, a regenerative dynamic was created. This strengthened the conditions to support shared understanding, learning and enhanced relationships to enable different actors to work together to shape aspects of the initiative. Overall, the study highlights that future community-based change initiatives need to be guided by explicit approaches that work with social relationships, but where these relationships are conceptualised as dynamic normative spaces of interaction and exploration. This can inform understanding on how to develop beneficial reinforcing regenerative dynamics, where advances in one aspect of social relationships within initiatives can begin to reinforce others and ways that increase collective capacity as a whole. Developing this regenerative potential through social relationships within initiatives is thus critical for engaging with complex challenges across communities.
Highlights
Overcoming and working with challenges like climate change and food insecurity require deliberate change across societies to guide more sustainable futures (Vermeulen et al 2012; Bohle et al 1994)
Four core social dynamics unfolded during the establishment process for the community fridge, with each including a range of interconnected factors
This study suggests that deliberate engagement in narrative-in-the-making within initiatives could support different actors to more quickly align their thinking and actions, to surface shared values and develop shared understandings that enable opportunities for further action in the future, which were critical in bringing about a regenerative dynamic the this case
Summary
Overcoming and working with challenges like climate change and food insecurity require deliberate change across societies to guide more sustainable futures (Vermeulen et al 2012; Bohle et al 1994) Such challenges are dynamically complex, with issues interconnected and continuously configured over time and across spatial scales A network of community-based initiatives has emerged, with a strong focus on responding to social needs and supporting specific social groups. This includes a small team that has been developing various initiatives across the city connecting action for both poverty and the environment
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