Communication that fosters collective action is considered a key driver of transformational change. This study explores the role that cooperatives could play in transforming the current unsustainable food system toward sustainability. The focal point of the study is how communication processes of nonprofit cooperative forms of collective action can optimize their transformative capacity and, in a wider context, contribute to agricultural transformation. The study addresses former research on transformation, in particular on how transformation is triggered at local level. To assess how transformation can be stimulated in practice, the case of a new food cooperative – Farming Communities, a grassroots initiative in the south of the Netherlands – is investigated. Farming Communities serves as an example of an innovative form of food production and illustrates how collective action and connective action come about through interaction. Collective action, depending on the quality and the results of interaction, is fostered by acknowledged vertical and horizontal interdependence and a certain level of trust. Interaction dynamics for collective action can enhance transformative capacity by emergent new ways of doing, knowing, framing, and organizing. Furthermore, the concept of connective action is introduced, which entails interaction dynamics among individuals who share ideas and opinions via networked technologies. Connective action can overcome the fragility of a single local initiative and is suitable for enhancing the transformative capacity of a grassroots initiative. However, a surplus of connection action could hamper the robustness of collective action. Cooperatives are therefore challenged to find a fruitful balance between collective action and connective action.
In many European cities, urban experimentation is increasingly preferred as a method for testing and disseminating innovations that might ignite a transformation toward more sustainable cities. By both academics and practitioners, these experiments tend to be approached as relatively neutral initiatives through which plural urban stakeholders willfully collaborate, while their success is seen as above all dependent on effective management. For this reason, the political nature of urban experiments, in the sense that they entangle different and often contending stakeholders in their innovation processes, remains relatively unarticulated in both practice and the academic literature. Building on the urban experimentation literature and political theory, this conceptual paper argues that the depoliticization of experimental initiatives is especially problematic for unleashing their transformative potential, which requires revealing the existing power-relations and biases keeping the status-quo in place and negotiability of radical alternatives. From this perspective, the paper sketches out four ideal-typical trajectories for experiments as related to their (de)politicization; optimization, blind leap, antagonistic conflict and transformation. Bringing insights from political theory to bear on the urban experimentation literature, we proceed to hypothesize the implications of our ideal-types for urban experiments’ transformative capacities. The paper closes by presenting a future research and policy agenda.
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This paper examines how a serious game approach could support a participatory planning process by bringing stakeholders together to discuss interventions that assist the development of sustainable urban tourism. A serious policy game was designed and played in six European cities by a total of 73 participants, reflecting a diverse array of tourism stakeholders. By observing in-game experiences, a pre- and post -game survey and short interviews six months after playing the game, the process and impact of the game was investigated. While it proved difficult to evaluate the value of a serious game approach, results demonstrate that enacting real-life policymaking in a serious game setting can enable stakeholders to come together, and become more aware of the issues and complexities involved with urban tourism planning. This suggests a serious game can be used to stimulate the uptake of academic insights in a playful manner. However, it should be remembered that a game is a tool and does not, in itself, lead to inclusive participatory policymaking and more sustainable urban tourism planning. Consequently, care needs to be taken to ensure inclusiveness and prevent marginalization or disempowerment both within game-design and the political formation of a wider participatory planning approach.
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