Search

This book focuses on the potential and possibilities for socially innovative responses to the climate emergency at the local scale. Climate change has intensified the need for communities to find creative and meaningful ways to address the sustainability of their environments. The authors focus on the creative and collaborative ways local- scale climate action reflects the extra-ordinary measures taken by ordinary people. This includes critical engagement with the ways in which novel social practices and partnerships emerge between people, organisations, institutions, governance arrangements and eco-systems. The book successfully highlights the transformative power of socially innovative activities and initiatives in response to the climate crisis; and critically explores how different individuals and groups undertake climate action as ‘quiet activism'– the embodied acts of collective disruption, subversion, creativity and care at the local scale.

This book introduces the methodology of critical discourse analysis (CDA) to the study of participatory planning. CDA uses linguistic analysis to elucidate social issues and processes and is particularly suited to institutional practices and how they are changing in response to changing social conditions. Illustrated by two case studies from Australia, it examines the talk between the various participants in a formal stakeholder committee context over five years, during which time they went through several phases of changing power dynamics, conflict and reconciliation. The book demonstrates the value of CDA to this field of research and develops specific techniques and conceptual tools for applying the methodology to the'formal talk'context of collaborative planning committees. It also sheds light on the dynamics of interaction between'stakeholders'and bureaucracies - particularly with respect to inherent communicative barriers, power inequalities, and the development of new discursive practices.

The concept of social innovation offers an alternative perspective on development and territorial transformation, one which foregrounds innovation in social relations. This volume presents a broad-ranging and insightful exploration of social innovation and how it can affect life, society and economy, especially within local communities. It addresses key questions about the nature of social innovation as a process and a strategy and explores what opportunities may exist, or may be generated, for social innovation to nourish human development. It puts forward alternative development options which variously highlight solidarity, co-operation, cultural-artistic endeavour and diversity. In doing so, this book offers a provocative response to the predominant neoliberal economic vision of spatial, economic and social change.