Building (and breaking) ties: explaining local relationships in grassroots place-making

This paper explores the factors that shape relationships between grassroots innovation initiatives and other actors in local sustainability transitions contexts. Building such ties with wider communities is crucial to the local effectiveness of grassroots innovation, yet in practice these relationships can be distant and strained. Despite its importance, reasons for this practical problem are insufficiently understood in the literature on grassroots innovation. Developing and using a theoretical framework for explaining relationships in GI place-making, this paper thus addresses the research question: How do the actions and goals of grassroots innovation actors shape relationships with other actors in co-creating local places? Accordingly, we conducted a qualitative single-case study of a German grassroots initiative in the context of rural solidarity-based provisioning. We identify five factors related to the initiative’s approaches that influence such relationships: production of visible outputs, radicalism in self-portrayal, pluralist approach, outreach activities and outward orientation, and awareness of current standing in their region. We discuss these findings against our theoretical framework, which links grassroots place-making with three other theories: the pathways approach, intermediacy, and boundary work. Our data not only confirm that grassroots initiatives are marginalised by powerful incumbent institutions and actors – as has been suggested previously – but also show that such initiatives themselves can close down and neglect divergent pathways of local actors, thereby hindering relationship-building. The paper extends the theoretical understanding of the barriers and opportunities for grassroots innovation initiatives to induce local transitions and offers practical lessons.