Lighting the way: The vital role of community initiatives in co-evolutionary processes of postcapitalist transformation

It has become evident that transformative change is required to address today’s multiple global crises in a durable and just way. This thesis argues that community initiatives are crucial loci for transformation: spaces in which new ways of being, doing, and knowing are embodied, practiced, made habitual, and disseminated. From a degrowth perspective and guided by a Gramscian model of co-evolutionary change, a series of semi-structured interviews were undertaken to explore how community initiatives in Wellington and Nelson, New Zealand foster transformation across a range of scales, and how they shape, and are shaped by, government. This thesis develops and applies a postcapitalist analytical map to take stock of the key values and practices that characterise processes of transformation, illuminating the vital role that community initiatives play in fostering these values and practices. Resourcing, relationships, and communication are found to be key enablers and challenges for these initiatives, and the transformative potential of community initiatives co-evolving with government is explored, building the case that individual practices are interwoven with shifts aa larger scales. These findings contribute to a large body of research theorising sustainability transformations beyond growth, and this thesis attends to a number of gaps in that literature: it answers a call for those exploring sustainability transitions to engage with theories of social change, conceptualises a degrowth transformation strategy, and embarks on a shared quest to answer the all-important – but neglected – question of how to move toward a postcapitalist society. This thesis has also sought to celebrate and bolster the efforts of community initiatives by highlighting the importance of their work and by amplifying and grounding in research their calls for policy action, for government regulation, and for a more autonomous and valued community sector.