The review of the literature on community gardens demonstrates that specifically their benefits have been well documented. In addition, they have been studied from various justice-related perspectives, namely environmental justice, food justice, commons, and the right to the city.
The other form of community food growing, the CSA, also takes place predominantly in the food justice literature. Similarly, people’s motives for participation and challenges that the CSA initiatives face have been well researched. However, there is not much evidence in the literature about the socially innovative role of both community gardens and community supported agriculture as part of a wider social economy, and their potential for a societal change toward more sustainable food systems. Moreover, from a geographical point of view, much of the
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studies reviewed earlier are based on cases in North America and Australia, and to a lesser extent, in the UK. Particularly Welsh community gardens and CSA initiatives are under-researched. Considering that Wales has a distinctive character with its small and devolved economy that is predominantly rural, where food plays an important role not only as an industry but also in a symbolic and traditional way, it is worth examining what is the role of community food growing in this economy, and what is the position of various actors against these alternative initiatives. From theoretical perspective, different types of community initiatives have been studied through the lens of the grassroots innovations and socio-technical transitions approach, as discussed earlier. However, community food growing has not attracted much interest from social innovation scholars. Consequently, the main aim of the research is to address these gaps in the literature on community gardens and community supported agriculture, on the one hand, and social innovation, on the other hand.
Considering the multitude of different social innovation approaches explained in the first part, the major problem is to decide how to examine community food growing initiatives in Wales and which approach would be most appropriate to answer the main research question: ‘what is the role of community food growing in Wales as a social innovation and its potential for making a societal change to more sustainable food systems?’. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to examine the community initiatives from a broad perspective, elaborating on their current position as social economy initiatives juxtaposed to the dominant food economy, and scrutinising their capacity to make an impact for a wider transformation in the society. The mainstream approach, as discussed earlier, provides a very narrow perspective of the social innovation (Jessop et al. 2013) and examines the social initiatives only at the management or organisational level, hence the criticism that they present reductionist view of social innovation.
Moreover, they do not show how social injustices can be overcome (Van Dyck and Van den Broeck 2013). The social practices approach would be a useful strategy if the aim of this research was to focus on the everyday practices of the community food growing initiatives as a way of making change. However, it does not provide a useful framework for examining their role and potential for wider societal impact.
In the case of the grassroots innovation and socio-technical transitions approach, distinction need to be made between the normative framework and the analytical frameworks. From
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analytical point of view, Strategic Niche Management (SNM) and Multilevel Perspective (MLP) proved useful for examining many community-based initiatives as grassroots innovation niches (Seyfang 2009; Brunori et al. 2010; Seyfang and Haxeltine 2012; Hargreaves et al. 2013a). The SNM can be a useful tool for examining the way the community food growing initiatives have been created and managed, how the learning happens, and how they network with each other.
However, it cannot help examining the wider role of these initiatives as part of the social economy. In a similar way, the MLP framework is useful in demonstrating the interplay between the niche, regime, and landscape. Applied as an analytical framework to the community gardens and the CSA initiatives, it can help addressing the question about the potential of these initiatives in making a societal change by examining their position against the mainstream economy and the landscape pressures. However, it cannot show how the processes within and between these levels happen, and how these can be practically examined. Moreover, drawing on the criticisms to the MLP approach, it is difficult to clearly define the three layers (Chang et al. 2017) and there is absence of agencies in the model (Geels 2011). Adding to these evaluations and criticisms the fact that the two models are technology-oriented and do not address the human dimension, leads to the conclusion that the SNM and MLP are not suited for the purposes of this research.
The main research question requires a more overarching analytical framework to grasp the complexity of the phenomena. ALMOLIN, which was explained earlier in the theoretical part of the literature review, can provide a more robust and detailed tool for analysing community food growing projects by addressing their various dimensions that feed into the better understanding of the role of these initiatives in terms of social innovation. Using ALMOLIN enables examining why and as a reaction to what these initiatives emerge, how do they mobilize resources and common visions to institutionalise, which ‘alienated’ needs do they satisfy, and how do they empower people. Moreover, by examining whether they lead to change in social relations not only at the community level but also at a higher level, including the wider society and the state, this framework can enable addressing the second part of the research question: ‘what is the impact of the community food growing in Wales in making transition to more sustainable food systems?’. Also, ALMOLIN includes some processes, e.g. learning and networking, that take place in the SNM framework.
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Accordingly, from a normative perspective, the societal-territorial approach with its broader understanding of social innovation provides a better theoretical framework in studying these initiatives. However, it has much in common with the grassroots innovation and New Economics approach, since grassroots innovations are placed within a broader perspective of the New Economics concept, which gives a better understanding about their place within the social economy. Therefore, studying community gardens and the CSA in Wales from the societal-territorial approach and drawing parallels with the grassroots innovations and the New Economics approach, would give a more integrated view of this phenomena. The central point in this normative approach are the dimensions of the social innovation, namely satisfaction of
‘alienated’ needs, change in social and governance relations, and empowerment. Related to these dimensions, this research aims to answer the following additional questions:
1) What were the needs that triggered the creation of the community gardens and CSA initiatives in Wales? How have the needs been satisfied?
2) What resources were mobilized and how?
3) What are the relations between the actors and is there a sense of community? Are there common visions?
4) What do people in the initiatives learn and how?
5) How do people take part in decision-making?
6) How do people see the position of the initiatives against the main economy?
7) What are the challenges and barriers for the initiatives?
8) What are the ways for the initiatives to make a greater societal impact?
In sum, this research aims to address the following gaps in the literature, explained above:
(1) Examining the broader role of community gardens and community supported agriculture from the social innovation theory perspective and by using ALMOLIN as an analytical tool that has not been applied to community food growing initiatives;
(2) Focusing on Wales as an under-researched area regarding community food growing;
using large number of case studies to allow a comparison between its different regions and the types of initiatives;
(3) Contributing with case studies of community food growing to the social innovation literature and the debates about the transformative potential of alternative food networks.
61 Chapter 3 METHODOLOGY
The purpose of this chapter is to discuss the rationale behind the research process, from the design phase to its implementation and analysis, in the case of community food growing initiatives in Wales studied though the lens of the social innovation theory. Due to the interdisciplinary character of the sustainability research, it is noted that researchers often face
“complex choices” about the methodological approach and methods to be applied, and the main reason is that there are no specific methods for researching sustainability as these depend on the research context (Franklin and Blyton 2011, p. 7). Similar is the problem about researching social innovation. According to Moulaert et al. (2010, p. 10), the social innovation research works toward a “joint methodology” due to its interdisciplinary and trans-disciplinary character; in other words, while on one hand there are overlapping disciplines in the social innovation research, such as social sciences, economics and humanities, on the other hand it requires the involvement of practitioners either by being “a core theme” or “real partners in the research”, thus emphasizing its societal impact. At the same time, it is argued that there is no “recipe book”
that prescribes exactly which methods are linked to different theories and therefore, “it is the framing of the research problem that links epistemology and social theory to method”
(Flowerdew and Martin 2005, p. 31).
This chapter explains how case studies based on participant observation and semi-structured interviews with actors of community gardens and community supported agriculture (CSA) projects are a suitable strategy for understanding the role of these initiatives as examples of social innovation research and sustainability in general. Thus, the aim is to establish the link between the methodology and the theoretical-philosophical underpinnings of this research (Hoggart et al. 2002; Gomez and Jones 2010). The chapter is organised in four parts. The first part establishes the links between the social innovation theory and qualitative research, then discusses the selection of the research methods. In other words, it explains why case studies based on participant observation and semi-structured interviews are appropriate for studying socially innovative food growing initiatives. The second part focuses on the fieldwork and the way the data has been collected, including the preparatory stage, e.g. how the cases were selected, the way of gaining access to those, and other organisational and logistical matters
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followed by the discussion of ethical issues, researcher’s positionality and reflexivity, and challenges encountered. And the third part is about the process of analysis.