Building a local structural basis for economic change? A case study on grassroots initiatives from a ‘social provisioning’ perspective

The ‘social provisioning process’ framework postulates that making provisioning processes more socially and ecologically sustainable requires structural changes in terms of the material, social, and cultural bases of economies. This paper explores the ways in which local community-led grassroots initiatives (GIs) contribute to such structural changes. The purpose of this paper is twofold: First, we offer systematic empirical evidence on the impact of GI activities on societal structures, which are crucial for assessing the transformative potential of GIs but have been insufficiently addressed in the literature. Second, we adapt and further develop the ‘social provisioning process’ framework to make it operational for research on local provisioning processes, thereby proposing a strong heterodox economic theory – which accounts for the structural dimension – to the research field of GIs that it was lacking so far. To this end, a qualitative multiple-case study design is employed to investigate three GIs. Eight categories of provisioning structures are identified as an advancement of the ‘social provisioning process’ framework. The data show how the three GI cases build a structural basis in each of the eight categories, which tends to facilitate more sustainable provisioning, and reveal foci, strategies, and limitations in the creation of those structures.