What are the barriers? ‘Alternative’ sustainability initiatives and problems of change-making in a neoliberalized world

Graham, Stephen and Jessop, Bob and Waterton, Claire and Doebler, Stefanie (2026) What are the barriers? ‘Alternative’ sustainability initiatives and problems of change-making in a neoliberalized world. PhD thesis, Lancaster University.

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Abstract

Contributing to debates around eco-localist organising’s change-making potential at a time of planetary-scale ecological crisis, this research examines two community-scale environmental organisations in rural north-west England: a food hub and a renewable energy company. Although informed by different eco-social imaginaries, both initiatives attempted to develop ecologically sensitive alternatives to fossil fuel-based production practices by building projects aimed at the alleviation of social problems generated by post-2008 austerity policies. Both initiatives, however, faced significant barriers in this regard. Combining insights from eco-Marxist and (neo-)Gramscian approaches, I examine these barriers and the contrasting ways the participants understood and sought to overcome them. Using ethnographic case studies, and by reading developments in the field of eco-localism through a Marxian critique of neoliberalism, I examine the rise of community localism as a ‘grassroots’ response to neoliberal globalization and explore how the co-evolution of neoliberalism and civil society environmentalism has shaped localist organising in Britain. Drawing on the case studies, I argue that in advanced neoliberal contexts, eco-localist initiatives can, by channelling the energies of ‘civil society’ environmentalists in sub-hegemonic directions, reinforce existing social arrangements. Yet I show, too, how activities on this terrain can also transform embedded structures and create spaces where counter-hegemonic activities can flourish. Building on this, I offer a way to break the impasse that has been reached in current debates between champions of ‘top-down’, left eco-modernist approaches and proponents of ‘bottom-up’, degrowth-focused, eco-localist perspectives. I show how the rapid roll-out of large-scale production that the former call for, and the urgent expansion of community-based activities that the latter demand, are not opposing goals, as is often assumed, but in fact constitute the condition of possibility for each other. I conclude by arguing that to bring about emancipatory change, activities in each of these spheres must be re-politicised.