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Community renewable energy (CRE) represents a growing empirical and academic turn towards community‐based sustainability and climate change interventions. This paper brings together postcolonial theory and CRE for the first time to outline fundamental tensions in the conceptualisation and application of the idea of community. The understanding of community within the CRE discourse is largely: (1) location‐based; and/or (2) a community of choice that is consciously opted into. Driven by postcolonial theory, this paper counterpoises both as a form of community as contract against an idea of community as solidarity. Its central thesis is that actually existing community, contrary to how the bulk of CRE literature commonly understands it, is a combination of bonds of solidarity and emergent purposes. The paper conceptualises community as fluid bonds of solidarity that align and realign differently around different purposes.

This article outlines the community economies of Esch-sur-Alzette, the ‘second city’ of Luxembourg. ‘Community economies’ – an approach outlined by J.K. Gibson-Graham – draws attention to alternative narratives of economic development and the representation of economic identity. Despite (the Grand Duchy of) Luxembourg’s reputation as a European Union centre, with substantial finance and tax activity, Esch-sur-Alzette is a post-industrial and multilingual melting pot. The alternative narrative here is of the multiple community-based organisations and movements in Esch-sur-Alzette: an energy cooperative, urban gardening, an upcycling clothing factory, a local food shop and restaurant, and vibrant civil society discussions and interventions in (inter)national politics. Civil society, while central to both understandings of grassroots environmental action and the community economies framework of Gibson-Graham, takes on quite a different flavour in Luxembourg. This article then takes the case of Luxembourg to reread the relationship of the state to the so-called third sector, in doing so defending the political possibilities of community economies.

This article emerges from the simple observation that community-based social and environmental activists often engage with practices of mindfulness, either personally or collectively. It draws on two case studies, a UK-based Transition initiative and a community of social entrepreneurs in Germany. On the surface, social and environmental activists, committed to change in the ‘real world’, outward facing and public, jar with practices of ‘mindfulness’: personal and interior actions –‘private’. We argue that post-foundationalist understandings of community, particularly Nancy’s being-in-common – popularised within geography as ‘community economies’ – and the philosophical and spiritual roots of mindfulness are two lines of thought that provide clues to this co-occurrence. Going beyond understandings of collectivity that build on the coming together of preformed individuals or presuppose a common substance, we set the (Westernised) Buddhist influences on mindfulness, specifically the notion of interbeing, side by side with Nancy’s being-in-common. This article argues that both the political and spiritual aspects of activism are integral parts of social change. It concludes that post-foundational and Buddhist-inspired lines of thought cross-fertilise and chart a course towards transformative mindfulness.

This intervention seeks to revivify democratic thinking in political geography, through foregrounding and pluralising its material and temporal dimensions. At the same time, it speaks to a renewed centrality and relevance of infrastructure and infrastructural projects in political discourse. The contributions included here demonstrate how an infrastructural lens can offer new insights into democratic spaces, practices, and temporalities, offering more expansive versions of what it means to act politically. Specifically, these contributions intervene in existing geographical debates by bringing to the fore four underexplored dimensions of democratic governance: (im)materiality, connectivity, performativity, and temporality. In doing so, it develops a research agenda that broadens and regenerates thinking at the intersection of socio-spatial theory and democratic action and governance. Previous title: Intervention: Democratising infrastructure

This article excavates the role, function and practices of community within Transition, a grassroots environmentalist movement. It does so to pursue a quest for understanding if, how, and in what ways, community-based environmental movements are ‘political’. When community-based low carbon initiatives are discussed academically, they can be critiqued; this critique is in turn often based on the perception that the crucial community aspect tends to be a settled, static and reified condition of (human) togetherness. However community—both in theory and practice—is not destined to be so. This article collects and evaluates data from two large research projects on the Transition movement. It takes this ethnographic evidence together with lessons from post-political theory, to outline the capacious, diverse and progressive forms of community that exists within the movement. Doing so, it argues against a blanket post-political diagnosis of community transitions, and opens up, yet again, the consequences of the perceptions and prejudices one has about community are more than mere theoretical posturing.

Permaculture-based social movements proliferate as a response to environmental challenges, a way to pursue the ‘good life’, and a vision of a more harmonious way to be in and belong to the world. Ecovillages, bioregionalisation, and the Transition (Town) movement all apply permaculture principles in designing social systems. Core to permaculture is designing based on, and in harmony with, patterns identified in nature. Yet, as is often highlighted, identifying, using, and thinking through ‘natural’ patterns are problematic. This article takes canonical geographical work on the social reception and (re)production of nature as its starting point. It then outlines permaculture, and particularly their most prominent expression, the Transition (Town) movement, as an ecosophical movement–an attempt to reorientate collective subjectivities as ecological entities. While discussion of Transition (with or without their permaculture heritage) abounds in Geography, paying attention to the ecosophical, and ethical, character of such movements is crucial to grasp their full significance.

Energy Research & Social Science (ERSS) emerged in response to an identified lack of social science energy scholarship. The first publication in this journal asked ‘what can the social sciences bring to energy research?’. Since then, ERSS has become a home for articles that have explored this question in a multitude of ways. In this Perspective we want to reflect, and stimulate debate, on the question we see as the other side of the coin: ‘What can energy research bring to the social sciences?’ We develop our reflection, first, by exploring energy’s unique features: what a focus on energy makes visible and thinkable that other entry points do not. We subsequently introduce a ‘menu of possibilities’: areas of scholarship where focus on energy has enabled or could enable different ways of understanding the world. We conclude with the suggestion that by changing the object of analysis, energy scholars can develop both new conceptual insights, and emphasise our connections with issues explored outside of energy scholarship.

In 2008, Walker and Devine-Wright published a short article that is now a key way-marker in the field: ‘Community renewable energy: what should it mean?’. A decade on, in this Perspective we revisit Walker and Devine-Wright’s paper to re-examine its central themes and to identify opportunities for the coming ten years of community renewable energy (CRE) studies. Our Perspective takes the form of a series of paired reflections from the authors of the original paper and three early career researchers whose work it has influenced. We present these reflections in three themes. First, despite its title, the 2008 article itself is not centrally concerned with meanings, still less what CRE should mean. CRE is always defined by its context, therefore, we argue for an approach that is alive to these contexts. Second, while the article splits ‘process’ and ‘outcome’ when conceptualising interpretations of CRE, research labelling elements of CRE as either ‘process’ or ‘outcome’ can obscure CRE’s complex and entangled dynamics. Third, the past decade of scholarship emerging in this article’s wake has tended to concentrate on the means by which CRE develops, rather than on its ends. There is a need for greater attention on the impacts of CRE, particularly its role in achieving just transitions. We propose that new approaches could further galvanise the study of CRE to help better understand what CRE does, for whom and in what contexts.

This paper introduces the Heideggerian terms Zuhanden and Vorhanden to studies of community low carbon transitions. It sets apart Zuhandenheit community as involvement: the doing, enacting and belonging aspects of community movements and activism. Vorhandenheit community contrastingly is observed: community as an object at arm's length, to be studied, tasked or used. The article builds on authors, particularly Malpas, who have utilised these concepts in spatial theory by adopting their associated spatialisation of involvement and containment. After introducing this theoretical understanding, the article addresses the case of a Transition initiative in receipt of government funding, where both Vorhanden and Zuhanden subjectivities can be found. Through focusing on this specific Transition project, we can more clearly grasp both the tensions emerging from state-funded community and the limits to, and possibilities for, appreciating community action phenomenologically.

In a 2011 contribution to this journal, Walker examined the ways that community is routinely employed in carbon governance, suggesting the need for more critical approaches. Here, we characterize an emerging, critical approach to researching climate change and community in neoliberal contexts, focusing attention principally on the global north, where this body of research has emerged. This work recognizes communities as sites of contestation, difference, tension, and distinction, in which action on climate change can be designed to meet a range of political and public ends. It aims to uncover the political and social context for community action on climate change, to be alert to the power relations inside and outside of communities, and to the context of neoliberalism, including individualism, the will to quantify, and competition. Furthermore, research in this space is committed to understanding both the lived experience of the messy empirical worlds we encounter, and the potential agency coalescing in community responses to climate change. Much of the work to date, discussed here, has focused on communities working on climate change mitigation in the global north, in which the idea of community as a space for governance is gaining traction. We also comment on the positioning of these arguments in the context of long-standing debates in the fields of ‘community-based’ development, natural resource management, and adaptation in the global South. This discussion establishes a foundation from which to progress learning across fields and geopolitical boundaries, furthering critical thinking on ‘community.’

This article addresses the narrowing interpretation of community when governmentalised: that of community’s elision with local. First it surveys five broad academic and policy interpretations of the community implied in low carbon transitions. These demonstrate the persistence of community’s broad and open-ended polysemy today. Second it looks more closely at the role community plays in UK environmental governance today, including specific evidence from two such government-funded community initiatives used to meet global environmental challenges: Transition Towns and Carbon Conversations. Third it provides a critique of community governance-beyond-the-state. It argues that community used to “jump scales” in response to global challenges like climate change, is often at its most narrow: local and governmentalised. Doing so helps contextualise the governmentalisation of (local-) community in UK environmental governance. Often it is localised in order to delegate (perceived) agency and responsibility onto individual actors at a local level.

This paper examines the use of ‘community’ rhetoric in the Transition Town Network (TTN). This is seen in both its external and internal context. Externally, TTN has emerged against the backdrop of an increasing use of ‘community’ rhetoric in environmental governance, for example, in renewable energy projects. Internally, the use of ‘community’ language and ‘community’ ways of operating are crucial for understanding this movement, in how it sees itself and the lineage it builds upon. Particularly, TTN builds upon the polysemic, subjective nature of the word, fused with their unique permaculture inspired meaning. TTN have emerged as an important response to climate change and peak oil (Bailey et al. 2010; Mason and Whitehead 2011). This paper attempts to address their crucial, if neglected, focus on ‘community’. In the wide sweep of writing on ‘community’, what distinctive, if anything, can TTN add to current understandings and practices of ‘community’?

Community is frequently called upon in policy to meet environmental challenges. It is increasingly recognized that the success of these environmental interventions relies on community awareness and action. But what this emphasis on community does, and what the impacts are, are often neglected, or left uncritiqued. To explore this issue, we surveyed literature from the UK across four distinct environmental domains—energy, urban greenspace, water, and land—to chart what characterizes the use of community in pursuit of environmental goals. We highlight the main conceptual commonalities across the domains by focusing on research that gives insight into the increased interest in communities in environmental policy. In summary, we posit that where community is used environmentally, it brings with it (a) a reframing of justice, (b) processes of “public making,” and (c) a rescaling of governance.