Conclusion

Mike Gismondi, Sean Connelly, and Sean Markey

In this book, we explore the convergence of the social economy and sustainability. Our analysis is grounded in a commitment to sustainable community development and is guided by a conceptual framework that allows us to place organizations, projects, and perspectives on a weak-strong continuum. As stated in our introduction, we are drawn to convergence as a means of addressing inherent limitations in the social economy and sustainability sectors. We propose that meaningful structural change can be achieved by “social economizing” sustainability—that is, by combining the social economy with sustainable development in order to create a whole greater than the sum of its parts. The many case examples explored throughout the book illustrate how the two sectors are converging through strong social economy/strong sustainability practices that emphasize building capacity, making decisions democratically, seeking structural change, creating market demand for green social economy services, building networks, and challenging existing regulations and policies. We found innovative organizations that have begun to intertwine the best of both fields and are developing into strong, viable alternatives to unjust and unsustainable practices. Using this empirical evidence, we have identified patterns, revealed mechanisms, and proposed models of structural change that embrace strong-strong practices in numerous settings: food, social care, energy, resource economies, ecotourism, housing, transportation, heritage conservation, land tenure, and banking and finance. In this diverse array of examples, we discovered a conjunction of organizational and institutional strategies, community building, social innovation, and new knowledge. This convergence, we believe, can be scaled up and out to accelerate a fair transition to sustainability.

True, the examples we have described in this volume are modest in scale relative to counterparts in the mainstream economy. Nevertheless, they are by no means marginal: their individual and collective significance is substantial. Many arose out of the need to address critical elements that are lacking or underdeveloped in our economy and society and have begun to move from the fringes to the centre. Within the framework upon which our analysis is based, it is significant that they represent more than just incremental change: individually and collectively, they suggest alternatives to current systems and plant the seeds of real transformative change—change that has structural implications for the whole economy and society. If we are to realize sustainability, it will be crucial to scale out and scale up these innovations—to multiply their impact through diffusion into new sectoral and geographic contexts (scaling out) and through moving each innovation from the fringe to the centre of its sector (scaling up).

At the end of this chapter is a series of charts that recount how organizations described in this book carry out a convergence of social economy and sustainability in each of seven sectors. The first three columns in each table identify the name, organizational structure, and socio-ecological mission of the organization. The last two columns list actions and outcomes related to scaling up the activity and policy changes that would support scaling out each initiative. In these two columns, we specify key political actions and policy directions that support convergence.

In table 11.1 we summarize findings in the food sector. In their discussion of food provision in chapter 3, Mary Beckie and Sean Connelly recognize that scaling out the local food system will require much more extensive storage, processing, and distribution infrastructure. In addition, informed consumers and knowledgeable, skilled producers are needed to build sustainable local food systems. In fact, only by strengthening and expanding the social infrastructure can these initiatives challenge current systems of food provision. Partnerships, coalitions, and networks of actors along the entire supply chain are essential to attract and maintain investment in a strong physical infrastructure. Without strong social infrastructure, we run the risk of re-creating the mistakes of the conventional food system, albeit on a more local basis.

Beckie and Connelly advocate for various types of coalitions that cluster small producers to increase their market opportunities and scale up volume and access for consumers but do not require investment in physical infrastructure. Strong social networks have real potential for changing systems of food provision. By strengthening the moral imperative to make fresh local food accessible to all, not just to those who can afford it, such coalitions help to overcome the current elitist trend in the local food market. And when investment in physical infrastructure is required, strategic partnering also spreads the financial risk. Beckie and Connelly identify a strong need for intermediaries and activists to co-ordinate a widespread group of food consumers, producers, and go-betweens. Collective building of social infrastructure will lead to increased capacity, shared knowledge, and stronger leadership skills, all of which are critical to increasing overall food security. As some of their examples show, partnering with the municipal government or the public sector to build social and physical infrastructure can lead to strategic collaboration and policy support. Such tactics help to address the challenges of scale, scope, accessibility, and organizational capacity that niche or grassroots local food initiatives often face. Policy support, in particular, is crucial to regionalizing food systems (Sonnino and Griggs-Trevarthen 2013).

In chapter 4, John Restakis tackles the topic of social care (see table 11.2). He notes that in an age of neoliberalism, applying market language and working with market forces in the provision of social care is risky, since conservative forces have co-opted market entrepreneurialism and seek a stripped-down, privatized model of public sector service delivery. Social economy actors who advocate operating in the market like a business must be wary. Restakis proposes instead the social use of market forces. Reciprocity is the basis for the type of social care that he champions. The aim of social care, he argues, should be to create local involvement in care delivery so as to ensure an equitable provision of care to all social classes and an increase in local employment. Even if money changes hands, both caregiver and recipient share in the generation of care as a human relation, not as a purchased commodity or a charitable offering. Restakis also anticipates that social care runs contrary to the traditional thinking of labour unions and left-wing political parties. His own research uncovers in the Canadian public a persistent wariness of co-operatives. He also notes the reluctance of co-operatives in other sectors to enter the arena of social service provision.

While the current politics of social care is challenging, it is encouraging to see in Canada the rise of new kinds of co-operatives and social enterprises that focus on relational goods. Over the last few years, The Cleaning Solution, Free Geek, and various bicycle cooperatives have all been integrating human care and the reduction of social inequality with specific green services (see chapter 4). The Cleaning Solution is a good strong-strong example. It is a green social enterprise that promotes ecologically sound practices while collaborating with government mental health departments and private firms to provide employment to the marginalized. Many readers might know of similar stand-alone or networked social enterprises in their own locales that create a blended return on investment.1 In its role as a social economy intermediary, Enterprising Non-Profits (2009) has found other ways to add value. ENP’s political and lobbying work focuses on increasing social procurement (using one’s purchasing power to create social change) and creating “intentional demand” for social economy services. The organization has proposed an enabling policy framework of social purchasing that would have the potential to scale up the activities of social enterprises (LePage 2014). Social purchasing policy would require that an annual proportion of budgeted purchases come from the social economy. Thus, public institutions, government, and even private corporations working on public projects would have to secure a percentage of their labour, products, and services from social enterprises and non-profits. In a remarkable move, ENP and others have lobbied for “event-based” social purchasing targets at the 2015 Commonwealth Games in Toronto, as they did at the recent Vancouver and London Olympics (Hamilton 2014). Social purchasing is another key to transition politics.

In her discussion of energy and sustainability in chapter 5, Julie MacArthur identifies key barriers to scaling up and out alternative energy sources: global market pressure (capitalist imperatives); insufficiency of local production; uneven free markets that make it hard for a small energy co-operative (or any small social innovator) to break in and compete for clients; a scarcity of capital investment for high-cost infrastructure; and the threat of private buyouts of successful community projects, even in good times (see table 11.3). Collective ownership is not a guaranteed defence against market pressures and lucrative buyout offers. Recently, members of a large regional rural electrical co-operative in Alberta (Peace Country REA, founded in the 1960s) voted to sell their electrical distribution lines and systems to ATCO Electric, a large private firm. MacArthur introduces two additional threats: the shallow understanding of the term community, in which a few community members make money on a “good” energy project at the expense of the most vulnerable groups in the community, and the greenwashing of social economy projects that provide local jobs or achieve energy autonomy but cause long-term environmental damage. She believes that local ownership and control and the adoption of appropriate technology can counter these equity and ethical threats. Strong local involvement in the NaiKun wind energy project, for example, ensures that the Haida Nation benefits in terms of employment opportunities and financial gain: half of all future revenue will flow to the community. Moreover, connection of the wind turbines to the local grid will reduce the nation’s dependence on diesel generators for electricity. In Ontario, a government feed-in tariff started off strong in 2009 but has met countervailing forces of late. The feed-in-tariff (FIT) policy guaranteed both the price for clean energy and the amount of electricity that could be supplied to the power grid by microproducers from alternative energy sources such as wind, solar, microhydro, and biogas. The FIT policy also encouraged up to 10 percent community-owned energy production. Considerable investment was attracted and long-term contracts signed, some of them by renewable energy co-operatives (Lipp, Lapierre-Fortin, and McMurtry 2012). In recent years, however, political opponents have questioned the high prices paid by government to FIT producers and have raised concerns about the effects of wind farming on communities, a range of land-use impacts, and government rules for local procurement (Stokes 2013). Prices for electricity fed into the grid from alternative sources have since been reduced. To improve scaling out, Stokes argues, the state and the renewables sector must collaborate to support the FIT beyond the policy stage and start-up and must be willing to adapt and modify the program in order to scale it out. Stokes concludes that a greater percentage of community-owned renewables would help to spread the innovation and reduce resistance (Stokes 2013). That said, FIT policies in general have heavily influenced the growth in investment in alternative energy technologies worldwide, whether by individual householders or by co-operative and community-owned energy producers (Lipp, Lapierre-Fortin, and McMurtry 2012).

For communities in regions responding to a decline in primary resource extraction—by transitioning from mining, fisheries, or logging to tourism and services, for example—Kelly Vodden, Lillian Hunt, and Randy Bell, in chapter 6, suggest a balanced mix of resource use and conservation, all underpinned by strong ecological principles (see table 11.4). They are cautiously optimistic about this approach, which they call “eco-cultural tourism.” They remind us that community control of local resources and ecotourism are vulnerable to cycles and events at macroeconomic levels and that the role of local governments is particularly critical to this approach. They are also wary of the dangers of traditional tourism, which tends to exploit both non-human nature and First Nation cultures. Their three examples emphasize the critical importance of cultural capital and its links to ecosystems and resources for planning both the conservation and the use of nature. The multistakeholder, multiple-use, community-coalition principles proposed by the authors are sound not just for First Nations communities but for any community that faces boom-bust resource cycles and depends on global market demands for primary goods.

Table 11.5 lists organizations and issues related to housing, transport, and community land trusts. In their discussion of affordable housing in chapter 7, George Penfold, Lauren Rethoret, and Terri MacDonald identify opportunities for collaboration among social housing organizations, green housing advocates, and social co-ops delivering care to seniors and to the poor. Once again, local-government tools and cross-sector collaboration are crucial to advancing sustainability and equity goals in housing. Marena Brinkhurst and Mark Roseland, in chapter 8, confirm that the community land trust model has great potential because it makes entry-level housing more attainable through common ownership of the land base: rents are lower, and the potential for equity ownership of social housing emerges. The affordable housing complexes associated with Station Pointe Greens (Edmonton), the Irvine Community Land Trust (California), and the Boyle Renaissance project (Edmonton), are strong-strong examples of sustainable housing projects that have made social and ecological sustainability integral to design, ownership, and operations. Other examples in this volume demonstrate links between transportation and affordable housing, particularly in car-centric cities and regions. Transitioning from private vehicles to more sustainable modes of transportation such as walking, cycling, and public transit will have health and social benefits. Most importantly, it will reduce household transportation budgets by thousands of dollars a year, freeing up cash for rent, mortgage payments, and other costs related to family well-being. Poorer people may then be able to afford to rent or purchase housing in a greater number of city neighbourhoods. This in turn will diversify those neighbourhoods and increase social equality.

In Canadian municipalities, links between bicycle culture and the use of public transit have strengthened. The bike lobby, which has long been active, has benefitted from the synergies it has developed with a series of federal and provincial funding programs now available for municipal sustainability planning and infrastructure: Canada’s Federal Gas Tax rebate, the Alberta Municipal Infrastructure Fund, and the BC Climate Change Plan are three examples. Programs such as these have emerged over the last decade and have required local governments to adopt municipal sustainability plans and, in some cases, climate change plans. The “traditional” strategies of bike riders, like mass actions to close roadways and bridges, now align with opportunities to open up the discussion of urban transport and to influence urban planning. The discussions go well beyond such practical solutions as bike and commuter lanes. Across all levels of governments, critics raise larger questions of mobility and transport disadvantage. They challenge the automobile culture that is embedded in state and municipal infrastructure planning. They prod City Hall planners to rethink transport and lifestyle, parking, noise, zoning, and development plans. In short, public transit, walking, biking, and carsharing are elevated into public discussions of urbanism, climate change, mobility justice, and social equity (Grieco and Urry 2012).

In chapter 9, Noel Keough, Mike Gismondi, and Erin Swift-Leppäkumpu discuss heritage-building conservation as a political act that reminds the broader public of a time when progressive governments assumed responsibility for investing in Canada’s public services and buildings (see table 11.6). The preservation of place, social memory, and authenticity in the built environment affirms that place is more than just a physical environment; place is a social construct. Again, examples of collaborations between heritage and social activists and municipal staff are many. In Edmonton, a derelict building was transformed into a women’s shelter and an inner city school converted to a multicultural community centre. In Moncton, New Brunswick, a century-old fire hall now shelters a non-profit that provides services across the province for homeless and at-risk youth. Most important of all, these collaborations reassert in bricks and mortar a long-standing Canadian cultural and political allegiance to the ethos of social democracy.

Table 11.7 addresses organizations and issues that concern financing sustainability. In the final chapter of this book, Sean Markey, Freya Kristensen, and Stewart Perry report their finding that many credit unions remain weak in the provision of financial support for the social economy, in part because credit union directors have a poor understanding of the social economy. There are some bright lights, nevertheless, and although more urban-centric, the ideas could translate to rural credit unions. Vancity Credit Union is a good example of a large credit union (Canada’s largest, in fact) that, through engagement in a wide range of initiatives, promotes both social innovation and sustainability. Two internal dynamics drive the structural potential of Vancity’s efforts. First, the credit union’s governance and risk management are guided by a policy of “no contradictions.” As the 2011 annual report states, “By 2013, we’ll implement a process to enable us to identify and correct systemic contradictions between what we say and what we do” (Vancity 2012, 71). This decision elevates social well-being and environmental sustainability from the portfolio of a sub-department or grant program to a corporate mandate. The entire capacity of the credit union has been mobilized to do things differently. Second, Vancity now defines and measures its community investment activities in terms of “demonstrable positive community impact” (43). Investment must be “impact investment”: it must improve people’s lives and/or sustain the natural environment. Among the strategic impact categories are affordable housing; social-purpose real estate; local, natural organic food; energy and the environment; and social enterprise and social venture. In 2011, Vancity exceeded its target and invested $361 million in impact investments. Vancity’s “no contradictions” policy and impact investing (in addition to the scale of the investments themselves) speak to the potential of credit unions to apply their considerable resources to effecting structural change. Vancity’s example also affirms the feasibility of the convergence of the social and the environmental, as outlined in this book. These efforts—and the fact that Vancity had its best net earnings ever in 2011—illustrate how initiatives and investments that combine strong sustainability and strong social economy do not have to diminish returns or make members nervous. These were two of the concerns that the researchers discovered could impede strong social economy/strong sustainability actions in the credit union sector.

As noted by Mike Gismondi, Lynda Ross, and Juanita Marois in chapter 2, the search for local capital in Alberta has taken a slightly different turn. Faced with capital withdrawal by large private rail companies, two communities in rural Alberta made creative use of the new-generation co-operative model and generated millions of dollars of investment from residents. In Westlock, the capital was used to secure local ownership of a large grain terminal. In Battle River, it was needed to purchase a rail line in the agricultural heartland. Both businesses are thriving. Other examples of local capital retention co-operatives in Alberta are those in Sangudo and Crowsnest Pass.2 In late 2013, the Alberta Community and Co-operative Association facilitated the spread of opportunity development co-operatives, co-ops that attract capital from local sources and invest it in local businesses, to six communities: Athabasca, Didsbury, Smoky River/Fahler, Three Hills, Drumheller, and Vulcan (Gismondi, Marois, and Strait, forthcoming; ACCA, n.d.). Local or micro-options such as these are essential to the development of models of money creation and credit that support local economies.

Taken together, the examples described in this volume suggest that with a more supportive government and policy context, the convergence of social economy and sustainability, together with the scaling up and scaling out of local innovations, could accelerate changes in the current system. Still, the questions remain: Can green social economy innovations shift the capitalist growth paradigm? Can they gain wide acceptance and become emulated across Canada? It depends.

Noam Bergman and colleagues (2010) describe a fixed bias among policymakers toward technological rather than social innovation. Policymakers presume bottom-up social innovations to be limited, localized, and context dependent (Gismondi and Cannon 2012). The evident success of local or small-scale green and social economy innovations notwithstanding, specialists are wary of the relevance of innovation from “bottom-up” sources (i.e., small-scale innovation generated by individuals, community groups, and so on) to major policy development. Dan van der Horst (2008) found that policymakers tend to believe that larger firms are more likely sources of sustainability innovation. They assume that large-scale change requires a “top-down” process, led by large private firms, and that the role of social economy or grassroots sustainability actors is to “fill in the gaps” and to ameliorate the shortcomings of the capitalist marketplace or state services. The social economy is considered incapable of transforming larger structures like markets; government programs, standards, and codes; the practices of financial institutions; or the habits of regional socio-economic planners. Community or co-operative energy sources, shared municipal/community forestry operations, socially infused organizations like bike and carshare co-operatives, and community land trusts all fall under the same rubric: they are deemed unlikely to spark widespread behavioural changes, let alone transformations in overarching structures of provision, business procedures, codes, practices, law, planning, and policy (Bergman et al. 2010; Brock and Bulpitt 2007). Van der Horst (2008) argues that successful privately owned local or small businesses receive a similar reception: they are downplayed as a source of social learning relevant to widescale change.

Given the evidence we have presented here, why does this remain the case? One reason for policy specialists’ tendency to privilege technological innovation is because it is difficult to measure the benefits of social innovation (Bergman et al. 2010). Policymakers prefer clear-cut statistical approaches. They struggle to calculate the value of such benefits as employment for marginal groups, community cohesion, resilience, carbon reduction, increased social capital, and reciprocity. Recently, the City of Vancouver demanded that the New City Market local food hub demonstrate a business case based on the same parameters as the large-scale food industry. Although city officials recognized the social and environmental benefits of local food, these factors held less weight than a business plan that answered the question: How will this make money? Bergman et al. argue that “it is hard to quantify the effects of a phenomenon that is not standardized or traded and which might include potentially nebulous outcomes” (7). A further complication arises when attempting to measure low-carbon contributions (like those of bicycle co-ops, carshares, or local food initiatives). The multiple ways in which the green social economy benefits the health of an urban living environment appear even harder to measure. They are less visible and “emerging in localized niches like communities and workplaces” distant from government power. These benefits take a form “which fits less well with mainstream, market-oriented ways of diffusing novelty across society” (2).

To address the perceived need to measure such benefits, grassroots sectors and their supporters have taken political steps and developed alternative measurement tools. Advanced social accounting and sustainability indicators include ways to measure different kinds of capital (social, cultural, ecological, heritage, and economic), their impacts, and progress (Mook and Sumner 2010; Sustainable Calgary 2011). Recently, the Vancity Community Foundation sponsored the Demonstrating Value project (demonstratingvalue.org). Its Web tools and Internet presence can help groups show their value to the community and in the long run “use data as a management and learning tool.” Other innovative indicators are now implemented municipally and even nationally, including measures for carbon emissions. For instance, Sustainable Calgary groups indicators into six indices: community, economy, education, natural environment, resource use, and wellness (Sustainable Calgary, n.d.). Each index contains five or six measures, ranging from safety of streets, adult literacy, and daycare worker turnover, to domestic waste, energy use, locally produced food, and the use of transit for trips to work. City councillors and staff use these sustainability indicators to measure their annual performance against goals. They can adjust municipal practices and policies accordingly. The public can use indicator trends to pressure elected officials and the administration for improvements.

Sometimes social innovations and sustainable alternatives meet resistance because of the beliefs embedded in the approaches, processes, and culture of the policy community. One such belief is that it is individual behaviour that needs to change rather than the social and economic practices that shape behaviour. What is required is a shift away from focusing on the individual in the explanation of behaviour (Shove 2010, 203; Gismondi and Cannon 2012). A number of social scientists and activists now focus instead on “systems of provision” and policies that “play a crucial role in establishing, stabilizing and transforming practices,” most often in unsustainable ways (Shove 2010, 203). Practice theorists argue that over time, the ways in which a society deals with energy and water provision, waste disposal, communication, and transport can lead to “lock-in,” a dependency on a particular practice not because it is optimal in terms of cost or performance but because it is part of a complex system that has been established over time and is difficult to escape. To alter a locked-in practice “may require significant changes to large scale technical networks, which are themselves maintained and reinforced by aspects of social structure (be it government policy, social norms, etc.)” (Büchs, Smith, and Edwards 2011, 7).

In each of our chapters, we have tried to demonstrate how social economy and sustainability actors seek changes in social structures, organizations, and systems of provision. These actors challenge conventional ways of providing a service, focusing their efforts on disrupting group-think and group-behaviour in order to alter norms, codes, and conventions. They question the attitudes and practices of professions and trades and the mainstream practices in sectors like finance, policy, law, planning, and taxes.

A good example of this is Light House, a non-profit company in Vancouver (see chapter 7). Light House is working to convince government, the real estate and construction industries, and consumers of the importance of sustainability in building design and performance. Company staff work to alter the policy landscape through advocacy and social marketing, a green technology trade show, and consulting services. They also directly work with construction unions and real estate developers in order to promote more equitable work practices. At the policy level, Light House staff network with different levels of government to support planning and programming change and with the construction industry to change rules, codes and construction training. They lobby construction manufacturers to meet demand for green building supplies, products, and competent trades and labour. They also collaborate with financial institutions like Vancity Credit Union to alter lending policy and to create new green mortgage products. They work with other sectors to improve, for example, insurance and lending policy for smart homes. Similarly, Light House uses strategic collaboration with the real estate and construction industry, financial institutions, and municipal government to promote sustainable housing construction education and awareness. Their networking and educational work allows them to influence practices at every stage of building construction: design, finance, planning, governance, construction practices, consumer education, labour force availability, sales and marketing, and aftercare. They create demand for the services they offer at every level and scale.

On the human services side, there is the example of Free Geek, a social enterprise that approaches the question of social inclusion and sustainability from a different angle (see chapter 4). Free Geek targets the negative side of rapid technological development and the digital divide between those who have access to computers and training (a prerequisite for many jobs and schooling today) and those who do not. The company does not simply give computers to marginal groups, however. Because the digital divide is social, Free Geek focuses on building capacity within marginal groups, including job skills training in the use and repair of computers. The organization addresses the global dimension of the divide as well. Computer technology is consumed en masse in the global North, and a corresponding amount of often toxic e-waste is shipped to the global South to be sorted by the working poor in e-waste dumps. Free Geek changes how we see the problem by reusing or by ethically recycling e-waste in accordance with the Basel Convention (www.basel.int). Since the founding of Free Geek Portland in 2000, eleven additional autonomous Free Geek organizations have sprung up in the United States, Vancouver, and Toronto.

Many of the organizations introduced in this book demonstrate significant social reach. They are part of national or international networks or federations that influence government policy at the municipal, provincial, and federal levels. They also work “horizontally” to alter their immediate policy contexts: they have influenced local bylaws, private business, finance, and other non-profit actors. They are creating change, not simply reacting. We are optimistic that the new ideas and exciting organizational practices of green social economy organizations are indeed “opening windows” of change (Schmidt 2011, 108) and catalyzing the scaling up and out of sustainable practices (Parrish 2008; Parrish and Foxon 2009, Smith 2006, 2007).

Yet, as some critics argue, biases against bottom-up policymaking can still effectively trump social innovation. How do we overcome that? Adrian Smith, Andy Stirling, and Frans Berkhout (2005, 1496) urge niche actors who wish to alter “the dominance of an incumbent [policy] regime” to exert “selection pressure” and simultaneously offer “the resources to respond to this pressure.” In a number of our examples, effective organizations increase pressure for sustainability by means of education, social marketing, and the building of alliances and networks. Their activities prepare the landscape for policy change and create demand for innovative change. They then meet this demand with services and products. In other words, many of these innovative organizations and initiatives are simply bypassing the policy actors and processes that are stuck in an increasingly outdated institutional past.

Many of the organizations reviewed in our research combine social and ecological issues in ways that disrupt current social practices and policy environments. They pose new questions and create public discussion about new problems. In so doing, they increase the ethical clarity of the issues at stake and alter public thinking. Their actions in the marketplace also generate new alliances among different actors and at different levels and scales. They connect once-isolated and intransigent policy silos and policy actors. And they exert strategic pressure for change and for scaling out innovation in theory and practice.

Can this array of small and modest scale changes result in transformative change? Can we move these innovations from the fringe to the centre and change structures of provision and service? Can the learnings from these innovations help us transition from capitalist growth to a new alternative economy that will contract resource use and redistribute income and wealth?

Scaling Up discloses example after example of green social economy actors who have been leading the development of alternative practices and policies that integrate sustainability and socio-economic justice. While obstacles and barriers remain, we are inspired by this bundle of successes, and even some failures. It is our hope that the examples collected in this book will change the direction of research, stimulate more intensive study into factors that enable or thwart change, and generate new hypotheses about how policy can be created or changed to support transition. We hope that the mixture of mission, practice, and theory in this book brings new ideas to your community, stimulates public discussion, and inspires new sustainable and just practices. In this convergence of social economy and sustainable community development lies the beginning, if not the core, of a new ethos and a fair and structurally relevant transition to sustainability.

TABLES

1. ACCA. N.d. “Unleashing Local Capital!” Alberta Community and Co-operative Association. http://acca.coop/unleashing/.
2. Bergman, Noam, Nils Markusson, P. Connor, Lucie Middlemiss, and Miriam Ricci. 2010. “Bottom-Up, Social Innovation for Addressing Climate Change.” Symposium conducted at the conference Energy Transitions in an Interdependent World: What and Where Are the Future Social Science Research Agendas, Sussex, UK, 25–26 February.
3. Brock, K. L., and C. Bulpitt. 2007. “Encouraging the Social Economy Through Public Policy: The Relationship Between the Ontario Government and Social Economy Organizations.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association, 30 May–1 June, Saskatoon.
4. Büchs, Milena, Graham Smith, and Rebecca Edwards. 2011. Low-Carbon Practices: A Third Sector Research Agenda. Third Sector Research Centre: Informing Civil Society, Working Paper 59, May. http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/generic/tsrc/documents/tsrc/working-papers/working-paper-59.pdf.
5. ENP. 2009. The Social Enterprise Purchasing Toolkit. Vancouver: Enterprising Non-Profits. http://www.socialenterprisecanada.ca/en/toolkits/purchasingtoolkit/.
6. Gismondi, Mike, and K. Cannon. 2012. “Beyond Policy ‘Lock-In’? The Social Economy and Bottom-Up Sustainability.” Canadian Review of Social Policy / Revue canadienne de politique sociale (67). http://pi.library.yorku.ca/ojs/index.php/crsp/article/view/35371.
7. Gismondi, Mike., Juanita Marois, and Danica Straith. Forthcoming. “Unleashing Local Capital: The Practice of Local Investing.” In Consumers, Activists, and Environmental Governance: Advances and Applications in Social Practice Theories, edited by Emily Huddart Kennedy, Maurie J. Cohen, and Naomi Krogman. UK: Edward Elgar.
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19. ———. 2010. “Beyond the ABC: Climate Change Policy and Theories of Social Change.” Environment and Planning 42 (6): 1273–85.
20. Shove, Elizabeth, Mika Pantzar, and Matt Watson. 2012. The Dynamics of Social Practice: Everyday Life and How It Changes. London: SAGE.
21. Smith, Adrian. 2006. “Bringing Sustainable Technologies into the Mainstream.” Innovation Brief. https://grassrootsinnovations.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/at-innovation-brief-final-dec-06.pdf.
22. ———. 2007. “Translating Sustainabilities Between Green Niches and Socio-Technical Regimes.” Technology Analysis and Strategic Management 19 (4): 427–50.
23. Smith, Adrian, Andy Stirling, and Frans Berkhout. 2005. “The Governance of Sustainable Socio-Technical Transition.” Research Policy 34: 1491–1510.
24. Sonnino, Roberta, and Christopher Griggs-Trevarthen. 2013. “A Resilient Social Economy? Insights from the Community Food Sector in the UK.” Entrepreneurship and Regional Development: An International Journal 25 (3–4): 272–92.
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