Questioning the Transformative Thrust of Local Experiments in Socio-Ecological Change

The city, the local level, as a site for intervening in unsustainable human-environment relations has become increasingly important. In recent years, two urban approaches to global socio-ecological challenges have become particularly prominent: the smart city and the degrowth approach (such as repair cafés, non-commercial sharing platforms, urban agriculture, food co-ops, etc.). Beyond their significant differences, they share important, yet mostly overlooked, common denominators: Both trust in local intervention in everyday life and in experimental, rather than end-of-the-pipe, solutions. Localism and experimentalism tend to be regarded as a promising avenue towards a transformation towards greater sustainability not only by those involved in smart or postgrowth urbanism, but also by scholars of environmental politics and movements. The core thrust of this paper is to make sense of the current trend towards localism and experimentalism against the backdrop of three larger, societal developments: the normalization of post-facticity (a challenge for defining a clear and comprehensive goal of transformative action); the fragmentation of governance (a challenge for steering transformative action); and increasingly liquid subjective commitments and identities (a challenge for sustaining transformative action). Possibly, the paper suggests, localism and experimentalism may be better understood as symptoms of a highly constrained scope for transformative action on the socio-ecological crisis in late modern democracies than – as is commonly assumed – signs of hope for transformative change. The paper undertakes a shift in perspective from solutions to conditions of and barriers to (radical, socio-ecological) change. Whereas much of the current environmental politics literature focuses on solutions, this paper takes a step back and examines the macro-political conditions for (a) the emergence of certain solutions and (b) realizing fundamental change. This paper argues that precisely if further impasses in coming to terms with the socio-ecological crisis are to be avoided, understanding the micro-political alongside the macro-political is key.