If we can make it there, we can make it everywhere: grassroots social innovations for post- capitalistic futures
Danai Liodaki
Colm Stockdale
Abstract: This paper aims to explore a number of alternative initiatives emerging in Epirus, Greece. Epirus is a region facing developmental problems, such as remoteness, population ageing, population decline and more. In the last years, a wide range of grassroots initiatives have emerged, unravelling alternative developmental pathways and challenging the traditional growth-driven development objectives. Through our empirical research, we explore how the initiatives in question (a) emerge in the considered ‘underdeveloped’ rural and peripheral areas of Epirus; (b) propose alternative developmental pathways and respond to the local and regional issues with grassroots innovative practices showing post-capitalistic perspectives for post-growth futures; (c) are linked to local and regional governments and policy makers and how they can be supported when those actors are not engaging with their practices and objectives. In the end, we aim to contribute to the existing literature on post-capitalistic alternative futures, showing how seeds from such futures are planted in the ‘here and now’ in places that are mostly needed and can lead to reproducible results for peripheral areas and beyond. As one of our interviewees mentioned ‘If we can make it there, we can make it everywhere’.
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