Revitalizing PLACE through Social Enterprise (Social and Economic Papers)

Around the world, rural and urban communities alike face growing socio-economic and environmental challenges. Confronted with mounting threats of climate change, food insecurity, resource depletion, and inequality, local leaders are increasingly leveraging place-based social enterprises to reimagine and reshape the future. This volume introduces the PLACE Framework as a novel approach for exploring how such enterprises tackle challenges and work to revitalize their places. Born out of engaged research in rural Newfoundland and Labrador, the PLACE Framework offers principles and lessons for community development, highlighting the importance of Promoting community leaders; Linking divergent perspectives; Amplifying local capacities and assets; Conveying compelling stories; and Engaging both/and thinking.

Collaboratively written by academics and practitioners, this volume offers case studies of place-based social enterprises in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Ireland, drawing on the lived experience of social entrepreneurs and community leaders to show the diverse ways the PLACE Framework can be applied to help create more sustainable futures.

Natalie Slawinski is professor of sustainability and strategy and director of the Centre for Social and Sustainable Innovation at the Gustavson School of Business, University of Victoria, and an adjunct professor at Memorial University. She earned her PhD from the Ivey Business School at the University of Western Ontario. Her research focuses on understanding sustainability, temporality, place-based organizing, and paradoxes in organizations, and has been published in such journals as Organization Science, Strategic Management Journal, and Organization Studies. Her most recent research examines these themes in the context of social enterprise and community entrepreneurship. Slawinski serves as an advisor to Memorial University’s Centre for Social Enterprise and is a research fellow at the Cambridge University Judge Business School’s Centre for Social Innovation. She is a member of the editorial review board at Organization & Environment.

Brennan Lowery is a transdisciplinary researcher interested in how rural and resource-based communities can craft self-determined sustainability narratives while employing entrepreneurial strategies to enhance well-being. With training at the nexus of traditional disciplinary boundaries (through Memorial University’s interdisciplinary PhD program), such as environmental policy, resource management, human geography, and economics, Brennan is developing an emerging research program on sustainability narratives in rural and resource-based communities and regions. He has recently begun exploring entrepreneurship and innovation in rural regions informed by this storytelling approach, currently in a post-doctoral role with the Marine Biomass Innovation project funded by the New Frontiers in Research Fund. Lowery’s research considers questions such as how more inclusive forms of entrepreneurship and innovation can serve as drivers of socio-economic revitalization in rural coastal communities and how communities can take innovative approaches to interpreting cultural heritage stories while safeguarding the inherent value of traditional knowledge.

Ario Seto is a post-doctoral researcher at the Ocean Frontier Institute, Memorial University. An anthropologist, his current research focuses on the intersectionality of mediatized practices, community-building, and values, particularly in terms of the emerging public morality, democratic resilience, grassroots economic solidarity, and marketization of digital living. His recent book, Netizenship: Activism and Online Community Transformation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), details the disciplining practices and ethics in shaping militant netizens in online forums.

Mark C.J. Stoddart is a professor in the Department of Sociology at Memorial University, with research interests in environmental sociology, social movements, and communications and culture. He is the author, with Alice Mattoni and John McLevey, of Industrial Development and Eco-Tourisms: Can Oil Extraction and Nature Conservation Co-Exist? (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). His work appears in a range of international journals, including Global Environmental Change, Energy Research & Social Science, Organization & Environment, Environmental Politics, Journal of Sustainable Tourism, Environmental Communication, Mobilities, and Social Movement Studies.

Kelly Vodden is a research professor with the Environmental Policy Institute and Associate Vice-President of Research and Graduate Studies at the Grenfell Campus of Memorial University. She has been engaged in the rural community and regional development research, policy, and practice across the country, particularly in Newfoundland and Labrador, for more than 25 years. She has published and led projects on topics ranging from rural regional governance and development models to climate change adaptation, rural drinking water systems, and labour force mobility, and has written and presented widely on these topics.