Intentional Communities as Social Innovations? Learnings and Their Societal Impact

Are intentional communities just niches for certain people? Are they isolated islands or multipliers of social innovation? Do they have a potential for helping to solve diverse societal crises? What is the potential of initiatives like intentional communities and ecovillages for a societal transformation? With this research question we started a four-years EU research project with 35 researchers in 2014. Based on a transition management theoretical approach, more than 100 local initiatives and 20 global networks were researched by in-depth qualitative research including participant observation; amongst them the co-housing network, the Global Ecovillage Network (GEN) and four ecovillages. The central learnings and their practices of transformation were extracted and we concluded their ways of societal impact for a societal transformation and systemic change. The result was a middle-range theory of transformative social innovation.

Intentional communities can be seen as ‘laboratories for new forms of living together’. They create social learning environments in daily life and by offering forums to work on emotional growth which appears as a fundamental precondition for social learning. They create space for new forms of knowing, framing, organizing and doing. Their learning are transferred on multiple ways into the society - through individuals, media, businesses, teachings and there are even some cases of changing national laws.

The presented insights are mainly based on this research project TRANSIT (TRANsformative Social Innovation Theory http://www.transitsocialinnovation.eu/  including a data base on critical turning points in initiatives and the manifesto of transformative social innovation) plus the research project COSIMA on ecovillages and eco-municipalities in Austria.