Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Geoforum journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum Power and privilege in alternative civic practices: Examining imaginaries of change and embedded rationalities in community economies Lucía Argüelles a, ⁎ , Isabelle Anguelovski b , Elizabeth Dinnie c a Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), Institute for Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA), Medical Research Institute, Hospital del Mar (IMIM), Barcelona, Spain b ICREA Research Professor, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (ICREA), Institute for Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA) and Medical Research Institute, Hospital del Mar (IMIM), Barcelona, Spain c Social, Economic and Geographical Sciences, The James Hutton Institute, Aberdeen, United Kingdom ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Neoliberalism Imaginaries of change Alternatives Community economy Responsibilization Environmental privilege Food networks Community energy Barter groups Community bicycle shop Land trusts ABSTRACT Community economies can be considered as examples of the diverse economies growing outside common ca- pitalist logics of private accumulation and profit, seeking to bypass or reconfigure dominant global trends of societal and economic organization. Yet, these communities seem to fit quite well under a neoliberal program in which responsibilities are shifting downwards, favoring multi-level governance over State intervention and accountability. This binary character makes imperative an open and critical discussion on the development of community initiatives, including on the motivations and visions of citizens practicing alternative ethical con- sumption. This article explores the neoliberal rationalities embraced by community members within the ima- ginaries of change they frame and examines how these rationalities contribute to (re)producing neoliberal conditions and forms of governance. Our analysis builds on semi-structured interviews conducted among the members of 11 initiatives in 5 EU countries and on participant observation. We argue here that communities articulate an “alternative imaginary” of change that appears imprinted by core neoliberal rationalities around questions of individual responsibility, the role of the State, and civic participation and equity. It is an imaginary related to the construction of CBEs to by-pass existing socio-political and economic configurations. This ima- ginary more often than not responds to neoliberal promises of individual freedom and autonomy and seems to undermine CBEs' more radical possibilities at the same time obscuring more diverse voices of transformation. 1. Introduction In the Global North, community economy practices are often in- itiatives committed to a transition towards a low-carbon and more lo- calized economy, and built around principles that distance themselves from traditional capitalist forms of economic organization. In this paper, we refer to initiatives such as barter groups, community gardens and farms, consumer cooperatives, bike repair workshops, community energy projects, waste recycling and transformation groups, land trusts, and other forms of community economy. The scholarship on community economy is positioned within two opposite political and discursive perspectives: an uncritical celebration of its practice and effects or an equally uncritical condemnation of its limitations (Hilbrandt and Richter, 2015). From a more nuanced per- spective these community-based economies (CBEs) can be seen as ex- amples of diverse economies growing outside common capitalist logics, recognizing their potential to bypass or even reconfigure dominant global trends. Such a posture also increasingly recognizes that CBEs fit quite well under a neoliberal program in which responsibilities are shifting downwards towards civil society, favoring multi-level govern- ance over government intervention (Rosol, 2012; Guthman, 2008a; Pudup, 2008; Busa and Garder, 2015). It therefore calls for a more open and critical discussion of the development and role of community in- itiatives (Richardson, 2015). In line with the more critical line of thought, Guthman and others have asked how activist groups “seem to produce and reproduce neo- liberal forms and spaces of governance [and] at the same time […] oppose neoliberalism writ large” (Guthman, 2008a:1172). From a de- finitional standpoint, neoliberal discourses promote community devel- opment as an essential channel of political engagement and as a com- pensatory mechanism for the inadequacies of the market (Jessop, 2002), which in turn helps to produce neoliberal subjects and men- talities (Pudup, 2008; Slocum, 2004). Other studies have shown how neoliberalism constrains activism by limiting “the arguable, the http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2017.08.013 Received 22 June 2016; Received in revised form 22 August 2017; Accepted 26 August 2017 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: Lucia.Arguelles@uab.cat (L. Argüelles), Isabelle.Anguelovski@uab.cat (I. Anguelovski), Liz.Dinnie@hutton.ac.uk (E. Dinnie). Geoforum 86 (2017) 30–41 0016-7185/ © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. MARK