A prevalent assumption is that grassroots transformative initiatives (GTI) pursuing territorial defence lack technical competence, digital access, or the ability or the desire to engage with digital technologies. However, in the past, social movements seeking socioecological transformation have been successful in mobilising resources for their political objectives. Current scholarship has not fully addressed to what extent this might also be occurring with digitalisation. Key to the DIVERSE project is the hypothesis that relationality, rather than enhanced performance, guides decisions on engagement, both in terms of deciding the extent to which they will engage with digitalisation or not, and in the type of concrete practices that are implemented and that are excluded. To explore this notion our team is conducting interviews with experts in GTI from several parts of the world identified through salient literature on pluriversal transformations. Their responses are helping us to articulate a framework connecting dimensions of relationality (care, community and connection), with Erin Olin Wright’s (2010) strategic logics of transformation (ruptural, interstitial, symbiotic). My talk will present interim results in this attempt.

Researcher: Beatriz Rodríguez-Labajos
Room: 24.120 - 13:00
Date: Thursday May 21, 2026 ⋅ 1pm – 2pm (Central European Time - Madrid)

Beatriz Rodríguez-Labajos is a distinguished researcher and tenure-track professor at the JHU-UPF Public Policy Center at UPF's Department of Political and Social Science. She coordinates the ERC CoG project DIVERSE, on the digitalization transformative initiatives, pursuing biocultural diversity and environmental justice.