Community Economies

2017

The burgeoning literature on diverse and community economies has been relatively hopeful, exploring how people learn, enact new, and reclaim other ways of meeting their needs outside of capitalist practices. For good reasons, much of this work has sought to avoid a conventional critical-leftist orientation, instead adopting what Gibson-Graham (2006, p 8) call a ‘weak theory’ approach ‘that welcomes surprise, entertains hope, makes connection, tolerates coexistence and offers care for the new’. Within this literature until recently, less attention has been given to how community economy collectives negotiate the everyday ethical dilemmas to enact interdependence. In this article I draw on Jean Luc Nancy’s (1991; 2000) understandings of subjectivity and what he terms an ‘inoperative community’ to explore the everyday anxieties and relational tensions in the Wellington Timebank, a community economy in Aotearoa, New Zealand. I use Nancy’s framing of the inoperative community and Gibson-Graham’s (2006) engagement with his ideas as a lens to explore the ethical tensions involved in enacting community economies. I show how Nancy’s ideas help us to better understand the apparent contradictions experienced in communities, by exploring the tensions between community myths of diversity and labour equality, which are unworked and interrupted by everyday anxieties and fears. This is not to suggest that community economies like the Wellington Timebank are a failure, but rather that openly discussing such examples help us as researchers to better understand the everyday tensions collectives necessarily negotiate in enacting interdependence.

2016

Agriculture is an increasingly capitalized and industrialized enterprise that has resulted in the alienation of consumers from the process of food production. The separation of consumers from producers is a fundamental source of non-sustainability in the modern food system. In this paper, we present three case examples of civic agriculture representing a breadth of alternatives in the social and spatial organization of agricultural production and distribution. In all cases, producers form associations to engage directly with alternative modes of production, and create markets that enroll consumers in the process of food production and distribution. We argue, using Gibson-Graham’s (2006) “post-capitalist politics ” that the (re)negotiation of the economic basis of agriculture generates new subjectivities directed toward a more integrated, interdependent and cooperative economy of agriculture.

Alpine Community Economies Snapshot Journal, 2023

A valley in the Italian Alps is teeming with people who are building community economies in place.There is a collective who makes refreshing drinks in circular processes, another that makes bread in a mobile oven and is forging more- than-human relationships. There is a feminist research lab, activating participatory methods to cultivate a communityrun academy to learn what is necessary for equitable futures. All this is happening in the cracks that open up in a seemingly endless agricultural and industrial monoculture and against the backdrop of enormous biodiversity loss in the Alpine region. In this place riven with opportunities and tensions, from 11 to 19 July 2023, 30 people gathered for the first Community Economies Practice Retreat to explore how to press forward with ways of enacting postcapitalist worlds. The Community Economies in Action Practice Retreat brought together practitioners from diverse fields (e.g., agroecology, art and design, urbanism, food transformation, crafts, pedagogy, co-housing) as well as practiceoriented PhD students and researchers with a participatory, activist approach. Participants learned from each other, mobilise situated knowledge, and shared the beauties and blind spots of their projects, initiatives and research. They forged new alliances, and explored ways of doing, feeling and knowing that value collectivity and interdependence.

2017

Initiatives and activists around the world are experimenting with alternatives to dominant forms of living to tackle pressing social and environmental problems. Several issues seem to reoccur for both engaged citizens and aspiring ones: the lack of time for sustained engagement, due to the mechanisms of the 'market', and other outer influences around us that shape the way we look at the world, such as culture, family, social networks, school and education. As a result, the transition to a more sustainable and just future seems difficult to achieve beyond rhetoric. To overcome these issues, many initiatives experiment with new economic frameworks based on the philosophy of the commons. Through practices of sharing, collaboration and cooperation, they interrogate the dominant cultural value systems of property and wage-motivated labour. The current international debates on the introduction of a basic income for all citizens opens up further questions on how we work, share, and live within our societies. This paper examines the potentials of emergent 'economies of commoning' to strengthen urban communities , reconstruct the commons, and support neighbourhood participation. Taking previous interviews with activists and case studies conducted for the co-edited book 'Agents of Alternatives – Redesigning Our Realities' and own experiences with community initiatives in Helsinki and Berlin as a starting point for analysis, this paper looks in more detail at two cases concerned with the basic income: the German crowdfunding experiment 'Mein Grundeinkommen' (My Basic Income) and the Swiss cultural initiative 'Grundeinkom-men' (Basic Income). As a theoretical framework for this analysis, I investigate and draw together relational theories about the 'commons', 'community economies', and the 'ecommony' (an economy based on the commons and care) by feminist authors such as Silvia Federici, Ma-ria Mies and Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen, J.K. Gibson-Graham and Friederike Habermann. Finally, the paper argues for an increase in 'time wealth' as a result of these economies, offering the necessary mental and physical spaces for citizens to become engaged in more meaningful ways with society to move towards a more just and ecological future.

Feminist Political Ecology and the Economics of Care, 2019

In this era of human-induced environmental crisis, it is widely recognised that we need to foster better ways to sustain life for people and planet. For us – and other scholars drawing on the Community Economies tradition – better worlds begin in recognising the diverse and interconnected ways human communities secure our livelihoods. Community Economies scholarship is a body of theory that evolved from the writings of geographers J.K. Gibson-Graham, which, for more than thirty years, has inspired others (including the three of us) to rethink economy as a space of political possibility. In this chapter we explore some of the common threads between Feminist Political Ecology (FPE) and Community Economies scholarship, highlighting the centrality of care work – women’s care work in particular – in the intellectual and empirical heritage of Community Economies Collective (CEC). We argue that an ethic of care has always been central to Community Economies thinking. The question of how to...

Urban Policy and Research, 2014

Take Back the Economy is the third volume in the J. K. Gibson-Graham trilogy that begins with The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It) (Gibson-Graham 1996) and A Postcapitalist Politics (Gibson-Graham 2006). Gibson-Graham is the authorial voice of Julie Graham and Katherine Gibson, one of the most productive research collaborations I have seen in the field of economic geography. Julie Graham died in April 2010 before the third volume was completed, but her thoughts, words, and influence are evident throughout the book. The collaborative research continues with Jenny Cameron (Australia) and Stephen Healy (United States) drawing on the work of The Community Economies Collective (http://www. communityeconomies.org), created to bring together academic and community activists to promote alternative, diverse, and sustainable economies.

2018

Even if some European and national labor market or social policy programs focused on fostering local economy, the social imperative of social and solidarity economy did not enter the political or academic mainstream. In light of the consequences of neo-liberal globalization, socio-political considerations need to pay much more attention than before to the local living space as a place of active participation and integration, of collective self-organization and sustainable development. Shaping sustainable development raises questions about the logic behind socially integrated economic activity geared to maintaining the capacity for social, cultural, ecological and economic evolution. The ecological imperative of community economy seems to have a stronger effect to eco-social transformation. The strong re-discovery of community-based action research - after three decades of marginalization - is on one side resulting from the challenges of eco-social transformation, and on the other si...

Social alternatives, 2011

Amidst widespread concern about 'the economy', this paper explores how academic researchers can contribute to the work underway to create environmentally orientated and socially just economies. We offer the diverse economies framework as a technique with which to cultivate ethical economies. Introduction Climate change is a booming wake-up call that our economies cannot go on with business as usual. Widespread concern about the environment sits alongside growing doubt about the viability of what we know as 'the economy' - the financial system is considered shaky, unemployment rates are high, and market expansion is no longer seen as a viable solution to declining revenues. From all quarters, not only the traditional left but also governments, non-government organisations, development agencies and grassroots organisations, there is interest in environmentally attuned and socially orientated economic alternatives. Amidst such concern, for some time now activists in mov...