Title: The nitty gritty of creating alternative economies
Abstract: 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 movements such as the World Social Forum have been supporting and growing alternative economies through a whole range of techniques including new forms of learning and more traditional methods of lobbying, publicity and rallies (Roelvink 2009 and forthcoming). In doing so, they are clearly showing that 'another world is possible'. As academics, with others we have developed a suite of complementary techniques for use in research specifically designed to cultivate more diverse, people and environment centred economies, what we call 'community economies' (see Gibson-Graham 2006, Chapter 4). In developing these techniques, one of which we introduce below, our primary aim has been to make real the possibility that the economy can be a space of ethical action, not a place of submission to 'the bottom line' or the 'imperatives of capital' as it is so often portrayed. We have found, however, that to imagine and enact 'other' economies is no small feat. A significant barrier resides in ourselves, in the very way that we understand 'the economy'. As Stephen Healy (2009) argues, when the capitalist economy is seen as the real, dominant and most powerful form of economic life, the alternative economy is usually seen as idealistic, inferior and powerless. But if we displace this binary view of the economy with one of radical difference - of diverse capitalist and non-capitalist economic forms - then we open up many more spaces of action without prejudging their transformative potential. From here our task can be to facilitate ethical debates about which practices foster community wellbeing and resilience and to conduct research that supports and grows these practices. The techniques we have developed are thus directed at transforming ourselves, that is, at creating new economic subjects who can begin to take ethical action in the economic realm. To create new subjects, however, we first need a different representation of the economy. J. K. Gibson-Graham (1996, 2006) offers an alternative framing of economy - diverse economies - that acknowledges the already existing multiple forms of economic activity and sources of economic innovation that we can find all around us if we look for them. In this essay we focus on the technique of diverse economies framing. The diverse economies framing When people speak of 'the economy' they tend only to think of formal commodity markets, waged and salaried labour and capitalist enterprises focused on creating profit for owners or shareholders. The diverse economies framing broadens our conception of the economy. There are different kinds of transaction and multiple ways in which exchange is negotiated - not only formal market transactions, but alternative markets where considerations other than supply and demand influence the terms of exchange, and non-market exchanges and transactions. There are different ways of performing and remunerating labour - not only waged and salaried labour, but alternatively paid labour and unpaid labour. …
Publication Year: 2011
Publication Date: 2011-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 70
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