LIVIANA 2023 - Community Economies Online Conference

The fourth Community Economies Research Network (CERN) LIVIANA International Online Conference has just concluded and recordings from the 26 sessions have been uploaded to the LIVIANA 2023 Playlist that is part of the CEI YouTube Channel. 

Details about the sessions are available here. Sessions included ones on community economies of the past; speculative fiction and community economies; social enterprises in Asia; and mutual learning within a Mapuche-led context in Chile. Topics covered include commoning, waste, the state, policy, prefiguration and more-than-human worlds. Some sessions are in Spanish. 

There were two keynote presentations.

The conference opened on Monday 30 October with a keynote by Dr Mary Njeri Kinyanjui, Independent Scholar from Kenya whose research explores women’s movements, the informal economy in Africa, ubuntu business models, and how women experience anthropain in their everyday lives.

In her keynote, Dr Kinyanjui discussed what she has called the Utu-Ubuntu business model which is practised by ordinary women in Kenya and is based on the principles of humanness and solidarity that they practice with radical courage and determination in their efforts to survive and flourish at the margins of the business and society. 

The second keynote on Tuesday 7 November was given by Dr Pieta Savinotko from the University of Eastern Finland whose research explores everyday food production practices and the idea of 'post-ownership' as a contribution to economic transition.

In her keynote, Dr Savinotko discussed hands-on practices of food production (such as home and community gardening, mushroom and berry picking) in the context of plantationocentrism, an economic practice that marginalises the everyday ways that people make a living through the entangled relationships of humans and non-humans as they 'get along'. 

LIVIANA is a decentralised series of exchanges and symposia that runs for two weeks, providing an opportunity for CERN members to connect and share.

The event is based on the sense of openness, free-floating train of thought, and cheerful spirit that the Spanish term liviana connotes.

Information about the previous LIVIANA conferences is available here.