Articles

In this paper we describe the work of a nascent research community of economic geographers who are making the choice to bring marginalized, hidden and alternative economic activities to light in order to make them more real and more credible as objects of policy and activism. The diverse economies research program is, we argue, a performative ontological project that builds upon and draws forth a different kind of academic practice and subjectivity. 

Reflecting on the process of field research this paper explores the challenges of bringing together empirical research and the experience of doing development work, with the complex and often speculative theorising of contemporary political and social philosophy.

Informal caregiving frequently exacts a heavy psychic and physical toll on subjects that perform it while simultaneously figuring as a source of deep ethical meaning, raising questions about how to account for both dimensions in a politics of health care reform.

Fishing economies are typically represented as pre-capitalist and as a barrier to capital accumulation rather than as an alternative economy with its own potentials. Privatization (and capitalism) appears logical and inevitable because there is no alternative described or given. The class analysis presented here focuses on questions of property and subjectivity and describes fishing as a non-capitalist and community-based economy consonant with both a tradition of common property and an image of fishermen as independent and interested in fairness and equity. While the latter is associated with a neoliberal subject aligned with the capitalist economy, a class analysis of fishing repositions fishermen as community subjects aligned with a community economy.

In response to the accusation that development can only serve to perpetuate uneven power between the '1st' and '3rd' worlds, this paper explores possibilities for new postdevelopment approaches founded on an understanding of development as a political engagement.

We, like Hester Eisenstein, have been encouraged by the resurgence of interest in "discussions about capitalism, socialism, and alternative economic systems" and by the innovative organizing energies of "those who believe that another world-a postcapitalist world-is possible." Indeed, our forthcoming book A Postcapitalist Politics (Gibson-Graham 2006b) takes up the very question of an alternative economic politics and, as the sequel to The End of Capitalism (as We Knew It): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy (1996, 2006a), does so with feminist politics as its guiding inspiration.

This paper co-written with Ken Byrne uses the psychoanalytic concept of fantasy to explore how people are attached to particular notions of economy. We explore how worker cooperators in Argentina's newly formed worker cooperatives experience their economic subjectivity.

Discussion of the history and concept of 'solidarity economy" and possible implementations in the U.S. context.

The emergence of a participatory orthodoxy in the development industry has had enormous positive impact, however discourses of participation are also being used in surprisingly political ways. This paper explores how a “pro-local” discourse amongst development professionals in northern Thailand is being deployed in ways that undermine the goals of empowerment and emancipation that are central to the aims of participatory approaches.

This paper engages with recent geographical debates on alternative economic practices, arguing that insufficient attention has been paid to the scale at which they operate. Through an analysis of recent attempts to 'fix' economic activity at a scale felt to be normatively desirable through alternative currencies, the paper argues that when attempting to build non-capitalist practices, scale matters. The paper discusses processes of financial structuration that limit and channel these spaces through an analysis of localized alternative networks in the UK (Local Exchange Trading Schemes - LETS) and the geographically wider barter networks in Argentina.

In this paper interpreting mushroom hunting as part of the diverse economy facilitates its place independent of environmental protection strategies like green capitalism, which fail in part because they ignore non-capitalist resource use and extraction activities that do not fit within market oriented approaches to resource management.

The first paper published during my PhD studies, this article explores how the movement to obtain citizenship rights for highland minorities in Thailand is carefully engaging with dominant discourses of Thai-ness in ways that open up the incompleteness of Thai state hegemony.

This paper offers a synopsis of the key findings of my PhD Thesis which explored the politics of development practice and theories of postdevelopment. Drawing on a series of case studies from northern Thailand, I argue that development is always political, whether it is being shaped by a politics of emancipation or the international geopolitical concerns of the day. Thus what is required in development practice is a much more aware engagement with the political dynamics at play.

Based on the Latrobe Valley Community Partnering Project, this paper introduces new ways of understanding disadvantaged areas, the economy, community and the research process in order to open up new ways of addressing social and economic issues.

This paper introduces a poststructuralist influenced participatory action research project seeking to develop new pathways for economic and community development in the context of a declining region.

In this paper we address the question of ‘what next after poststructuralism’ through a reassessment of area studies. In a narrative of our own involvement with place-oriented research and institutions, we examine the traditional position of area studies in geography and anthropology and its reevaluation by poststructuralist scholars in a number of disciplines. We argue that both prestructuralist and poststructuralist treatments of areas are oriented by a narrative of capitalist development; at the same time, we recognize that traditional area studies has a deep interest in noncapitalist economic practices and relations. It is therefore a resource for those of us who want to create a discourse of economic diversity as a contribution to a politics of economic innovation.

J.K. Gibson-Graham explores two responses to the violence of development – the politics of empire and the politics of place. Drawing on the well-known book Empire by Hardt and Negri, the experience of the SID project on Women and the Politics of Place, and a slum dwellers' initiative in India, she attempts to open up alternatives to the dominance of capital and affirm a new political space.

This article discusses the use of GIS for an alternative analysis of the transition to capitalism in Moscow, Russia in the 1990s. Following the argument for incorporating quantitative methods into feminist research agendas, the article illustrates how GIS can be part of a critical and feminist analysis of economic transition.

This article examines survival strategies of urban households in post-socialist cities during the transition from the Soviet system to a market economy. The article links the outcomes of systemic transformation to the daily lives of households and connects urban change induced by mass privatization to class and gender processes inside the households. These other transitions in everyday class and gender processes are consistently overlooked by macroeconomic approaches that dominate among transition theorists and policy consultants.

Exploring how recent feminist thinkers are attempting to add women into the economy.

Situates contemporary evaluations of the success of Spain's Mondragon cooperative complex within a tradition of debate about the politics of economic transformation and argues for the development of an economics of surplus that can guide ethical decisions in community economies.

Principles and practices for cultivating a local ethics of economic transformation.

Outlines the Rethinking Economy action research project in the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts, highlighting the role of academy-community partnerships in constructing community economies.

How women's activism in the Philippines, China and Papua New Guinea is helping build and strengthen community economies.

A review of Australian research and policy interventions aimed at communities and regions from the perspective of the Community Economies Project.

This article draws on field research in New England to challenge conventional individualized accounts of fishery dynamics and develop a representation of fisheries as diverse sites of community organization and cooperative management of common property. This is a "re-mapping," both literal and figurative, of the landscapes of fishery practice as a strategy to open more possibilities for communal resource management.

Outlines the 'politics of becoming' associated with desiring and building communal economies.

In this paper I examine the politics behind the establishment of Local Exchange Trading Schemes or LETS. By deploying concepts of the ‘heterotopia’ and of ‘micropolities’, I examine the extent to which advocates of LETS as a resistant space have developed a micropolitical tool that enables the realisation of resistant conceptions of money and exchange, of livelihood, community, and cooperation. A fourfold conception of the heterotopia is developed to examine, first, the multiplicity of resistant conceptions of money and work developed by participants. Second, LETS is held to be effective micropolitics if these benefits are realisable, irrespective of the attitudes of elites, for any length of time within this resistant space.

"Recently I attended a conference on globalization and global regulation which was organized by some left social scientists at a university in the USA. One thing I noticed in many of the contributions was the way in which everything was centered on or by capitalism, almost by default. Regulation was seen as focused upon capitalism and ultimately became part of a capitalist formation. Non-capitalist social sites (including the household and the state) were involved in the reproduction of capitalism, perhaps in new forms. Even opposition was situated within capitalism, defined and ultimately coopted by it.