Grounded! COVID-19 and Recovering Postcapitalist Possibility in Place

Stephen Healy
Matthew Scobie
Kelly Dombroski

We comment on Bruno Latour's post-COVID futures essay and his book on terrestrial politics with reference to Aotearoa New Zealand and grounded Indigenous politics of place. We seek postcapitalist possibilities in a number of key events of 2020.

Food for people in place

Kelly Dombroski, Gradon Diprose, Emma Sharp, Rebekah Graham, Louise Lee, Matthew Scobie, Sophie Richardson, Alison Watkins, Rosemarie Martin-Nueninger

The COVID-19 pandemic and associated response have brought food security into sharp focus for many New Zealanders. The requirement to “shelter in place” for eight weeks nationwide, with only “essential services” operating, affected all parts of the New Zealand food system. The nationwide full lockdown highlighted existing inequities and created new challenges to food access, availability, affordability, distribution, transportation, and waste management.

Food rescue as collective care

Gradon Diprose, Louise Lee

Recent research into waste has moved beyond focusing on individual behaviour change to the wider practices, systems, and social norms that construct and perpetuate waste. Running alongside this work on waste, community economy scholars have been exploring how communities form around and care for commons.

Community led initiatives for climate adaptation and mitigation

Katy Simon, Gradon Diprose, Amanda Thomas

Planning for climate change is complex. There is some uncertainty about how quickly the climate will change and what the anticipated localised effects will be. There are also governance questions, for instance, who has the mandate to make decisions around the management of collective resources (like council infrastructure) and private property. Underlying these questions are issues of justice, equity and agency – who pays for the costs of adaptation and mitigation, and how do decision-makers engage with communities when what is ultimately needed is transformational socio-economic change?

Beyond the birth wars: diverse assemblages of care

Kelly Dombroski
Katharine McKinnon
Stephen Healy

In this article, we argue that paying attention to the diverse assemblages of care enables us to go beyond simplistic natural versus medical models of birth and maternity care. We draw on interviews with women in New Zealand.

Community Economies: Responding to questions of scale, agency, and Indigenous connections in Aotearoa New Zealand

Gradon Diprose
Kelly Dombroski
Stephen Healy
Waitoa, Joanne

This commentary was invited by the special editors of this issue and is partly based on the Community Economies session that the four authors organised at the Social Movements Conference III: Resistance and Social Change in Wellington, 2016. During the session, a number of questions were asked by participants. Some of these questions were new for us, while others have been asked of Community Economy scholars before.