Awards for Diverse Economies Books

Diverse Economies and Livable Worlds

Two books from the Diverse Economies and Livable Worlds book series won awards at the 2020 American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting earlier this year.

Lindsay Naylor’s 2019 book Fair Trade Rebels: Coffee Production and Struggles for Autonomy in Chiapas won the Julian Minghi Distinguished Book Award from the Political Geography specialty group.

The citation reads: This book provides an empirically grounded analysis of the diverse economic and agricultural practices of indigenous coffee producers in resistance as they play out in self-declared autonomous communities in highland Chiapas; such practices are enacted as a struggle for dignified livelihoods. Fair Trade Rebels draws on stories and experiences coming from the highlands based in interaction with the fair trade certified marketplace and state violence. In five substantive chapters, this book covers the racialized and historical underpinnings of coffee production and rebel autonomy in the highlands of Chiapas, deconstructs development and common binaries associated with fair trade certification, considers the possibilities of being in common, and evaluates actually existing food sovereignty and diverse economic exchanges.

Ethan Miller's 2019 book, Reimagining Livelihoods: Life Beyond Economy, Society, and Environment won the CAPE (Cultural and Political Ecology specialty group) Outstanding Publication Award.

The citation reads: Dr Miller's imaginative and empirically-grounded examination of livelihoods serves as a provocation to all cultural and political ecologists to not just question but abandon the "hegemonic trio" of economy, society, and environment. As the nomination letter highlights, "this work shows the often inadvertent complicity of those seeking to transform contemporary realities with the assemblages they seek to change." Not simply a critique, the book advances the livelihoods triad as a map for visualizing and politicizing the ways livelihoods are made. Congratulations to Dr. Miller on receiving the CAPE Outstanding Publication Award!

There are now five books in the Diverse Economies and Livable Worlds book series, published by University of Minnesota Press, with the most recent being Urbanism without Guarantees by Christian Anderson.

Other books in the series are Amanda Huron’s 2018 Carving out the Commons: Tenant Organizing and Housing Cooperatives in Washington D.C., and Gerda Roelvink’s 2016 Building Dignified Worlds: Geographies of Collective Action.

As part of the University of Minnesota’s featured books for understanding complicated moments, Roelvink has written about the power of a pause and how, for those whose circumstances allow, these moments of slowing down are an opportunity to think differently and imagine new possibilities in the here and now, and into the future.

The editors of the book series are Community Economies Institute members J.K. Gibson-Graham, Stephen Healy, Kevin St Martin and Maliha Safri.

Jenny Cameron

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