Resources for Teaching Community Economies

Resources for Teaching Community Economies

Looking for ideas for teaching about diverse economies and community economies? The Community Economies website includes a range of resources.

With the Take Back the Economy website now up and running, there is a dedicated section on using the book in teaching.

This section includes the full set of teaching materials, including examples of students’ assignments, from a 2015 upper-level undergraduate course on Take Back the Economy taught by Jenny Cameron at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

There are also examples of students’ ‘Take Back’ assignments from a second-year Economic Geography course taught by Lindsay Naylor from the University of Delaware, US, and materials from a third-year Rethinking Development course taught by Kelly Dombroski from Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha (University of Canterbury), Aotearoa New Zealand.

And there are examples of films and related resources that can be used for teaching each chapter of Take Back the Economy.

Along with tools and templates for each chapter of Take Back the Economy, the Tools section has extra resources that can be used in teaching.

For example, the Finance page has links to two films about community-based financing in the form of ROSCAs (Rotating Savings and Credit Associations): The Banker Ladies, by Caroline Shenaz Hossein and set in Canada, and Doing Finance Differently by Kelly Dombroski and set in Indonesia.

The film by Dombroski is one of a series of five films on her YouTube Channel which can be used in teaching, with the others covering issues such as climate change adaptation in Lalua, Bangladesh, water resources in Bhutan, and commoning in post-earthquake Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand.

Istvan Rado, from the University of Thammasat, Thailand, has written a guide based on his People and Communities course which provides a step-by-step process for teaching undergraduates about diverse economies and action research.

Other relevant resources for teaching about diverse and community economies include materials from the Community Partnering for Local Development project (involving Katherine Gibson and Ann Hill) and the Gender and Economy in Melanesian Communities project (involving Michelle Carnegie, Katherine Gibson and Katharine McKinnon); and chapters from the 2020 publication, The Handbook of Diverse Economies (edited by J.K. Gibson-Graham and Kelly Dombroski), which has section themes that relate to the chapters of Take Back the Economy.

If you have relevant teaching and other materials to share, please email Jenny.Cameron@communityeconomies.org.

Jenny Cameron

Photo by Tribesh Kayastha on Unsplash