What is your life's work?

What is your life’s work? This is a question that Caroline Shenaz Hossein poses in a recent podcast discussion as she reflects on how her life’s work has been devoted to changing mindsets so that people develop an ethical economic consciousness that is centred on norms and values such as cooperation and communal wellbeing, rather than the current emphasis (at least in the Western world) on invididualism and competition. 

Hossein identifies that one crucial element of her work has been to make the unseen seen and she describes how she has been a scribe for people’s lives documenting stories of economic diversity to make sure that those who are often purposively erased from economic matters are not invisibilised. In so doing, she has been on a journey of showing how the work of people such as The Banker Ladies matters. 

In describing this element of her life’s work, Hossein draws on the image, used by community economies researchers and activists, of the economy as an iceberg and the related tools of inventorying and amplifying economic diversity. 

She says “Let’s make space for more diverse economic practices that allow people to participate in multiple domains, from mainstream banking to mutual aid financing.” 

“The problem is that currently we are too heavily focused on the tip of the iceberg and we don’t see enough of the diversity that is already there. How do we make room—amplify diversity—so that people can actively engage with diverse practices. Let’s have the options more available for people to decide what makes sense in their lives.”

Related to this point, a second element of Hossein’s life work has been to encourage people to make decisions about their economic practices in terms what is immediate to their lives, with the understanding that from those places close to home it is then possible to branch out to see who else you can collaborate with to start effecting change.

She describes how in her teaching she is often working with students who are studying business, and with these students in mind she highlights the diversity of enterprises, organisations and financial institutions and the ways that people with business training might contribute. 

“What I’m trying to do is shine a light on institutions that people can bring their talents to and get paid. It is transformative. When you see these young people who realise they can do things such as bookkeeping for a resettlement organisation, you see how happy and fulfilled they are feeling.”

Dr Caroline Shenaz Hossein is Associate Professor of Global Development and Political Economy at the University of Toronto, founder of DISE (the Diverse Solidarity Economies Network) and member of CERN (the Community Economies Research Network).

She was recently named as the 2024-2025 Black Feminist Economics Fellow by the Boston Ujima Project, a democratic, member-run organisation building a cooperative business, arts and investment ecosystem. Its mission is to return wealth to working-class communities of color.

The Regenerative Marktwirtschaft podcast series is led by Thomas Schindler. Other episodes in the series include Katherine Trebeck from the Wellbeing Alliance; and Lynx Guimond, founder of Sailcargo. 

Jenny Cameron