Articles

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.

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.

In the work of Chantal Mouffe, society is seen as structured by a hegemonic articulation, but one that is only temporarily fixed and always under subversion. Following Mouffe, in this paper I pursue the implications of theorizing ‘the economy’ as a hegemonic formation rather than as a fixed capitalist totality. What might it mean to understand ‘the economic’ as a provisional articulation of capitalist and noncapitalist activities and relations? How might it open up the possibility of anticapitalist and noncapitalist economic interventions?

This paper has a surplus of titles. The authoritative title is “Rethinking Capitalism,” affirming a connection with Rethinking MARXISM and with the larger movement to “rethink” received concepts; indeed, to question the entire epistemic foundation that has rendered such concepts prevalent and effective. The querulous title is “Why can feminists have revolution now, while marxists have to wait”? I’m drawn to this question about feminism and revolution, even though it may be a little misleading.’The question points to the proximity of social transformation for certain feminisms-that image of gender as something always being renegotiated, that vision of social transformation taking place at the interpersonal level as well as at the level of society as a whole.