Politics of the Economy
Occupy! Connect! Create! Imagining Life Beyond 'The Economy'
Ethan Miller
Inspired by and written for the global #Occupy Movement, this text is part theory, part strategy and part call-to-action for the immediate and long-term work of identifying and seizing spaces of democratic practice (occupy!), linking them together in networks of mutual support and recognition (connect!), and drawing on our collective strength to actively create new ways of meeting our needs and making our livings (create!).
Ethan Miller. 2011. Occupy! Connect! Create! Imagining Life Beyond "The Economy." Grassroots Economic Organizing.
Rethinking Economy for Regional Development: Ontology, Performativity and Enabling Frameworks for Participatory Vision and Action
Ethan Miller
This thesis involves three interrelated projects: first, a critique of conventional regional development literature; second, an exploration of the "performativity" of (economic) discourse at both conceptual and material levels; and third, a survey of alternative economic ontologies that might help us to imagine more diverse, ecological, equitable and democratic livelihoods.
Miller, Ethan. 2011. Rethinking Economy for Regional Development: Ontology, Performativity and Enabling Frameworks for Participatory Vision and Action. MS Thesis. Department of Geosciences, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst MA, USA.
Lessons from the Hummingbird
Jenny Cameron
In Dirt!: The Film, Wangari Maathai, the Kenyan Nobel Peace Laureate and founder of the Green Belt Movement in Africa, tells the story of the tiny hummingbird who fights a huge bush fire drop by tiny drop of precious water. What can the little hummingbird tell us about ways of building a sustainable food future? This paper explores this question.
Cameron, J. 2010. Take back the (food) economy: lessons from the hummingbird. Keynote Presentation, Fair Share Festival, Newcastle, October 22-23.
Solidarity Economy: Key Concepts and Issues
Ethan Miller
An overview of concepts and strategic organizing practices of the emerging solidarity economy movement.
Miller, E. 2010. Solidarity Economy: Key Concepts and Issues, in E. Kawano and T. Masterson and J. Teller-Ellsberg (eds), Solidarity Economy I: Building Alternatives for People and Planet. Center for Popular Economics: Amherst, MA.
Enjoyment as an Economic Factor: Reading Marx with Lacan
Yahya M. Madra
This paper takes issue with economic discourses that present excessive greed as the central cause of economic crises. We argue that this focus on greed as the catalyst (when harnessed “appropriately”) or the enemy of social order keeps the public debate from deliberating on the particular modes of enjoyment (jouissance) which both shore up and destabilize the dynamics of production, appropriation, distribution and consumption under capitalism. We produce an analysis of the latest crisis of US capitalism that steers away not only from the theoretical humanist categories like "greed", but also from the residual reproductionism that continues to silently inform certain Lacanian analyses.
Madra, Y. M. and C. Özselçuk. Forthcoming 2010. Enjoyment as an Economic Factor: Reading Marx with Lacan, Subjectivity 3(3).
Collective Action and the Politics of Affect
Gerda Roelvink
This article examines the force of affect in collective action transforming the economy. I draw on my experience at the 2005 World Social Forum to illustrate the operation of affect in collective action.
Roelvink, G. Forthcoming. Collective action and the politics of affect, Emotion, Space and Society.
Broadening the Horizons of Economy
Gerda Roelvink
This article draws on the work of Bruno Latour and Eve Sedgwick to examine the ways in which two documentary films are broadening the horizons of economy.
Roelvink, G. 2009. Broadening the horizons of economy. Jouranl of Cultural Economy 2(3), 325-344.
Independence from the Corporate Economy
Ethan Miller
This article discusses the power of telling different economic stories, and making connections between diverse initiatives, in the work of imagining and enacting more just and joyful community economies.
Miller, E. 2007. Independence from the Corporate Economy, Yes! Magazine Winter Issue.
Review Article: Performing the Market
Gerda Roelvink
This review artilce asks, how is it that Elyachar’s book, Markets of Dispossession, is able to contribute both to critical Marxist research documenting and analysing neoliberalism and also to a post-structural performative approach to market networks?
Roelvink, G. 2007. Review article: performing the market, Social Identities 13(1), 125-133.
Other Economies Are Possible
Ethan Miller
Discussion of the history and concept of "solidarity economy" and possible implementations in the U.S. context.
Miller, E. 2006. Other Economies Are Possible: Organizing Toward an Economy of Cooperation and Solidarity, Dollars and Sense 266(July/August).
Solidarity Economics: Building New Economies From the Bottom-Up and the Inside-Out
Ethan Miller
A pamphlet discussing the concept of "solidarity economy" as a tool for linking and strengthening emerging networks of cooperative economic projects. Written for use in community and popular education contexts.
Miller, E. 2005. Solidarity Economics: Building Other Economies from the Bottom-Up and the Inside-Out, Greene, ME: JED Collective.
An Ethics of the Local
JK Gibson-Graham
Principles and practices for cultivating a local ethics of economic transformation.
Gibson-Graham, J.K. 2003. An Ethics of the Local, Rethinking Marxism 15(1), 49-74.