The KATARSIS research project responds to one of the most pressing questions of our times—how to live together? In EU countries this concern has focused on creating conditions for social cohesion, especially by researching the ways that processes of exclusion and inclusion operate. On the global stage the question of how to live together has gained increasing weight in recent times in the light of climate change, public health challenges and economic crisis. Hard-hitting questions about basic needs, consumption levels, capitalist surplus, and the environmental commons that have been suppressed in the language of ‘cohesion’ and ‘inclusion’ are beginning to surface.

Gibson-Graham, J.K. (2009) Socially Creative Thinking: or how experimental thinking creates ‘other worlds’.

Also presented at the Katarsis conference, 2008. 

Amidst widespread concern about “the economy”, this paper explores how academic researchers can contribute to the work underway to create environmentally orientated and socially just economies. We offer the diverse economies framework as a technique with which to cultivate ethical economies.

Gibson-Graham, J.K. and Roelvink, G. 2010, The Nitty Gritty of Creating Alternative Economies, Social Alternatives, Volume 30, Number 1, 2011, pp. 29-33.

At the core of J.K. Gibson-Graham’s feminist political imaginary is the vision of a decentralized movement that connects globally dispersed subjects and places through webs of signification. We view these subjects and places both as sites of becoming and as opportunities for belonging. But no longer can we see subjects as simply human and places as human-centered. The ‘arrival’ of the Anthropocene has thrown us onto new terrain.

Gibson-Graham, J.K. 2010, A feminist project of belonging for the Anthropocene,  Gender, Place and Culture - A Journal of Feminist Geography, Volume 18, Number 1, February 2011 , pp. 1-21(21).
Publisher: Routledge, part of the Taylor & Francis Group

A post-development approach to world-making has arisen from a critique of the idea that development, especially economic development, is yoked to capitalist growth. This approach extends the long tradition of critique that has accompanied the hegemonic rise of a mainstream development project focused on the „problem‟ of less developed regions of the world. As we see it, the challenge of post-development is not to give up on development, but to imagine and practice development differently. Thus post-development thinking does not attempt to represent the world “as it is,” but the world “as it could be.”

J.K. Gibson-Graham (2010) 'Post-Development Possibilities for Local and Regional Developmen'. in Pike, A., Rodriguez-Pose, A., Tomaney, J., (eds) Handbook of Local and Regional Development, London: Routledge.

Community-based social enterprises offer a new strategy for people-centred local economic development in the majority „developing‟ world. In this chapter we recount the stories of four social enterprise experiments that have arisen over the last five years from partnerships between communities, NGOs and municipal governments in the Philippines, and university based researchers from Australia.

Community Economies Collective and Gibson, K. 2008, Building community-based social enterprises in the Philippines: diverse development pathways, 
Department of Human Geography, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University, September 2008.
Also in A. Amin (ed.), The Social Economy: International Perspectives on Economic Solidarity. London: Zed Press, 2009.

In response to the concern expressed by some senior Chinese Studies academics over young scholars 'deserting to the disciplines', Kelly suggests that Gen Y are less interested in 'understanding China' and more interested in interdisplinary, culturally engaged (yet cross-cultural and collective) thinking for a new and better world - of which China is an important part.

Dombroski, K. 2011. Writing in the Margins: Gen Y and the (im)possibilities of 'understanding China'. China Studies Association of Australia Newsletter.

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.

This paper reveals how ethical economic decision making in a government-led local food project in the Philippines is generating social surplus, creating and sustaining commons and building a community-based food economy.

Hill, A. 2011. A helping hand and many green thumbs: local government, citizens and the growth of a community based food economy, Local Environment. 16(6), 539-553

This paper highlights social enterprise development as a  post-disaster livelihood re-building strategy that has the potential to build resilience and foster disaster preparedness in local communities.

Hill, A. and Rom, P. 2011. From calamity to community enterprise, Asian Currents. May, 7-9.

Using story and analysis, this paper explores the role of my (maternal) body in producing ethnographic knowledge, re-envisioning ethnographic fieldwork as an embodied relational engagement with a 'site' or 'space' where a multiplicity of trajectories converge.

Dombroski, K. 2011. 'Embodying Research: Maternal bodies, fieldwork, and knowledge production in Northwest China'. Graduate Journal of Asia-Pacific Studies. 7(2): 19-29.

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.

Discusses the role of visual representation in the production of urban economic subjects. Focus on Philadelphia in the 19th Century. Includes a discussion of the continuation of subsistence practices into the 20th. 4 images.

Work in progress paper about social enterprise clustering as a local economic development and livelihood (re)building strategy in Manila in the Philippines

Resource Management in Asia Pacific Seminar paper, The Australian National University, 24th February 2011

This paper explores the performative effects of law legal incoporation in the context of worker cooperatives internally governed through consensus, concluding that this representational disjuncture has particular effects on cooperative subjectivity.

Healy, S., 2011.  “Cooperation, Surplus Appropriation, and the Law’s Enjoyment,” Rethinking Marxism 23(3): 364-370.

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.

This paper uses the Diverse Economies Framework to explore initiatives that have been developed to build more sustainable and ethical food futures, and to identify policy and reseach activities that might help strengthen these initiatives.

Cameron, J. and R. Gordon 2010. Building sustainable and ethical food futures through economic diversity: options for a mid-sized city'. Paper presented at the Policy Workshop on The Future of Australia's Mid-Sized Cities, Latrobe University, Bendigo, Australia, Sept 29-30.

This paper takes a look at the practice of ba niao or 'Elimination Communication', where even very small babies are held out to 'eliminate' their waste rather than using nappies! The cross-cultural awkward engagement between two different hygiene understandings sparks changes in the day-to-day domestic practices of a group of Australasian mothers who rethink their use of hygiene products and other 'stuff'.

Dombroski, K. (2010) Poor mothers are not poor mothers: Cross-cultural learning between northwest China and Australasia. Unpublished conference paper presented atA New Generation of Cross-cultural Researchers: Centre for Cultural Research, University of Western Sydney September 2010.

This paper explores the different and diverse economic practices that two Community Supported Agriculture initiatives use to enact their ethical commitments. The paper considers what this means for current government support for social and community enterprises.

Cameron, J. 2010, Forthcoming. Business as usual or economic innovations? work, markets and growth in community enterprises, Third Sector Review 16(2).

This paper discusses a performative research project conducted with community gardeners in Newcastle Australia.

Cameron, J., C. Manhood and J. Pomfrett. 2010. Growing the community of community gardens: research contributions. Paper submitted to the Community Garden Conference, Canberra, October 2010. (Note: The final published version is available online at the Conference Website, pages 116-129).

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.