diverse economies

When the United Nations (UN) proposes that it is the social and solidarity economy (SSE) that will lead the way towards a well-functioning, prosperous and inclusive economy, it is time to identify the bold steps needed to normalize all forms of economic activity that put people and the planet before private profit making. Through a critique of capitalocentrism, this chapter counters certain perceptions of the SSE's capacity for radical leadership and transformation as limited.

This piece was written for a Rethinking Marxism (2025) Symposium on The Handbook of Diverse Economies.

Reseña del libro: Casellas Antònia. J.K. Gibson-Graham: Hacia una economía postcapitalista o cómo retomar el control de lo cotidiano. 2022. España. Icaria Editorial

This article analyzes the progression from traditional to current pastoralist practices and the contemporary diversification of livelihoods of the Jie group of the Karimojong in the Kotido district in Karamoja (Uganda). the focus is on changes of land use, framed by the commons debate. We identify factors that have forced the Karimojong to abandon their traditional mobile pastoral lifestyle and to adopt new income-generating activities, including charcoal production and brick-making, which may have detrimental effects on local forest and soil cover.

This article examines the success of paper-based alternative currencies in facilitating convivial, sustainable localised economies. Based on fieldwork in the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany, it discusses the capacity of activists to create alternative forms of currency that communicate the organisers’ visions of a localised economy, before examining material practices: for whom do the currencies work, and who struggles to use them?

The involvement of private sector actors in low carbon urban transitions is a neglected element of geographical analysis. Drawing on Polanyian, cultural economic geographies and the non-capitalocentric ethics of JK Gibson-Graham’s diverse economies perspective, the paper engages with the wider literature on the engagement of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in environmental action, corporate social responsibility and low carbon transitions to develop a substantivist account of the contribution of SMEs to local low carbon transitions.

This essay offers conceptual development for thinking diverse economies in terms of their relationship to antagonism. Rather than seeing antagonism as unhelpfully fueling capitalocentric thinking, the essay argues that antagonism can usefully recognize and engage with problematic forms of power and domination.

“Icebergian Economies of Contemporary Art” by Kathrin Böhm and Kuba Szreder (Centre for Plausible Economies) offers reflections on art and economy, stimulated by J. K. Gibson-Graham’s representation of the economy as an iceberg. Just as the capitalist economy is the peak of the iceberg, the glossy world of celebrity art dominates over the vast—yet invisible—realm of artistic dark matter, the realm of artistic labour that sustains the social gravity of the artistic universe, just as physical dark matter prevents the cosmos from collapsing.