Symposium on The Handbook of Diverse Economies

A recent 2025 issue of Rethinking Marxism featured a symposium discussing The Handbook of Diverse Economies, edited by Community Economies Institute members J. K. Gibson-Graham and Kelly Dombroski (Elgar, 2020). 

The symposium brings together four review essays on the Handbook, each offering a distinct perspective on the book, followed by a response by Dombroski and Gibson-Graham. 

There is also an accompanying pictorial work by Kathrin Bohm and Kuba Szreder based on their book Icebergian Economies of Contemporary Art (an online version of their book is available here).

In their introduction, the editors of this issue of Rethinking Marxism, Chizu Sato and Esra Erdem, note that “the common thread that emerges across all contributions is the deeply felt need for hope and joy and a sense of the potential that the theory of diverse and community economies embodies in these times of global despair and crisis.” 

This is a theme that Dombroski and Gibson-Graham return to in their response to the four review essays as they reflect on their joint and individual responses to reading what was said by researchers and practitioners who are deeply engaged with a range of economic concerns from Black women’s collectives to degrowth, economic policy, Indigenous economies and the state. 

Dombroski and Gibson-Graham highlight the importance of acknowledging grief and despair while simultaneously moving towards practices of possibility and care, especially those that value processes of collective action and “the joy and pain of working and being together.” 

The papers in the Symposium are all available through Rethinking Marxism, click here, or there are pre-publication and other versions available here.