Critical Gibson-Graham: Reading Capitalocentrism for Trouble

Tuomo Alhojärvi

J.K. Gibson-Graham’s postcapitalist approach to diverse economies has unleashed a flourishing of research and activism for other worlds. One reason for its successes is found in the intricate links between a feminist and antiessentialist critique of political economy and an experimental, enabling, and affirmative practice of economy. While initially powered by explicitly critical and negating energies, diverse-economies scholars have increasingly accentuated an affirmative, “post/critical” register. This essay explores what has happened to “capitalocentrism” in this process.

For Postcapitalist Studies: Inheriting Futures of Space and Economy

Tuomo Alhojärvi
For Postcapitalist Studies

The worldwide social and ecological unravelling of the 21st century presents an unprecedented challenge for thinking and practising liveable economies. As life support systems are annihilated in view of the sustainable accumulation of capital, social and economic alternatives are rapidly emerging to shelter possibilities for life amidst the ruins. Postcapitalism has gained increasing attention as an invitation to amplify existing alternatives to systemic scale.

Reading for economic difference

J.K. Gibson-Graham

This chapter in the Methodology Part VI of The Handbook of Diverse Economies discusses reading as a practice of knowledge production. It introduces 'critical reading' as a reading for dominance and lays out techniques of deconstruction and queering to show what reading for difference might entail.