Community economy: Community economies collective

Abstract

Community economy, since the mid-1990s, has signalled an expanding and evolving project within radical geography that resonates with a host of initiatives taking place around the world. Activating community economy as an object of analysis and economic practice requires a rethinking of economy where the economy loses its power to structure and figure all other processes (e.g. community) as well as a rethinking of community as other than a static and bounded entity based upon principles of exclusion. Informal and non-monetised forms of exchange, independent or cooperative production, household or community-based labour, state sectors and nationalised industries, even alternative corporate practices are all elements of the diverse economy. By and large, radical geography’s core interest in economic justice has traditionally been pursued through the important documentation of the injustices which emerge from capitalism’s essential dynamic, much of which has been traced in the pages of Antipode.