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New Political Economy, Vol. 7, No. 1, 2002 

‘Economy’, Sustainability and Sites of 

Transformative Space 

PAUL LANGLEY & MARY MELLOR 

In common with many other commentators, we start from the proposition that 

the contemporary global market economy, established through neoliberal economic 

theory and practice, is both socially and ecologically unsustainable. 1 That 

is, it cannot reproduce generalised conditions of socioeconomic and ecological 

well-being. We would see sustainability as combining conditions of existence 

where human beings achieve their potential without exploiting the labour and 

resources of other individuals, groups or societies with a level of ecological 

replenishment necessary not only for human futurity but for the continued 

existence of other species and their ecosystems. Despite evidence of increased 

global inequality and the acknowledgement of environmental problems associated 

with ‘development’ in international political circles, neoliberal globalisation 

continues to be represented as though there is no viable politico-economic 

alternative. 2 

In the face of the apparently immobilising structural constraints of neoliberal 

economic thought and practice, 3 political economists critical of the contemporary 

global market have sought to identify potential sites of transformative political 

space. Both state institution s and an emerging global civil society have been 

identi� ed as spaces that, through conceptual and sociopolitical contestation, hold 

out the possibility of enabling transformative political strategies. 4 We would not 

wish to deny the prospective importance of global civil society or even the 

promise of state institution s as transformative spaces able to facilitate strategies 

for the establishment of egalitarian and ecologically benign socioeconomic 

relations. Yet it is our argument that seeking potential sites of transformative 

space in state institutions and global civil society can be greatly enhanced by 

linking these with sites that already exist or are opening up within ‘economy’. 

In this article, then, we want to identify and re� ect upon potential sites of 

transformative space within ‘economy’ itself. 

The article begins by challenging the ideological and totalising claims of 

neoliberalism as it has come to de� ne contemporary common sense representations 

of ‘economy’. We argue that the neoliberal claim that economy is socially 

or ecologically disembedded is a mysti� cation. The neoliberal assertion that 

Paul Langley & Mary Mellor, School of Social, Political and Economic Sciences, University of 

Northumbria at Newcastle, Northumberland Building, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 8ST, UK. 

ISSN 1356-3467 print; ISSN 1469-9923 online/02/010049-17 Ó 2002 Taylor & Francis Ltd 

DOI: 10.1080/1356346012011551 6 

49

Paul Langley & Mary Mellor 

human nature conforms to the behaviour of ‘economic man’ is also shown to be 

unsubstantiated , particularly when women’s work and the epistemological bases 

of this claim are taken into account. In the second part of the article we move 

to problematise further the tendency to equate ‘economy’ with ‘market’, developing 

instead a disaggregated understanding of economy as a multilayered social 

structure constituted by sets of provisioning and non-provisionin g practices. The 

market and its constitutive practices are seen as only one part or layer of 

economy. A disaggregated understanding of economy is essential in order to 

identify and open up those spaces within economy that could enable transformative 

action. We will stress that, despite the contemporary advance of global 

markets in terms of extent and intensity, there remains potential space within 

economy for transformative strategies to achieve genuinely sustainable social 

relations. The � nal part of the article illustrates this with reference to spaces 

based in practices of provisioning that lie outside both the formal market and the 

state. Throughout the discussion we draw upon the insights made available to us 

by bringing together institutionalis t and neoMarxist approaches with ecofeminist 

political economy. 

Contesting neoliberal economy 

Neoliberalism has come to de� ne the common sense understanding of ‘economy’ 

in our age. 5 We will term this orthodoxy ‘neoliberal economy’. Neoliberal 

economy combines and re-articulates two theoretical conceptualisation s of economy 

derived from classical political economy which Caporaso and Levine term 

‘the economy’ and ‘economic calculation’. 6 ‘The economy’ is a conceptualisation 

of economy that, informed by liberal economics broadly, begins from the 

assumption that economy constitutes ‘a separable entity … a distinct set of 

(market) relations between persons not in essence political or familial’. 7 As such, 

‘economy’ and ‘market’ tend to be equated and used interchangeably in common 

sense parlance. Meanwhile, ‘economic calculation’ draws upon the neoclassical 

liberal economics of the late 19th and early twentieth centuries and emphasises 

economy as a rational and utility maximising mode of behaviour. The combination 

of economy as separable realm with economy as behaviour is mutually 

reinforcing. Economy becomes a technical realm replete with its own market 

logic that emerges from the natural rational characteristics of homo economicus. 

Economy is thus presented as both distinct and universal. Perhaps most 

signi� cantly, the market economy takes on a naturalised, transhistorica l and 

universal quality, pushing inexorably across space and enduring throughout time. 

As David Williams notes: 

50 

The current popular discourses all rely on a view that marketbased 

economic arrangements are more or less natural. Even 

those arguments which accept that there remains an important role 

for the state in setting the ‘right’ economic policies, or providing 

an effective regulatory and institutiona l environment for the 

market, nonetheless rely on the view that, at bottom, market-

‘Economy’ and Sustainabilit y 

based economic arrangements are natural because they are the 

product of an economic rationality inherent in all persons. 8 

Claims about human nature undercut and strip away potential objections to 

neoliberal economy, while a belief in the ef� cacy of the market mechanism 

ensures that individual interests are seen to be compatible with, even necessary 

for, the advancement of the universal social good. 

Empiricist epistemology and positivist methodology provide the metatheoretical 

underpinnings that legitimate neoliberal economy. The widespread acceptance 

of neoliberal economy is intimately bound up with the exclusionary 

production of knowledge about economy that serves to ‘� x’ the common sense. 9 

Economy is effectively mysti� ed as alternative, plausible conceptualisation s of 

economy are rendered problematic. In particular, ontological assumptions of 

economy as a rational mode of behaviour are both predicated on and reinforced 

by the individualis t methodology of positivism. 10 As a � eld of inquiry, economics 

comes to stand alone in the social sciences as being united as much by its 

methodological predispositio n as by the subject matter that is its focus. 11 Such 

is the heady, circularly-reinforcing combination of ontology, epistemology and 

methodology in neoliberal economy that Hodgson and Fine see contemporary 

economics as ‘colonising’ other branches of the social sciences. 12 Not only does 

economy as a mode of rational behaviour become applied to the study of 

socioeconomic life, but, with the development of rational choice theory, it tends 

to come to frame analysis of all aspects of social and political life. The primacy 

of rational economic motives is seen as taking precedence over and above other 

con� icting and transient motivations such as emotions, attachments and desires. 

Demystifying ‘economy’ 

The attack on the neoliberal assertion of the disembedded economy (economy as 

a separable realm) has long been associated with the work of Karl Polanyi. On 

the � rst page of his critical account of the 19th-century imposition of the 

self-regulating market, Polanyi claims that ‘a self-adjusting market … could not 

exist for any length of time without annihilating the human and natural substance 

of society; it would have physically destroyed man and destroyed his surroundings 

into a wilderness’. 13 Resting upon a metatheoretical basis that does not 

preclude consideration of historical structures and shifting and multiple social 

motivations, Polanyi’s work suggests that economy is not, contrary to neoliberalism, 

a realm of market relations separable from nature and society. Furthermore, 

Polanyi also casts the neoliberal conceptualisation of economy as a 

universal mode of behaviour as an ‘economistic fallacy’. 14 A market society that 

ideologically claims and behaves as if the market is a separate phenomenon is 

not a natural result of human nature, but a political construct. As such and 

following Polanyi, it is only through the liberalisation, privatisation and deregulatory 

initiatives of the powerful states that today’s economy becomes the 

separate realm of the market marked by the pursuit of private self-interest by 

utility maximisers. 15 

51


Polanyi’s warning as to the unsustainable social and ecological consequences 

of the disembedding of economic practices is echoed and developed by contemporary 

green political economists. From a variety of perspectives, green political 

economists point to the contradictions and tensions that emerge from neoliberal 

efforts to commodify social and natural relations, thereby bracketing the economy 

from society and nature. For instance, ecological economists highlight that 

ecological costs cannot be measured in line with positivism, but are quite 

literally incalculable as there is no commensurability between environmental and 

economic values. 16 Meanwhile, ecoMarxists stress the inseparability of the 

analysis of material con� icts from their ecological framework. 17 As James 

O’Connor argues, disembedded capitalist markets not only foul their own nest 

ecologically but also undermine the capacity of societies to reproduce infrastructural 

and human resources through family, state and community structures. 18 

Feminist and ecofeminist political economy also serves to demystify the 

neoliberal claim that economy is a distinct realm that is separable from society 

and nature. Central to feminism is the claim that the formal economy, which 

includes all valued activities whether in the public or market sector, rests on 

other economic practices in which women’s work predominates. 19 Social power 

relations of exploitation and dependency are present that are obscured by the 

bracketing of economy from society. As Gardiner summarises: 

The traditional dualistic treatment of households and markets as 

separate spheres, within both mainstream social science and 

Marxism, is therefore problematic from a feminist perspective 

because it supported the exclusion of households and domestic 

labour from economic analysis and the neglect of gender inequality. 

Both market and household behaviour were misrepresented, 

the former as exclusively individualistic , self-interested 

and competitive, the latter as exclusively altruistic, harmonious 

and cooperative. 20 

As such, the concept ‘economy’ is recognised as attached to particular market 

practices both in theory and practice. Economic practices are embedded in 

society and nature and the consequences of this embeddedness are not immediately 

apparent as they tend to be borne by others in the process that Mellor has 

described as deep materialism. 21 From this perspective the adverse outcomes and 

extra-market demands of rational market practices are represented in the lives 

and work of women, the dispossession of peoples from their land and livelihood, 

the destruction of natural habitat and the general degradation of the environment. 

Feminist political economy thus provides a basis from which to begin to 

demystify the neoliberal claim that economy as a mode of behaviour is a 

re� ection of human nature, highlighting the false separation of utility maximising 

‘economic man’ from the wider economy of women. 22 Under neoliberal 

economy, the social practices of ‘women’s work’ that are subject to a wide range 

of motivations are, despite their undoubted importance for human existence, 

deemed non-economic and in some instances irrational. 23 As one of us has 

discussed more fully elsewhere, ‘economic man’ is both an ideal and a reality 

in that many individuals, usually men, can live as if they are rational, calculating, 

52


individualise d economic actors because of the underlabouring work of women 

and other exploited and subordinated groups. 24 

Of course, the ‘reality’ of economic man is further predicated on the 

exclusionary grip of empiricism and positivism on the creation of common sense 

understandings of economy. The rise to predominance of neoclassical economics 

in the late 19th century, establishing the ideas of economic calculation as a mode 

of behaviour that exempli� ed the Western rationalist tradition, was central to the 

legitimation of the self-regulating market. Casting economy as the separate 

realm for the exercise of private interest requires the articulation of a common 

moral language, expressed in terms of rational self-interest such that moral 

obligations to others can be satis� ed only by � rst satisfying obligations to the 

self. 25 The social relations between individuals are dissolved as all interaction 

services economic self-interests, i.e. the articulation of economy as a mode of 

calculating behaviour is essential for separation of economy from society. The 

assertion that human nature conforms to the behaviour of calculating, rational 

economic man is shown to be unsubstantiate d when women’s work and the 

epistemological basis of this claim are taken into account. 

Disaggregating ‘economy’ 

In this section of the article we seek to problematise further the neoliberal 

equation of ‘economy’ with ‘market’, with a particular focus on the provisioning 

of societies. For Caporaso and Levine, 

The spirit of the provisioning approach emphasises material 

goods over nonmaterial, often giving the former a special status 

and larger role in economic affairs. While not inevitable, this 

emphasis follows naturally from the perspective that sees provisioning 

as a kind of material circulation of the things necessary to 

sustain life—to provide nutrition, warmth, and shelter. The provisioning 

approach focuses our attention on our basic needs and the 

goods that sustain life in its more elemental senses. 26 

Feminist political economists have done much to develop the provisioning 

approach. 27 Indeed, a theoretical conception of economy as ‘provisioning ’ has 

been central to the challenge by feminist political economy to male-stream 

neoliberal economy. Drawing on this work and in contrast to Caporaso and 

Levine, our understanding of provisioning would include social and emotional as 

well as physical needs. Two implications follow. First, the concept of provisioning 

no longer comprehends need in a simple-rational, materialist manner such 

that knowledge of economy is not bound by the same metatheoretical con� nes 

as neoliberalism. Alternative understandings of economy can be developed 

which, by recognising the epistemological implications of an ontology of 

historicity, maintain a ‘transformative’ or ‘ameliorative’ purpose. 28 Second, we 

would not see the main distinction within economy as between material/nonmaterial, 

but between provisioning /non-provisioning . Socioeconomic practices 

can thus be differentiated between the meeting of human needs and market/ 

� nancial noise. 

53


If markets fully and exclusively provisioned societies, then, in line with 

neoliberalism, it would follow that ‘economy’ and ‘market’ could be equated. It 

would also need to be the case that provisioning was the primary motivation of 

a market mode of behaviour. Neither of these statements can be said to be true 

of the market. It does not fully provision human societies, nor is provisioning the 

primary motivation of market actors. Both the ideology of neoliberal economy 

and the social and political power relations that underpin the practices of 

neoliberal economy, serve to subordinate the satisfying of human need to 

� nancial calculation. This would indicate that it is necessary to consider the 

notion of economy as distinct from market in both theory and practice. In the 

argument that follows we advance a disaggregated understanding of the contemporary 

economy that views economy as a multilayered social structure constituted 

by sets of provisioning and non-provisionin g practices. The market and 

market practices are, then, only one part or layer of economy. 

Financial and real economies 

There is nothing intrinsically ‘new’ about disaggregating economy. Many 

contemporary political economists distinguish the ‘symbolic’ or ‘casino’ economy 

of securitised global � nance from the ‘real’ economy of trade, production 

and exchange. 29 Such ideas draw on a long lineage of thought that stretches back 

to Aristotle’s distinction between the speculative and non-provisionin g economics 

of ‘chrematistics’ and the home economics of ‘oikonomia’. While the notion 

of ‘real economy’ still tends to con� ate economy with market, the distinction 

between � nancial and real economies provides a useful starting point. Despite 

the commodi� ying pressures exerted through the � nancial economy, the contemporary 

extension and intensi� cation of global market relations throughout the 

‘real’ economy is currently incomplete and remains riddled with a myriad of 

contradictions. 30 We would argue, therefore, that the disaggregation of � nancial 

and ‘real’ economies does not go far enough. The ‘real economy’ itself needs to 

be disaggregated. 

Disaggregating the real economy 

Fernand Braudel and Karl Polanyi both provide a disaggregated understanding 

of the ‘real’ economy. Given the in� uence of these thinkers over the 

construction of what has been variously called ‘new’ or ‘heterodox’ (international) 

political economy, it is somewhat surprising that this common element 

of their work has tended to be largely neglected by contemporary political 

economists. 31 

Fernand Braudel’s history of the pyramidal world economy from the 15th to 

19th centuries addresses restructuring across three hierarchical social realms 

which he terms ‘capitalism’, ‘market economy’ and ‘material life’. 32 ‘Capitalism’ 

stands at the apex of the world economy, a narrow layer of economic life 

characterised not in terms of the means of production but by the largely 

speculative reproduction of capital for its own sake on a massive scale. 33 In the 

contemporary world economy, the realm of capitalism is the preserve of 

54


symbolic global capital and equity market practices and top-level real estate, 

insurance and other information industries. 34 Immediately below the domain of 

capitalism stands the ‘market economy’, the realm of regular and relatively 

transparent patterns of exchange through local and national markets. 35 The 

present scope of the market economy shows signs of reaching regional proportions 

in North America, Europe and Asia. 36 At the base of the world economy 

stands the realm of ‘material life’, the vast world of those daily routines 

encompassing domestic life that service the central needs of social reproduction. 

37 In contrast to the realm of the market economy where ‘exchange 

value’ predominates, socioeconomic practices in the domain of material life are 

motivated by ‘use value’. 38 Material life contains those embedded social, 

political and institutiona l dynamics that combine to constrain commodi� cation 

structurally. 

Polanyi identi� ed three circuits of the economy—exchange, redistribution and 

reciprocity. 39 Exchange is the realm associated with the market, redistribution 

the realm of state taxation and subsidies, and reciprocity that of socioeconomic 

practices that neoliberal economy would regard as non-economic. Drawing upon 

Polanyi’s work, feminist political economists such as Runyan have further 

stressed the gendered nature of the layers of the real economy. The realm of 

reciprocity becomes ‘where women predominate as volunteer workers in the 

community and as unremunerated caretakers of children and the elderly’. 40 

While many feminists would question whether domestic, communal and subsistence 

work done by women is characterised by reciprocity, 41 others have 

nonetheless made the case that this work should be recognised as constituting a 

highly signi� cant aspect of the world economy. 42 Feminist campaigns on this 

issue have led to some formal attempts to account for women’s work. For 

example, the UN Development Programme in 1995 estimated that, while men 

and women’s paid labour in the world economy was worth US$23 trillion, 

women’s unpaid work was worth an additional US$11 trillion. 43 

Feminist political economy also provides us with an understanding of the 

relationships between the various realms or layers of the real economy suggested 

by the work of Braudel and Polanyi. As feminists have long argued, no income 

can be earned until basic care work has been done. In this sense the formal 

economy of state and market depends on the ef� cacy of household and 

social/communal structures. As Hilkka Pietila summarises: 

If the human maintenance—mental and physical—and the nurturance 

of human beings are not taken care of, no other economy 

is possible. Thus the household is basic not only for the economy, 

but for the whole society, for the survival of the human species. 

Therefore the picture of the human economy should be turned the 

right side up: the industrial and commercial economy should be 

seen as auxiliary, serving the needs of families and individuals 

instead of using them as means of production and consumption. 44 

The dependence of the formal economy on women’s role in provisioning 

practices is particularly clear in less industrialised societies. Here women’s 

55


agricultural and gathering work (fuelwood/water) is often the last to leave the 

subsistence sector and the � rst to return to it when the market fails. 45 

An economic system designed to start from women’s provisioning work rather 

than the market would clearly view socioeconomic practices very differently. It 

would start from economic concepts that are use-based rather than exchangebased. 

While those socioeconomic practices that provision the well-being of 

society occur both ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ the market economy in a Braudelian 

sense, exchange value rather than use value is the predominant motivation of 

market practices. If there is not a pro� t to be made, the market economy will not 

provide. Where the market ‘fails’ and unless a variety of strategies emerge, 

whether based on families, communities, state-societies or self-help, real suffering 

will ensue. The assertion within conventional economics that it is not 

possible to distinguish between needs and wants becomes irrelevant in the face 

of market failure. Within the sphere of women’s work and other practices 

primarily motivated by provisioning , the distinction between needs and wants is 

often very clear. 

Given the current commodifying advance of the global market, it might be 

tempting to assume that in the contemporary era practices can no longer be 

motivated primarily by provisioning. For instance, Helleiner uses Braudelian 

terms to assert that the expanded reach of capitalism and the market economy 

since the late 1960s is leading to a ‘hierarchical compression’ in the world 

economy such that the signi� cance of material life is eroded. 46 This has 

stimulated another Braudelian to comment that ‘it is perhaps not too much to say 

that in the contemporary period the market economy is the basic sub-stratum of 

society’. 47 Indeed, women’s work in the contemporary household may be 

becoming commodi� ed to a certain extent (e.g. laundries, childcare, nursing 

homes, fastfood, counsellors). There are, however, limits both to the theory and 

practice of subjecting the realm of material life to market relations, particularly 

those arising from the mental horizons of rituals and routines and the durability 

of communal and familial relationships. For instance, as one of us has argued 

elsewhere, limits on the commodi� cation of household work stem from its 

structural inability to conform to time-limited or money-valued frameworks. 48 

The most signi� cant aspect of formal economic labour is that it is limited either 

by its time frame (the working day) or by its money value (what someone will 

pay for it). Women’s work can conform to neither criterion as it is largely 

associated with the life of the body, re� ecting the life-cycle and daily cycle of 

human existence. As such, it is work that � ows with what Mellor has described 

as ‘biological time’: the need to eat and sleep, to grow and mature, to age and 

die. It is possible to stretch these boundaries but not to break them. 49 

Drawing upon the concept of provisioning and informed by the heterodox 

insights of a broad range of political economists, then, it becomes possible to 

disaggregate economy. Economy in this context is shown not to be equivalent to 

the market, but instead can be seen in various ways as a multilayered social 

structure (e.g. capitalism, market and material life) constituted by practices 

subject to the motivations of both provisioning and non-provisioning . Motivations 

of non-provisionin g include principally pro� teering through speculation 

and exchange-value, but also status, display and their like. We would not deny 

56


that market practices are signi� cant to provisioning , particularly given the 

contemporary extension and intensi� cation of the globalised market and 

the pressures for commodi� cation exerted through global � nance. However, it is 

the non-market practices which dominate the realm that Braudel terms ‘material 

life’ that continue to form the basis for provisioning . Indeed, both � nancial 

practices framed by the desire to generate capital for its own sake and market 

practices that are driven by exchange value are themselves dependent upon 

subsistence and household practices and the capacity of the natural environment 

to provide raw materials and absorb waste. Armed with a disaggregated 

understanding of economy, the potential for transformative spaces outside or 

adjacent to state and market and based upon the practices of provisioning begins 

to be revealed. 

Transformative spaces in ‘economy’ 

The heart of our critique of neoliberal economy is that it collapses and subsumes 

many different activities and meanings that could be described as ‘economic’ 

within the framework of pro� t-centred market exchange while leaving outside 

many others. The strength of the contemporary market economy is that it does 

provide much that is necessary in highly commodi� ed societies, and much that 

is not, thus feeding consumerism and obsolescence. This would not necessarily 

be a problem if the resources of the world were limitless and if the contemporary 

promise of jam for everyone did not coincide with increased inequalities within 

and between societies. 50 The only solution offered by governments and international 

agencies to this dilemma is more of the same as structural adjustment 

policies bite ever harder. Even where there is a commitment to social democracy 

at the national level, state action appears unlikely to realise sustainability . 51 As 

Paterson argues: 

States should be seen as themselves part of a globalising capitalist 

dynamic, which is fundamentally ecologically problematic. 

Social-democratic politics, as simply a different means of organising 

capitalist economies and a different variant of the liberaldemocratic 

state, is itself just as subject to the ecological 

pathologies of capitalism as is neoliberalism. Such states are still 

fundamentally capitalist states and, as such, structurally required 

to promote capital accumulation, which immerses them in what 

some call the second contradiction of capitalism, that between 

the forces of production and the conditions of production, i.e. 

ecology. 52 

Therefore in this closing section we will look for spaces in practices of 

provisioning outside both the state (public economy) and the formal market as 

an anchor for potential transformation. Three overlapping but distinguishable 

sets of provisioning practices can be identi� ed in ideal-typical terms: domestic– 

local subsistence, abandoned–informal and associational–voluntaristic. 

57

Domestic–local subsistence 


The importance of retaining or regaining control over the local provisioning of 

basic subsistence needs in the context of highly industrialise d and marketised 

societies forms a central plank of much contemporary green thinking. Greens 

bring together the idea of the local as ecologically sustainable and as democratically 

desirable. 53 Ecologically, local production is seen as more sustainable as 

it avoids the energy costs of transport and makes it much more dif� cult to 

disguise externalities. Emphasising local control also puts resources in the hands 

of local people which, it is argued, they would use within the principle of 

suf� ciency rather than pro� igacy. 

Domestic-local subsistence provisioning practices are arguably the original 

form of economic organisation and that is why we have linked them in this 

category. In industrialise d and commodi� ed societies such as Britain where very 

little original subsistence provisioning remains apart from the remnants of urban 

allotments, 54 unpaid (women’s) work in the household and community is the 

most substantial non-commodi� ed sector. While the link between domestic work 

and subsistence production continues to be seriously challenged in developed 

state-societies, this is not the case for the village economies of the South in 

which women’s work is central. 55 Here the argument is being made that the 

global market should be resisted in favour of retaining subsistence production. 

For instance, Veronika Bennholdt Thomsen and Maria Mies make a strong case 

for the transformative space of contestation in and around subsistence production 

in which women are seen as playing a central role. 56 Like Vandana Shiva, they 

seek to defend existing subsistence economies and the remnants of commonsbased 

provisioning . 57 Even in cities they argue for a ‘re-commonisation’ to give 

people back direct access to food resources by building strong links between 

local farmers and urban consumers as well as reclaiming derelict land for urban 

farming. 

The aim to roll back neoliberal economic globalisation by re-establishing or 

retaining what Goldsmith has called ‘vernacular communities’ is not without 

problems. 58 Traditional rural communities are often limiting for women and also 

harbour structures of inequality. 59 Feminists are in a dif� cult position if domestic/caring 

work is seen as a symbol of radical social change, as the unequal 

treatment of women as domestic workers is often central to their arguments. 60 

Peterson, on the other hand, sees the household and the community as a focal 

point ‘not only of collaboration and reproduction but also resistance and 

transformation’. 61 In addition, as Ellen effectively warns us, siting transformative 

space in subsistence practices is also not straightforward. 62 Concepts such as 

‘local’, ‘traditional’ or ‘indigenous’ do not capture the changes in the theory/ 

practice of subsistence. As transnational corporations increasingly seek to patent 

so-called ‘local’ knowledge, transformation based in subsistence practices must 

ensure that knowledge of the environment is the inheritance of the people 

engaged in subsistence practices. 

We would argue that it is not necessary to support repressive domestic 

structures in order to make the case that women’s (and men’s) unpaid domestic 

and subsistence labour is important to understanding the workings of our 

58


multilayered economies of provisioning /non-provisioning . It is possible to retain 

a radical critique of market production and distribution through attention to 

domestic-subsistenc e provisioning without adopting a romanticised view of 

traditional domestic and communal relations. Fundamental criticisms of the 

global market are being made by organisations based in the South such as 

DAWN (Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era). 63 Networks of 

indigenous people and subsistence communities are protesting against destructive 

production and extraction and the loss of their livelihood. 64 Similarly, the 

importance of the knowledge and experience of subsistence farmers has been 

stressed by writers such as Enrique Leff. 65 Leff points to the way in which 

peasant and indigenous peoples in Latin America are re-asserting their cultural 

identity and demanding self-determination through traditional provisioning practices. 

This, he argues, is a source of ‘environmental rationality’ which could 

form the basis of ecological sustainability . 

Identifying sites of transformative space in the household or broader subsistence 

communities does raise problematic questions about the restrictions of 

domestic life or traditional cultures, but this does not undermine the increasing 

role that contests around domestic-subsistenc e provisioning are playing in global 

politics. In a similar way, strategies of transformation based around provisioning 

practices are emerging among the growing urban populations who either no 

longer or never participated in rural subsistence practices. 

Abandoned–informal 

The notion of the ‘informal economy’ has tended to be used rather broadly to 

refer to a range of unregulated market and non-market socioeconomic practices. 

Within highly regulated economies it can cover ‘cash in hand’ work and criminal 

activity, as well as household, local subsistence and voluntary interaction. 

However, it is within the less regulated economies of the South that the 

possibility of transformative space in informal provisioning practices has been 

explored most notably by Serge Latouche. 66 In his study of economic ‘castaways’ 

in the globalising city economies of the South, Latouche explores the 

informal provisioning practices undertaken by social groups abandoned and 

excluded from the global market economy. He sees informal economies as 

‘enormous nebulas’, a ‘seething chaos of human life’ where dense social 

relations can vastly increase provisioning capacity. As such, he views Third 

World city economies as exhibiting the socioeconomic resilience of provisioning, 

rich in creativity, vitality and solidarity. 

Latouche casts these neglected urban communities not as pre-modern, but 

post-development, post-modern or non-modern. That is, by virtue of their 

abandonment and exclusion from the contemporary global market, they are 

evolving new informal provisioning practices. The castaways are therefore in a 

strong position from which to refute the rationality and ‘universality’ of the 

‘grand society’ of modernity that stands as a key foundation stone of neoliberal 

economy. Latouche suggests that, as a consequence of similar exclusionary 

dynamics at work in the declining cities of the industrialised societies, a broader 

resurgence of informal provisioning practices is underway incorporating clandes- 

59


tine work, crafts, petty trading, personal services and small-scale commodity 

production. Ultimately, in these terms, it is the conviviality and sustainability of 

informal provisioning that constitutes the ‘real’ economy, and the global market 

economy that is the aberration. 

Latouche’s view is supported by Cheru’s study of individuals and households 

amongst Africa’s peasantry and urban poor. 67 He argues that household and 

informal provisioning practices tend to be portrayed either simply as the 

collaborative coping mechanisms of marginalised individuals, or more rarely as 

contributing to the reproduction of the economy as a whole. However, for Cheru, 

these practices are what he terms ‘everyday forms of resistance’. 68 Not dissimilarly 

to Cheru, Scott uses the concept ‘infrapolitics’ in the context of Southeast 

Asia to capture everyday forms of resistance undertaken both individually and 

collectively that, although not necessarily accompanied by a declaration of 

opposition, could not properly be viewed as acquiescent coping strategies. 69 

Scott sees infrapolitics as central to the formation of collective consciousness 

amongst subordinate groups that challenges common sense understandings. He 

argues that to view household and informal provisioning only as coping 

strategies gives a sense of disorganisatio n and individualism instead of seeing 

them as collective responses to collective problems. As Cheru emphasises, 

African peasants have sought collective solutions that actively divorce them 

from the post-colonia l state which ‘has lost its role as an instrument of 

development and ordinary citizens do not expect anything from the state. 

Instead, they are determining their own development.’ 70 

As with our consideration of domestic–local subsistence provisioning practices, 

we would not want to romanticise the struggle of poor communities. 

Rather, we would argue that there is considerable space in both domestic–local 

subsistence and abandoned–informal provisioning practices upon which to base 

transformative strategies for achieving sustainable social relations. While everyday 

forms of resistance are important to such a task, particularly in terms of 

creating shared understandings that challenge the ‘there is no alternative’ 

teleology of neoliberal economy, collectively organised strategies to make good 

the potential for change are also required. 

Associational–voluntaristic 

Associational–voluntaristic practices of provisioning are those through which 

people come together in (self) organised groups. Classic examples are the 

medieval guilds and cooperatives. 71 From its origins in the 1770s and successful 

establishment in 1844, the cooperative movement in Britain responded to the 

failures of the industrialisin g market economy by provisioning the British 

working class from the cradle to the grave for more than a hundred years. The 

mutual sector also offered � nancial services to millions of people until comparatively 

recently. Even though the cooperative and mutual sector has been under 

attack in Britain, the size of the cooperative economy world-wide at around 750 

million members should not be underestimated. 72 

The problem of market-economic abandonment in the old industrial econom- 

60


ies has led to a widespread movement to (re)establish local economies on the 

basis of communal or membership organisations. A range of local non-market, 

not-for-pro� t strategies such as cooperatives, community businesses and credit 

unions are being set up to provision local communities directly or to enable local 

people to recover some control over their local economy and personal � nances. 

A European wide study of such local initiatives casts them as moving towards 

the creation of a ‘people’s economy’. 73 Probably the best known of these new 

initiatives are the various attempts to set up non-market forms of exchange, local 

exchange trading schemes (LETS). 74 LETS operate through a notional currency 

(e.g. Readies in Reading) with a system of debits and credits as skills are 

exchanged. Alternative associational–voluntaristic initiatives, such the Time 

Dollars movement launched by Edgar Cahn, have sought to avoid the value of 

labour altogether by trading purely on a time basis. 75 

The LETS and Time Dollar examples raise the whole question of the role 

of money in local economies and the signi� cance of alternative forms of 

money to associational–voluntaristic provisioning practices. Plainly, there is a 

problem of low circulation of money in relatively weak local economies (i.e. it 

transfers out to globalised economic structures). So-called ‘New Economics’ 

thinkers are arguing strongly for local currencies that are non-convertible 

and, therefore, only circulate locally and enable provisioning practices. 76 This in 

turn leads into the debate about the nature of money, particularly the problem 

of debt-based (bank-originated) money and the problem of money as commodity. 

77 As the global � nancial system has expanded and based itself increasingly 

in new technology, a banking famine has emerged in poorer areas. 78 This 

is a disaster in a commodi� ed market economy. Alternatives to meet the 

situation involve various associational savings and loans schemes for low status 

groups such as micro-credits (Yunis’s Grameenbank system), credit unions and 

social and ethical investment that look to redirect the funds of the better off 

towards the needs of the less well-off or into ecologically sustainable production. 

79 

Alongside the everyday forms of resistance of informal provisioning practices 

and in conjunction with domestic–local subsistence, associational–voluntaristic 

provisioning practices would appear a signi� cant space for collective transformative 

strategies to achieve sustainable social relations in the contemporary era. 

Associational–voluntaristic structures can avoid the reproduction of traditional 

patterns of inequality and also open up the process of transformation to 

democratic forces. Associational–voluntaristic provisioning would seem to lie at 

the heart, then, of developing the potential of what Alain Lipietz has described 

as the ‘third sector of social and ecological utility’. 80 However, there remains a 

very long way to go if the potential of the transformative space of provisioning 

practices is to be made actual. A concerted attack on the immobilism engendered 

by the perceived and real constraints of neoliberal economic globalisation is 

required in theory and practice. The political space within economy needs to be 

reclaimed through conscious transformative strategies that build out from the 

realms of those provisioning practices that stand outside of state and market 

economies. 

61

Conclusion 


New political economists of various hues have in recent years been united by a 

normative opposition to neoliberal globalisation while searching for sites of 

political space amidst seemingly prohibitive structural constraints. To date 

contributors have tended to stress scope for transformative strategies undertaken 

through the space of either state institution s or an emerging global civil society. 

Relatively little attention has been paid to the possibility of locating transformative 

strategies capable of founding sustainable social relations within ‘economy’. 

Given the immobilising reach of neoliberal economic thought and the associated 

globalising advance of market relations, the relative silence on the issue of 

political space within economy itself is not surprising. 

In this article we have sought to outline some of the key theoretical and 

practical considerations of advancing transformative strategies within economy. 

We have challenged the neoliberal common sense that falsely casts ‘economy’ 

as rooted in human nature and uprooted from its social and ecological context. 

In turn, informed by and in support of a provisioning conception of economy, 

we have argued that ‘economy’ is not coterminous with ‘market’. Rather, we 

have posited a disaggregated understanding of economy as a multilayered social 

structure of provisioning /non-provisionin g practices as a second step to identifying 

sites of political space for transformative strategies within economy. This 

serves to reveal the potential space for strategies that build on and through those 

provisioning practices that stand outside the formal economic layers of market 

and state. In particular, everyday forms of resistance based in domestic–local 

subsistence and abandoned–informal provisioning practices need to be harnessed 

and developed through associational–voluntaristic practices to take advantage of 

this potential space. Transformative strategies based within economy itself 

require not just the theoretical demysti� cation and dissaggregation of economy, 

which arguably is the role of radical new political economists, but also the 

practical reclamation of economy itself through the ongoing struggles for 

sustainable livelihood that are taking place across the globe. 

Notes 

The authors would like to thank Louise Amoore, Keith Shaw, Frances Hutchinson, Jamie Gough, Bill 

Hopwood and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive criticisms of an earlier version of the text. 

1. Martin O’Connor, ‘Introduction: liberate, accumulate—and bust?’, in: Martin O’Connor (Ed.), Is Capitalism 

Sustainable? Political Economy and the Politics of Ecology (Guilford Press, 1994), pp. 4–14; 

Wolfgang Sachs, Planet Dialectics (Zed, 1999); Michael Chossudovsky, The Globalisation of Poverty: 

Impacts of World Bank and IMF Reforms (Zed, 1997); Elmar Altvater, ‘World Economy, the Financial 

Crisis, and Ecological Sustainability—A Trilemma’, Capitalism, Nature, Socialism: A Journal of Socialist 

Ecology, Vol. 10, No. 4 (1999), pp. 37–68; and Richard Falk, Predatory Globalization: A Critique (Polity 

Press, 1999). 

2. World Bank, World Development Report 2000/2001: Attacking Poverty (Oxford University Press, 2000); 

and OECD, Work on Sustainable Development 1998–2001: Strategy Paper (OECD, 1998). 

3. Louise Amoore, Richard Dodgson, Barry K. Gills, Paul Langley, Don Marshall & Iain Watson, 

‘Overturning “Globalisation”: Resisting the Teleological, Reclaiming the “Political” ’, New Political 

Economy, Vol. 2, No. 1 (1997), pp. 179–95. 

4. On state institutions as providing sites of transformative space, see Paul Hirst & Grahame Thompson, 

Globalization in Question: The International Economy and the Possibilities of Governance (Polity Press, 

62


1996); John Zysman, ‘The Myth of a “Global Economy”: Enduring National Foundations and Emerging 

Regional Realities’, New Political Economy, Vol. 1, No. 2 (1996), pp. 157–84; and Linda Weiss, The Myth 

of the Powerless State: Governing the Economy in a Global Era (Polity Press, 1998). On an emerging 

global civil society and sites of transformative space, see Ronnie D. Lipshütz, ‘Reconstructing World 

Politics: The Emergence of a Global Civil Society’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol. 21, 

No. 3 (1992), pp. 389–420; Robert W. Cox, ‘Civil Society at the Turn of the Millennium: Prospects for 

an Alternative World Order’, Review of International Studies, Vol. 25, No. 1 (1999), pp. 3–28; and Falk, 

Predatory Globalization, pp. 137–52. 

5. Manfred Bienefeld, ‘Karl Polanyi and the contradictions of the 1980s’, in: Marguerite Mendell & Daniel 

Salée (Eds), The Legacy of Karl Polanyi: Market, State and Society at the End of the Twentieth Century 

(Macmillan, 1991), pp. 3–5; and Mark Rupert, ‘Globalisation and contested common sense in the United 

States’, in: Stephen Gill & James H. Mittelmann (Eds), Innovation and Transformation in International 

Studies (Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 138–52. 

6. James A. Caporaso & D.P. Levine, Theories of Political Economy (Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 

21–31. 

7. Ibid., p. 28. 

8. David Williams, ‘Constructing the Economic Space: The World Bank and the Making of Homo 

Oeconomicus’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol. 28, No. 1 (1999), p. 79. 

9. On the exclusionary dynamics of epistemology in the sense of determining what exists as knowable, see 

Roger Tooze & Craig N. Murphy, ‘The Epistemology of Poverty and the Poverty of Epistemology in IPE: 

Mystery, Blindness, and Invisibility’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol. 25, No. 3 (1994), 

pp. 681–707; and John MacLean, ‘Philosophical roots of globalization and philosophical routes to 

globalization’, in: Randall D. Germain (Ed.), Globalization and its Critics: Perspectives from Political 

Economy (Macmillan, 2000), pp. 3–66. 

10. Craig N. Murphy & Roger Tooze, ‘Getting beyond the “common sense” of the IPE orthodoxy’, in: Craig 

N. Murphy & Roger Tooze (Eds), The New International Political Economy (Lynne Rienner, 1991), pp. 

11–31; 

11. Jane Humphries, ‘Introduction’, in: Jane Humphries (Ed.), Gender and Economics (Edward Elgar, 1995). 

12. Geoff Hodgson, ‘Some Remarks on “Economic Imperialism” and International Political Economy’, Review 

of International Political Economy, Vol. 1, No. 1 (1994), pp. 21–8; and Ben Fine, ‘A Question of 

Economics: Is it Colonizing the Social Sciences?’, Economy and Society, Vol. 28, No. 3 (1999), pp. 

403–25. 

13. Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (Beacon Press, 

1944), p. 3. 

14. Karl Polanyi, Primitive, Archaic and Modern Economies (Beacon Press, 1968). 

15. ‘As a political reality, neo-liberalism is both a broad strategy of restructuring and a succession of 

negotiated settlements, of concessions to the rigidities and dynamics of structures, as well as to the political 

possibilities of the moment’. André Drainville, ‘International Political Economy in an Age of Open 

Marxism’, Review of International Political Economy, Vol. 1, No. 1 (1994), p. 116. 

16. Joan Martinez-Alier, Ecological Economics (Macmillan, 1997); and John Barry, Rethinking Green Politics 

(Sage, 1999). 

17. Ted Benton, The Greening of Marxism (Guilford Press, 1996). 

18. James O’Connor, ‘Capitalism, Nature, Socialism: A Theoretical Introduction’, Capitalism, Nature, Socialism: 

A Journal of Socialist Ecology, Vol. 1, No. 1 (1988), pp. 11–38. 

19. Mary Mellor, ‘Challenging the new world disorder: feminist green socialism’, in: Susan Himmelweit (Ed.), 

Inside the Household: From Labour to Care (Macmillan, 2000), pp. 78–98. 

20. Jean Gardiner, Gender, Care and Economics (Macmillan, 1997), p. 236. 

21. Mary Mellor, Feminism and Ecology (Polity Press, 1997); and Mary Mellor, ‘Feminism and Environmental 

Ethics: A Materialist Perspective’, Ethics and the Environment, Vol. 5, No. 1 (2000), pp. 107–23. 

22. Marianne Ferber & Julie Nelson (Eds), Beyond Economic Man (Chicago University Press, 1993); and 

Mary Mellor, ‘Woman, Nature and the Social Construction of Economic Man’, Ecological Economics, 

Vol. 20, No. 2 (1997), pp. 129–40. 

23. It is important to make clear here the distinction between the marginalisation of women and of women’s 

work. Women are present in the formal economy, often in low paid and/or supportive roles (cooks, 

cleaners, secretaries), that is, women associated with women’s work. Where women escape that association 

63


they can achieve more parity with men, although rarely equality. Cf. Cynthia Cockburn, In the Way of 

Women (Macmillan, 1991). 

24. Mellor, ‘Woman, Nature and the Social Construction of Economic Man’, pp. 129–40; cf. J.K. Gibson-Graham, 

The End of Capitalism (As We Know It) (Blackwell, 1996), p. 17. 

25. Alan Wolfe, ‘Market, state and society as codes of moral obligation’, in: Mendell & Salée, The Legacy 

of Karl Polanyi, p. 33. 

26. Caporaso & Levine, Theories of Political Economy, p. 25. 

27. Cf. Julie Nelson, ‘The study of choice or the study of provisioning: gender and the de� nition of 

economics’, in: Ferber & Nelson, Beyond Economic Man, p. 32; and Gardiner, Gender, Care and 

Economics, p. 233. 

28. Louise Amoore, Richard Dodgson, Randall D. Germain, Barry K. Gills, Paul Langley & Iain Watson, 

‘Paths to a Historicized International Political Economy’, Review of International Political Economy, Vol. 

7, No. 1 (2000), p. 67; and Tooze & Murphy, ‘Epistemology of Poverty and the Poverty of Epistemology 

in IPE’, pp. 696–8. 

29. Peter Drucker, ‘The Changed World Economy’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 64, No. 4 (1986), pp. 768–91; and 

Susan Strange, Casino Capitalism (Pinter, 1986). 

30. David Held & Anthony McGrew, David Goldblatt & Jonathan Perraton, Global Transformations: Politics, 

Economics and Culture (Polity Press, 1999). 

31. Randall D. Germain, ‘The Worlds of Finance: A Braudelian Perspective on IPE’, European Journal of 

International Relations, Vol. 2, No. 2 (1996), pp. 201–30; and Hannes Lacher, ‘The Politics of the Market: 

Re-reading Karl Polanyi’, Global Society: Journal of Interdisciplinary International Relations, Vol. 13, 

No. 3 (1999), pp. 313–26. 

32. Fernand Braudel, Afterthoughts on Material Civilization and Capitalism (John Hopkins University Press, 

1977); Fernand Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism 15th–18th Century, Vol. I: The Structures of 

Everyday Life, trans. M. Kochan (Harper & Row, 1981); Fernand Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism 

15th–18th Century, Vol. II: The Wheels of Commerce, trans. S. Reynolds (Harper & Row, 1982); and 

Fernand Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism 15th–18th Century, Vol. III: The Perspective of the World, 

trans. S. Reynolds (Harper & Row, 1984). 

33. Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism 15th–18th Century, Vol. III, pp. 232–42. 

34. Ibid., p. 622; and Germain, ‘The Worlds of Finance’, pp. 205 and 211. 

35. Braudel, Afterthoughts on Material Civilization and Capitalism, pp. 16 and 50. 

36. Germain, ‘The Worlds of Finance’, pp. 201–230. 

37. Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism 15th–18th Century, Vol. I, pp. 23–4. 

38. Braudel, Afterthoughts on Material Civilization and Capitalism, p. 17. 

39. Polanyi, The Great Transformation, pp. 43–55. 

40. Anne Sisson Runyan, ‘Of markets and men: the (re)making(s) of IPE’, in: Kurt Burch & Rob Denemark 

(Eds), Constituting International Political Economy (Lynne Rienner, 1997), p. 83. 

41. Christine Delphy & Diana Leonard, Familiar Exploitation (Polity Press, 1992). 

42. Marilyn Waring, If Women Counted (Macmillan, 1989). 

43. Figures from Runyan, ‘Of markets and men’, p. 83. 

44. Hilkka Pietila, ‘The Triangle of the Human Economy: Household–Cultivation–Industrial Production’, 

Ecological Economics, Vol. 20, No. 2 (1997), p. 121. 

45. Sachs, Planet Dialectics. 

46. Eric Helleiner, ‘Braudelian re� ections on economic globalisation: the historian as pioneer’, in: Gill & 

Mittelmann, Innovation and Transformation in International Studies, p. 100. 

47. Randall D. Germain, ‘Globalization in historical perspective’, in Germain, Globalization and its Critics, 

p. 82. 

48. Mary Mellor, Breaking the Boundaries: Towards a Feminist, Green Socialism (Virago, 1992); and Mellor, 

‘Challenging the new world disorder’. 

49. Mellor, Feminism and Ecology, p. 189. 

50. Cf. Ankie Hoogvelt, Globalisation and the Postcolonial World: The New Political Economy of Development 

(Macmillan, 1995). 

51. Colin Hay, ‘From Crisis to Catastrophe? The Ecological Pathologies of the Liberal-Democratic State 

Form’, Innovations, Vol. 9, No. 4 (1996), pp. 421–34. 

64


52. Matthew Paterson, ‘Globalisation, Ecology and Resistance’, New Political Economy, Vol. 4, No. 1 (1999), 

p. 139. 

53. Herman Daly & John Cobb, For the Common Good (Green Print, 1990). 

54. David Crouch & Colin Ward, The Allotment (Five Leaves Press, 1997). 

55. Sachs, Planet Dialectics. 

56. Veronika Bennholdt Thomsen & Maria Mies, The Subsistence Perspective (Zed Press, 1999). 

57. Vandana Shiva, Staying Alive (Zed, 1988). 

58. Edward Goldsmith, The Way (Random Century, 1992). 

59. Bina Agarwal, ‘The Gender and Environment Debate: Lessons from India’, Feminist Studies, Vol. 18, No. 

1 (1992), pp. 119–58; and Cecile Jackson, ‘Radical Environmental Myths: A Gender Perspective’, New 

Left Review, No. 210 (1995), pp. 124–40. 

60. Christine Delphy, Close to Home: A Materialist Analysis of Women’s Oppression (Hutchinson, 1984). 

61. V. Spike Peterson, ‘Seeing world order beyond the gendered order of global hierarchies’, in: Robert W. 

Cox (Ed.), The New Realism: Perspectives on Multilateralism and World Order (Macmillan and St. 

Martin’s Press, 1997), p. 39. 

62. Roy Ellen, ‘Local knowledge and sustainable development in developing countries’, in: Keekok Lee, Alan 

Holland & Desmond McNeil (Eds), Global Sustainable Development in the 21st Century (Edinburgh 

University Press, 2000). 

63. Cf. Gita Sen & Caren Grown, Development Crises and Alternative Visions (Monthly Review Press, 1987). 

64. Cf. Paul Ekins, A New World Order: Grassroots Movements for Global Change (Routledge, 1992). 

65. Enrique Leff, Green Production: Towards an Environmental Rationality (Guilford Press, 1995) 

66. Serge Latouche, In the Wake of the Af� uent Society: An Exploration of Post-Development (Zed, 1993). 

67. Fantu Cheru, ‘The silent revolution and the weapons of the weak: transformation and innovation from 

below’, in: Gill & Mittelman, Innovation and Transformation in International Studies, pp. 153–69. 

68. Ibid., p. 153. 

69. James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (Yale University Press, 1990). 

70. Cheru, ‘The silent revolution and the weapons of the weak’, p. 161. 

71. Anthony Black, Guilds and Civil Society (Methuen, 1984); and Mary Mellor, Janet Hannah, & John 

Stirling, Worker Co-operatives in Theory and Practice (Open University Press, 1988). 

72. At http://www.coop.org/statistics.html. 

73. European Network for Economic Self-Help and Local Development, The People’s Economy (Bauhaus 

Dessau Foundation, 1996). 

74. Jonathan Croall, LETS Act Locally (Gulbenkian Foundation Report, 1997); and Gill Seyfang, ‘The Euro, 

the Pound and the Shell in Our Pockets’, New Political Economy, Vol. 5, No. 2 (2000), pp. 227–46. 

75. Cf. Richard Douthwaite, Short Circuit: Strengthening Local Economies for Security in an Unstable World 

(Lilliput Press, 1996), pp. 90–93. 

76. James Robertson, The Transformation of Economic Life, New Economics Foundation, Schumacher 

Brie� ng No. 1, 1999. 

77. Michael Rowbotham, The Grip of Death: A Study of Modern Money, Debt, Slavery and Destructive 

Economics (John Carpenter, 1999). 

78. Andrew Leyshon & Nigel Thrift, ‘Geographies of Financial Exclusion: Financial Abandonment in Britain 

and the United States’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, No. 20 (1995), pp. 312–41. 

79. Of course, alternative forms of money may not only be utilised in support of associational–voluntaristic 

provisioning and sustainable development. Cf. Frances Hutchinson, Mary Mellor & Wendy Olsen, The 

Politics of Money: Towards Sustainability and Economic Democracy (Pluto, forthcoming). 

80. Alain Lipietz, ‘Political Ecology and the Future of Marxism’, Capitalism, Nature, Socialism: A Journal 

of Socialist Ecology, Vol. 11, No. 1 (2000), p. 85. 

65

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