SUFFiciENcy EcONOMy ANd GRASSROOtS DEvElOPMENt

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184 The Meaning of Sufficiency Economy International Conference Three Perspectives on Community Economies Since SE is fundamentally an alternative economic model, it seems more appropriate to glean ideas about community empowerment from literature on other alternative economies—in this case community economies—rather than from community development literature. This section considers three social science perspectives on community economies. The first and earliest is by Herman Daly and theologian John Cobb Jr., elaborated in their book For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy toward Community, the Environment, and a Sustainable Future. Their approach reveals the fallacies in our current conception of economy, crafts an ethical alternative, and proposes policy applications for the United States. Next, economic anthropologist Stephen Gudeman looks at community economy from a different angle: his approach is to describe what he argues already exists, basing his theory on a rich ethnographic record. Finally, returning to ethics, feminist geographers JK Gibbson-Graham and their collective Community Economies Project aim to reimagine and recreate economies to value non-capitalocentric diversity and interdependence among other ethics. What is offered here are ideas for further consideration so as to strengthen SE as a community development approach. To establish conditions necessary for “economics for community”, Daly and Cobb call for a shift from individualism to “person-in-community” much like the idea of interdependence elaborated above. Regarding community, they state that the term “suggests people are bound up with one another, sharing, despite differences, a common identity” (1989:170). That is, community members self-identify as such based on their relationships with each other. Daly and Cobb specify three other requirements of community: 1) members must enjoy full participation in the community’s activities (especially decision making); 2) the community as a body must take responsibility for its membership as a whole; and 3) that responsibility includes respect for the diversity represented by individual members. They remark that community thus conceived is a matter of degree, but that economics for community favors development toward these ideals. In defining their economics for community model, Daly and Cobb take up Aristotle’s distinction between oikonomia and chrematistics. They understand chrematistics as “the branch of political economy relating to the manipulation of property and wealth so as to maximize short-term monetary exchange value to the owner” (138). They explain that the GDP is essentially a chrematistic model with the additional (erroneous) assumption that individual economic welfare is correlative with overall market growth. Oikonomia, by contrast, “is the management of the household so as to increase its use value to all members of the household over the long run.” Daly and Cobb continue, “If we expand the scope of the household to include the larger community of the land, of shared values, resources, biomes, institutions, language, and history, then we have a good definition of economics for community” (138). They state that oikonomia differs from chrematistics in three ways: 1) it takes the long-run rather than the short-run view; 2) it considers costs and
The Meaning of Sufficiency Economy International Conference 185 benefits to the whole community (not just those involved in the immediate transaction); and 3) it focuses on concrete use value and the limited accumulation thereof, rather than on abstract exchange value and its impetus toward unlimited accumulation (139). For Daly and Cobb, community is sorely missing in Western conceptions of the economy as well as in the lives of people in the modern world. For economic anthropologist Stephen Gudeman, the community economy is right there before our eyes. Gudeman has theorized community economy as an everpresent economic realm existing in dialectic relation with the market realm: these may at times be separate or overlapping, complimentary or in tension, and we may sometimes emphasize one over the other or participate in these realms for different purposes. Where the market is abstract and impersonal, characterized by anonymous, short-term exchanges, the communal realm is local and specific, constituted by social relationships and contextually defined values. At a time when “the economy” has become synonymous with “the market,” Gudeman’s detailed exposition of the communal realm is a much needed reminder that real economies are much more diverse and varied and above all center on people. The core concept in Gudeman’s community economy model is the commons or base, a community’s shared interests such as physical resources and produced things that help sustain the members’ individual and collective livelihoods. The most common definition of a commons stops here, yet it also encompasses “ideational constructs such as knowledge, technology, laws, practices, skills, and customs” (7) as well as the cultural agreements and beliefs that shape or assign values to social relationships, transactions of goods and services, and accumulated wealth. The instrumental act of contributing to the base reproduces the group materially while at the same time reinforces commitment and identity as a community member; or more simply put: “the base makes the community as it is made” (36). According to Gudeman, the central acts in a community economy are creating, maintaining, and sharing the base, as opposed to market capitalism, where the focus is making and accumulating profits. Making and maintaining the base relies heavily on situated reason. Situated reason refers to knowledge that is produced through trial and error or innovation on the ground, which allows flexibility to find the most appropriate solutions and treats all individuals as potential agents. It is what Stephen Marglin (1990) terms techne (tactile practical knowledge), as opposed to episteme (abstract analytic knowledge), the latter of which is privileged in Western culture and dominates mainstream development activities. Beyond what is gleaned through tinkering, situated reason may also draw on a dynamic array of beliefs, values, and practices that encompass familiarity with the immediate environment; spiritual ideas about the relationship between humans, nature, and the supernatural; cultural practices of resource management and dispute resolution; and so on—the ideational constructs that make up part of the base itself. Finally, situated reason may be viewed as contextually dependent rationality. Take for example a woman on her way to market who refuses to sell her heavy load to a foreigner offering more than market value; she may be
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SUFFiciENcy EcONOMy ANd GRASSROOtS DEvElOPMENt

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