SUFFiciENcy EcONOMy ANd GRASSROOtS DEvElOPMENt
SUFFiciENcy EcONOMy ANd GRASSROOtS DEvElOPMENt
SUFFiciENcy EcONOMy ANd GRASSROOtS DEvElOPMENt
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186<br />
The Meaning of Sufficiency Economy <br />
International Conference<br />
perceived as behaving irrationally until one considers that she places greater value<br />
on long-term social relationships with market trading partners than a one-time<br />
monetary gain. This concept certainly bears some relation to SE’s condition of<br />
reasonableness in terms of valuing the thought process that contributes to<br />
sustainable livelihoods, but it is more expansive. <br />
Sharing the base—specifically the tangible aspects but possibly also the<br />
intangible—proceeds according to contextually defined values and relations of<br />
power. Gudeman distinguishes between allotment, which is a way of partitioning<br />
permanent resources such as land, and apportionment, which has to do with<br />
divvying up material flows, such as harvests. Communal rules are generally<br />
established to dictate proper allotment and apportionment. For example, official<br />
property rights may be given according to local inheritance laws but usufruct may be<br />
granted under certain circumstances; other goods such as foodstuffs may be<br />
distributed amongst all in a community, or they may flow from all to one, as in a<br />
tributary to a leader, or from all to one, as in a feast hosted by a headman to<br />
redistribute wealth in the community. In this way, access to the base may be<br />
determined by social status, but forms of reallotment and reapportionment can<br />
equalize power differentials. Thus, in these central acts of creating, maintaining, and<br />
sharing the base, the core element is social relationships.<br />
What’s missing from Gudeman’s rich community economy model is ethics that<br />
would mediate these relationships to ensure wellbeing for all individuals, our society<br />
as a whole, and the environment that sustains us. Feminist geographers JK Gibson-<br />
Graham and fellow contributors to the Community Economies Project have been<br />
working to articulate such an approach. This project, coalescing the theoretical and<br />
practical work of academics and real communities, emerged from their shared belief<br />
that more socially just and environmentally sustainable economies are possible, and<br />
that anyone is capable of rethinking and remaking our economies in that direction.<br />
This project is a continuation of Gibson-Graham’s first book, The End of Capitalism<br />
(as we knew it), which deconstructed and critiqued the predominant view of<br />
capitalism as a unified, singular totality so powerful that it cannot be resisted or<br />
transformed and then argued for a cognitive transformation that would liberate the<br />
possibility of economic difference. With their present work (Postcapitalist Politics<br />
and “Community Economies”), Gibson-Graham aim to expound on how to<br />
reimagine and reconstruct our economic worlds.<br />
They begin by discussing how diverse our economic activities actually are,<br />
using an iceberg as a metaphor. The tip of the iceberg, what is visible above water, is<br />
what is usually considered to be the economy: wage labor, market exchange, and<br />
capitalist enterprise; meanwhile, what is beneath the water is less visible but far<br />
more vast: the multitudinous other methods of economic production, transaction,<br />
and distribution we all engage in every day. Gibbson-Graham and their colleagues<br />
have created lists to illustrate these alternatives. For example, instead of or in<br />
addition to traditional market exchange, individuals might practice fair trade, use<br />
alternative currencies, barter, give gifts, or hunt and gather. Instead of mainstream