SUFFiciENcy EcONOMy ANd GRASSROOtS DEvElOPMENt

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186 The Meaning of Sufficiency Economy International Conference perceived as behaving irrationally until one considers that she places greater value on long-term social relationships with market trading partners than a one-time monetary gain. This concept certainly bears some relation to SE’s condition of reasonableness in terms of valuing the thought process that contributes to sustainable livelihoods, but it is more expansive. Sharing the base—specifically the tangible aspects but possibly also the intangible—proceeds according to contextually defined values and relations of power. Gudeman distinguishes between allotment, which is a way of partitioning permanent resources such as land, and apportionment, which has to do with divvying up material flows, such as harvests. Communal rules are generally established to dictate proper allotment and apportionment. For example, official property rights may be given according to local inheritance laws but usufruct may be granted under certain circumstances; other goods such as foodstuffs may be distributed amongst all in a community, or they may flow from all to one, as in a tributary to a leader, or from all to one, as in a feast hosted by a headman to redistribute wealth in the community. In this way, access to the base may be determined by social status, but forms of reallotment and reapportionment can equalize power differentials. Thus, in these central acts of creating, maintaining, and sharing the base, the core element is social relationships. What’s missing from Gudeman’s rich community economy model is ethics that would mediate these relationships to ensure wellbeing for all individuals, our society as a whole, and the environment that sustains us. Feminist geographers JK Gibson- Graham and fellow contributors to the Community Economies Project have been working to articulate such an approach. This project, coalescing the theoretical and practical work of academics and real communities, emerged from their shared belief that more socially just and environmentally sustainable economies are possible, and that anyone is capable of rethinking and remaking our economies in that direction. This project is a continuation of Gibson-Graham’s first book, The End of Capitalism (as we knew it), which deconstructed and critiqued the predominant view of capitalism as a unified, singular totality so powerful that it cannot be resisted or transformed and then argued for a cognitive transformation that would liberate the possibility of economic difference. With their present work (Postcapitalist Politics and “Community Economies”), Gibson-Graham aim to expound on how to reimagine and reconstruct our economic worlds. They begin by discussing how diverse our economic activities actually are, using an iceberg as a metaphor. The tip of the iceberg, what is visible above water, is what is usually considered to be the economy: wage labor, market exchange, and capitalist enterprise; meanwhile, what is beneath the water is less visible but far more vast: the multitudinous other methods of economic production, transaction, and distribution we all engage in every day. Gibbson-Graham and their colleagues have created lists to illustrate these alternatives. For example, instead of or in addition to traditional market exchange, individuals might practice fair trade, use alternative currencies, barter, give gifts, or hunt and gather. Instead of mainstream
The Meaning of Sufficiency Economy International Conference 187 capitalist enterprises, we might do business with cooperatives, non-profits, green businesses, or socially responsible ones. And in terms of finance, we might forgo the big banks and deal with credit unions, cooperative or community banks, or microfinance institutions that keep money in the community and offer low-interest loans or sweat equity options. In revealing the entire body of the iceberg, JK Gibson-Graham and their colleagues disrupt capitalocentrism—which means defining all economic activities in terms of their relation to capitalism (e.g., compatible with, contained within, the same as, etc.), thereby paving the way for a potentially infinite array of economic practices, relations, and identities. Their conception of community economy follows from this economic plurality and adds the ethical element: The community economy is a normative representation of the diverse economy, one in which certain ethics are valued over others. In a community economy our interdependence with each other and with all earth others is recognized and respected as we negotiate: what is necessary to personal, social and ecological survival; how social surplus is appropriated and distributed; whether and how social surplus is to be produced and consumed; [and] how a commons is produced and sustained. (“Community Economies”) These authors and activists stop short of specifying which ethics should be valued. They aim instead to open up space for debating relevant ethics and exploring alternatives. They do, however, stress interdependence, with nature as central to our communal wellbeing. One last thought on community economies. It may seem from the descriptions above that a community economy suggests small scale. Certainly, in many ways it fits into calls by some to localize in response to the ravages of globalization. But a community economy could be regional, national, or even global. Members of a given community economy need not be in geographic proximity, though they should meet or be working toward Daly and Cobb’s four community criteria. Moreover, a community economy must recognize our embeddedness in larger contexts, even our inextricable connections with the global economy. Given the dynamics of social life, it’s not reasonable to envision a “return to tradition” in terms of organization (small communities) or facilely privilege “local” over “global,” particularly in terms of the knowledge, skills, and so on that make up the commons. In reality, people select from a wide variety of ideas and techniques available to them from global, regional, local, and historical sources. In the imaginative combination of these elements, something entirely new is fashioned.
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SUFFiciENcy EcONOMy ANd GRASSROOtS DEvElOPMENt

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