Solidarity Economy: Building Alternatives for People and Planet

Solidarity Economy: Building Alternatives for People and Planet

Author: Jenna Allard

Publisher: Lulu.com

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 443

ISBN-13: 0615194893

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The emergence of the global grassroots economic structural reform movement known as the Solidarity Economy. This book contain the core papers, discussion and debates on the topic at the U.S. Social Forum of 10,000 people in Atlanta in the summer of 2007.


The Resilience Imperative

The Resilience Imperative

Author: Michael Lewis

Publisher: New Society Publishers

Published: 2012-06-12

Total Pages: 402

ISBN-13: 0865717079

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Argues that the economy can only be improved through major changes that will make it more decentralized and cooperative, including such novel ideas as energy self-sufficiency, interest-free financing, affordable housing, local food systems and more. Original.


More Powerful Together

More Powerful Together

Author: Jen Gobby

Publisher: Fernwood Publishing

Published: 2020-07-25T00:00:00Z

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 1773632515

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How can social movements help bring about large-scale systems change? This is the question Jen Gobby sets out to answer in More Powerful Together. As an activist, Gobby has been actively involved with climate justice, anti-pipeline, and Indigenous land defense movements in Canada for many years. As a researcher, she has sat down with folks from these movements and asked them to reflect on their experiences with movement building. Bringing their incredibly poignant insights into dialogue with scholarly and activist literature on transformation, Gobby weaves together a powerful story about how change happens. In reflecting on what’s working and what’s not working in these movements, taking inventory of the obstacles hindering efforts, and imagining the strategies for building a powerful movement of movements, a common theme emerges: relationships are crucial to building movements strong enough to transform systems. Indigenous scholarship, ecological principles, and activist reflections all converge on the insight that the means and ends of radical transformation is in forging relationships of equality and reciprocity with each other and with the land. It is through this, Gobby argues, that we become more powerful together. 100% of the royalties made from the sales of this book are being donated to Indigenous Climate Action www.indigenousclimateaction.com


Social and Solidarity Economy

Social and Solidarity Economy

Author: Peter Utting

Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.

Published: 2015-04-09

Total Pages: 376

ISBN-13: 178360347X

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As economic crises, growing inequality and climate change prompt a global debate on the meaning and trajectory of development, increasing attention is focusing on 'social and solidarity economy' as a distinctive approach to sustainable and rights-based development. While we are beginning to understand what social and solidarity economy is, what it promises and how it differs from 'business as usual', we know far less about whether it can really move beyond its fringe status in many countries and regions. Under what conditions can social and solidarity economy scale up and scale out - that is, expand in terms of the growth of social and solidarity economy organizations and enterprises, or spread horizontally within given territories? Bringing together leading researchers, blending theoretical and empirical analysis, and drawing on experiences and case studies from multiple countries and regions, this volume addresses these questions. In so doing, it aims to inform a broad constituency of development actors, including scholars, practitioners, activists and policy makers.


Take Back the Economy

Take Back the Economy

Author: J. K. Gibson-Graham

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published: 2013-05-01

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 0816684456

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In the wake of economic crisis on a global scale, more and more people are reconsidering their role in the economy and wondering what they can do to make it work better for humanity and the planet. In this innovative book, J. K. Gibson-Graham, Jenny Cameron, and Stephen Healy contribute complex understandings of economics in practical terms: what can we do right now, in our own communities, to make a difference? Full of exercises, thinking tools, and inspiring examples from around the world, Take Back the Economy shows how people can implement small-scale changes in their own lives to create ethical economies. There is no manifesto here, no one prescribed model; rather, readers are encouraged and taught how to take back the economy in ways appropriate for their own communities and context, using what they already have at hand. Take Back the Economy dismantles the idea that the economy is separate from us and best comprehended by experts. Instead, the authors demonstrate that the economy is the outcome of the decisions and efforts we make every day. The economy is thus reframed as a space of ethical action—something we can shape and alter according to what is best for the well-being of people and the planet. The book explores what people are already doing to build ethical economies, presenting these deeds as mutual concerns: What is necessary for survival, and what do we do with the surplus produced beyond what will fulfill basic needs? What do we consume, and how do we preserve and replenish the commons—those resources that can be shared to maintain all? And finally, how can we invest in a future worth living in? Suitable for activists and students alike, Take Back the Economy will be of interest to anyone seeking a more just, sustainable, and equitable world.


The Climate Crisis

The Climate Crisis

Author: Vishwas Satgar

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2018-02-01

Total Pages: 293

ISBN-13: 177614208X

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Essays that address the question: how can people and class agency change this destructive course of history? Capitalism’s addiction to fossil fuels is heating our planet at a pace and scale never before experienced. Extreme weather patterns, rising sea levels and accelerating feedback loops are a commonplace feature of our lives. The number of environmental refugees is increasing and several island states and low-lying countries are becoming vulnerable. Corporate-induced climate change has set us on an ecocidal path of species extinction. Governments and their international platforms such as the Paris Climate Agreement deliver too little, too late. Most states, including South Africa, continue on their carbon-intensive energy paths, with devastating results. Political leaders across the world are failing to provide systemic solutions to the climate crisis. This is the context in which we must ask ourselves: how can people and class agency change this destructive course of history? Volume three in the Democratic Marxism series, The Climate Crisis investigates eco-socialist alternatives that are emerging. It presents the thinking of leading climate justice activists, campaigners and social movements advancing systemic alternatives and developing bottom-up, just transitions to sustain life. Through a combination of theoretical and empirical work, the authors collectively examine the challenges and opportunities inherent in the current moment. This volume builds on the class-struggle focus of Volume 2 by placing ecological issues at the centre of democratic Marxism. Most importantly, it explores ways to renew historical socialism with democratic, eco-socialist alternatives to meet current challenges in South Africa and the world.


Towards Just and Sustainable Economies

Towards Just and Sustainable Economies

Author: North, Peter

Publisher: Policy Press

Published: 2017-04-19

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 1447327268

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With capitalism in crisis - rising inequality, unsustainable resource depletion and climate change all demanding a new economic model - the Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE) has been suggested as an alternative. What can contribute in terms of generating livelihoods that provide a dignified life, meeting of social needs and building of sustainable futures? What can activists in both the global North and South learn from each other? In this volume academics from a range of disciplines and from a number of European and Latin American countries come together to question what it means to have a 'sustainable society' and to ask what role these alternative economies can play in developing convivial, humane and resilient societies, raising some challenging questions for policy-makers and citizens alike.


Getting Past Capitalism

Getting Past Capitalism

Author: Cynthia C. Kaufman

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 201

ISBN-13: 0739172808

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Getting Past Capitalism begins with a critique of the impacts of capitalism on human society and the environment. It looks in new ways at what capitalism is and at how it is reproduced. That investigation opens the door to fresh ways of looking at how to challenge it. Cynthia Kaufman looks at some fundamental questions about how capitalism comes to look like a system that is unbeatable, and how people come to have desires that work to reinforce capitalism. Kaufman uses this analysis to develop ideas about how to challenge capitalism. She argues that rather than looking for the fulcrum point in a system that will make it able to be overthrown, we should try to understand what kinds of practices open more spaces for stopping the reproduction of capitalist processes, and what kinds of structures need to be developed to make capitalism a less important part of our world. Getting Past Capitalism includes a critique of capitalism and presentation of alternatives to capitalism, many of which already exist. It explores strategies for developing and strengthening those alternatives.


The New Systems Reader

The New Systems Reader

Author: James Gustave Speth

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-10-19

Total Pages: 514

ISBN-13: 1000171264

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The recognition is growing: truly addressing the problems of the 21st century requires going beyond small tweaks and modest reforms to business as usual—it requires "changing the system." But what does this mean? And what would it entail? The New Systems Reader highlights some of the most thoughtful, substantive, and promising answers to these questions, drawing on the work and ideas of some of the world’s key thinkers and activists on systemic change. Amid the failure of traditional politics and policies to address our fundamental challenges, an increasing number of thoughtful proposals and real-world models suggest new possibilities, this book convenes an essential conversation about the future we want.