Proposes new
currencies that are direct, personal, and motivated
by ideals of community, cooperation, and reciprocity.
At
the beginning of the 21st
century, the three most important concerns in the
developed nations are remarkably
convergent--unemployment, the environment, and
community breakdown--and there are strong indications
that these same issues will remain on top of the
agenda well into the next century.
Emerging
technologies promise to keep unemployment a major
issue, even if all Western economies get out of
recession. By 2010, China will introduce as much
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as the entire world
does today. And community breakdown is one of the
most systemic, deep, and complex societal trends of
the past 30 years, with no signs of any reversal.
Precisely
because we will have to live with these issues for
the foreseeable future, only a long-term structural
approach can successfully resolve these problems.
Community and Money is about how community currencies
could contribute to tackling all three problems.
Local
currencies are springing up all over the world in an
impressive diversity and increasing sophistication.
In more than sixty-five different places in the
United States and Canada you can earn and use
colorful bills with names like Barter Bucks and Time
Dollars for anything from buying groceries to having
your hair cut or your computer repaired.
Using
communities in Ontario and New York State as a model,
this book, through a combination of theory, practical
implementation, and personal interviews, offers a
guide to some very attractive alternatives to
traditional currency transactions the goal of which
is to encourage [re]localization of the production of
wealth, consumption and exchange; fairly remunerate
work that is un- or under-paid; and build a sense of
community through personalized, face-to-face
transactions.
Raddon
demonstrates how a new economy is built, not only
through re-localizing work and exchange, but also
through the intricate processes of creating
community and realizing new relationships between
the genders. A highly recommended book for those
working towards alternatives to the global
economy.
--Susan Witt, Executive
Director, E. F. Schumacher Society,
Massachusettes
It
is vital to have a gender analysis as so many of
the ideas surrounding the new experiments draw on
women's life and experience and therefore have
the danger of stereotyping or romanticising
women's lives. Extensive interview material is
used to draw out key ideas in a way that combines
depth of analysis with accessibility. This book
certainly demonstrates a vitality in the new
thinking and makes very useful links to the
existing literature.
--Mary Mellor, author of
Feminism and Ecology and
co-author of The Politics of
Money
Table of Contents
Mary-Beth
Raddon holds a Ph.D. in sociology from the University
of Toronto, Ontario and has contributed to both the
research and the debate around the new economy.
216
pages
Paperback ISBN: 1-55164-214-X $19.99
Hardcover ISBN: 1-55164-215-8 $48.99
Cultural Studies /
Business & Economics
December
2002
