J.K Gibson-Graham, Post-Capitalist Politics - Amazon Web Services

316 Pages·2005·3.29 MB·English

A Postcapitalist Politics
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A Postcapitalist Politics
J. K. Gibson-Graham
University of Minnesota Press
Minneapolis • London
See pages 263–64 for copyright information on previously published material in this book.
Copyright 2006 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording,
or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press
111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290
Minneapolis, MN 55401-2520
http://www.upress.umn.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gibson-Graham, J. K.
A postcapitalist politics / J.K. Gibson-Graham.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 13: 978-0-8166-4803-0 (hc), 978-0-8166-4804-7 (pb)
ISBN 10: 0-8166-4803-4 (hc : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-8166-4804-2 (pb : alk. paper)
1. Economic policy. 2. Capitalism. 3. Political science. I. Title.
HD87.G52 2006
338.9—dc22
2005032836
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer.
12 11 10 09 08 07 06 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Bernice, Don, Elspeth, Eve, Helen, Jack, K, Megan, and Ramonda
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Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: A Politics of Economic Possibility xix
1. Affects and Emotions for a Postcapitalist Politics 1
2. Reluctant Subjects: Subjection and Becoming 23
3. Constructing a Language of Economic Diversity 53
4. The Community Economy 79
5. Surplus Possibilities: The Intentional Economy of Mondragón 101
6. Cultivating Subjects for a Community Economy 127
7. Building Community Economies 165
Notes 197
Bibliography 241
Previous Publications 263
Index 265
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Preface and
Acknowledgments
Hope is the difference between
probability and possibility.
—Isabelle Stengers,
“A ‘Cosmo-Politics’—Risk, Hope, Change”
This is a hopeful book written at a time when hope is finally getting a hearing
but also a battering. Between the completion of the manuscript and the writ-
ing of this preface, the seemingly intractable nature of the world’s problems has
impressed itself on us quite powerfully. A recently aired BBC documentary on
“global dimming” showed how airborne industrial pollutants are blocking sun-
light from reaching the earth; as these pollutants are reduced, global warming
will presumably proceed at a much faster rate than is currently projected. Ac-
cording to the documentary, the Ethiopian famine that killed ten million people
in the early 1980s was due to the failure over more than a decade of the year-
ly monsoon, as the water-laden tropical air mass was prevented from moving
northward by the northern hemisphere’s pollution haze—a shocking wake-up
call about global responsibility. On top of all the environmental news, one of us
has just discovered that she is not exempt from what feels like a breast cancer
epidemic in women of the “developed” world. From the global scale to the place
closest in, we have been presented with the enormity of “what pushes back at us”
(to use the words of our inspirational activist friend Ethan Miller) when we at-
tempt to imagine and inhabit a world of economic possibility.
Both of these “events” highlight in different ways the ethical imperatives and
challenges of the interdependence that this book attempts to bring into focus.
All too clearly we are being presented with the unintended effects of “develop-
ment.” All too starkly we can see that increased consumption, with its promise of
heightened well-being, is bought at the expense of the destruction of the global
ix