Real systemic solutions to humanity's problems require a radical reshaping of the global political system

Society's problems cannot be alleviated via mere policy interventions, whether individual- or system-level, when the system is the problem. To bring about true and lasting change to the better, we must replace the present global political-economic system - oligarchic capitalism backed by the power of the state - with one that would let the people take charge of their lives.

Ecocentric Living: A Way Forward Towards Zero Carbon: A Conversation about Indigenous Law and Leadership Based on Custodianship and Praxis

This paper reflects on leadership shown in Venda, Southern Africa to protect the lungs of the planet and draws out key themes on the way Indigenous wisdom — underpinned by a sense of the sacred and the profane – expressed in solidarity with nature - are vital for protecting forests. It explores indigenous wisdom on their kinship with organic and inorganic sacred totems (plants, animals and features of the landscape) which are protected through relationships that inform governance. The ongoing community of practice and related projects make a case for standing together to address climate change. The paper was developed as part of a University of South Africa project together with the named authors. Mphatheleni Makaulule has developed an a priori and a posteriori approach to Ecosystemic governance that resonates with the work of Wangari Maathai. Makaulule’s leadership in Venda that is discussed with fellow project members who are exploring how the agendas for COP 26 could be attained by fostering law informed by Bateson’s concept an “ecology of mind – which means an understanding of human beings’ place within living systems and our need for both education and laws to protect ecosystems such as forests (which are the lungs of the world) and the water systems (which are the life blood of all living systems). The governance approach in Venda emphasised the need to think in terms of our relationships with all living systems. The idea of extending a sense of solidarity to others is explored deeply with Makaulule and colleagues by considering similar approaches in other places, such as the Amazon where Makaulule spent time learning from shamanic leaders, Ghana (where Akwasi Achemfuor has undertaken research), Northern Territory and South Australia (where McIntyre was mentored by Peter Turner and Olive Veverbrants). The paper also refers to the work of Widianingsih based on an in-depth discussion on the Kasepuhan Ciptagelar community in West Java that has also been protecting the forests for more than 300 years. The authors explore whether attributing personhood to nature, could be regarded as limiting a notion of mystical and pragmatic recognition of interbeing or even a form of colonising the notion of interbeing? We suggest that a community of practice approach (Wenger, 1999, Wenger et al., 2009) to support learning organisations and communities could support two-way education to enable cross cultural, cross disciplinary and transnational learning to support steps towards wellbeing through sharing our understanding of interbeing in dialogue, it became clear that transcendence through totemism, dreams and shamanistic rituals support a sense of oneness with nature, relationality as well as a sense of awe, solidarity and responsibility for others which is being increasingly recognised in the arts and sciences.

Decolonising money: learning from collective struggles for self-determination

As a reflection of our politically engaged research, this paper addresses the multiple challenges of transforming money for the emergence of the Pluriverse, arguing that practical efforts of emancipation and autonomy need to dismantle the colonial nature of our current monetary system: the flip side of the colonial state. On the one hand, we look into Chiloé, a territory marked by long-term relations of colonialism, dependency and extraction, where the arrival of monetised forms of work in extractive industries has meant the destruction of former ways of inhabiting the territory. On the other, we explore the emergence of the Circles project, in Berlin, that aims at creating a basic income from the bottom-up, whereby people in different communities issue money equally and exchange with each other without the need for state cash. More than assuming that money in itself is 'bad', we suggest that a recovery of the social and ecological fabric of life could be done through local money systems, designed and managed by the communities themselves, delivered and redistributed as a basic income. Moving to a plural monetary system based on relations of care would lead to a recovery of history as a project of collective self-determination.

From democracy at others’ expense to externalization at democracy’s expense: Property-based personhood and citizenship struggles in organized and flexible capitalism

This contribution investigates the anthropological foundations of European democracies’ continuous entanglement with economic and military expansionism and a hierarchical separation between public and private spheres, both of which have enabled the appropriation of nature and others’ labour as property on which citizens’ abstract personhood could be founded. Drawing on an argument made by David Graeber, it is suggested that modern European history can be interpreted as a process of the ‘generalization of avoidance’, in which such abstract, property-based forms of personhood, which were initially what defined the superior party in relations of hierarchy, came to be a model for the figures of market participant and citizen within the spheres of formal equal exchange of economy and politics. From this perspective, and building on an account of different stages of capitalist history as ‘subjectivation regimes’, the article then analyses the transition from the ‘exclusive democracy’ of post-war organized capitalism in Western Europe, in which citizens’ entitlement, through the collective guarantees of ‘social property’ (Castel), increasingly allowed individualized competitive practices of status attainment and gave rise to individualist movements for extended citizenship, to current-day flexible capitalism. This regime, seizing on those calls and instrumentalizing the desires for competitive status consumption, has effected a broad restructuring of the social as a unified field of competition in which new hierarchies and inequalities materialize in global chains of appropriation, causing a ‘dividual’ fragmentation of property-based personhood and generating calls for responsible citizenship as an inherent counter-movement. In conclusion, it is suggested that anthropologists have much to contribute to investigating the possibility of democratic, post-capitalist ‘anthropologies of degrowth’.

Countering corporate violence: Degrowth, ecosocialism and organising beyond the destructive forces of capitalism

Corporate violence is a form of organised violence motivated or caused by material interest, profit-seeking or economic expansion. It is inflicted on human beings or ecosystems. Complementing a Marxist theoretical frame with literature on ecosocialism and degrowth, we examine how corporate violence is inherent to and has been consistently encouraged by the capitalist mode of production. By drawing on the concepts of primitive accumulation and social metabolism, we visibilise how such violence is manifested within the productive forces of capitalism – natural resources, labour, technology and money. Corporate violence, we argue, may only be countered in a post-capitalist society where the productive forces are radically transformed. We build on degrowth principles to articulate how corporate violence may be countered and how post-growth organising of productive forces may look.

Ecological Economics Beyond Markets

Non-market practices and institutions make up much of every economy. Even in today's most developed capitalist societies, people produce things that are not for sale and allocate them through sharing, gifts, and redistribution rather than buying and selling. This article is about why and how ecological economists should study these non-market economies. Historically, markets only emerge when states forcibly create them; community members do not tend to spontaneously start selling each other goods and services. Markets work well for coordinating complex industrial webs to satisfy individual tastes, but they are not appropriate for governing the production or distribution of entities that are non-rival, non-excludable, not produced for sale, essential need satisfiers, or culturally important. Moreover, we argue, markets do not serve justice, sustainability, efficiency, or value pluralism, the foundations of ecological economics. We sketch an agenda for research on economic practices and institutions without markets by posing nine broad questions about non-market food systems and exploring the evidence and theory around each. By ignoring and demeaning non-market economies, researchers contribute to creating markets' dominance over social life. Observing, analyzing, theorizing, supporting, promoting, creating, and envisioning non-market economies challenges market hegemony.

The Case for Studying Non-Market Food Systems

Markets dominate the world’s food systems. Today’s food systems fail to realize the normative foundations of ecological economics: justice, sustainability, efficiency, and value pluralism. Drawing on empirical and theoretical literature from diverse intellectual traditions, I argue that markets, as an institution for governing food systems, hinder the realization of these objectives. Markets allocate food toward money, not hunger. They encourage shifting costs on others, including nonhuman nature. They rarely signal unsustainability, and in many ways cause it. They do not resemble the efficient markets of economic theory. They organize food systems according to exchange value at the expense of all other social, cultural, spiritual, moral, and environmental values. I argue that food systems can approach the objectives of ecological economics roughly to the degree that they subordinate market mechanisms to social institutions that embody those values. But such “embedding” processes, whether through creating state policy or alternative markets, face steep barriers and can only partially remedy food markets’ inherent shortcomings. Thus, ecological economists should also study, promote, and theorize non-market food systems.

Performing Values Practices and Grassroots Organizing: The Case of Solidarity Economy Initiatives in Greece

This article discusses solidarity economy initiatives as instances of grassroots organizing, and explores how ‘values practices’ are performed collectively during times of crisis. In focusing on how power, discourse and subjectivities are negotiated in the everyday practices of grassroots exchange networks (GENs) in crisis-stricken Greece, the study unveils and discusses three performances of values practices, namely mobilization of values, re-articulation of social relations, and sustainable living. Based on these findings, and informed by theoretical analyses of performativity, we propose a framework for studying the production and reproduction of values in the context of GENs, and the role of values in organizing alternatives.

Post-Fordist reconfigurations of gender, work and life: theory and practice

Based on an in-depth study with 56 informants (25 women and 31 men), across the ICT (information and communication technology), creative and academic sectors in one city/regional hub in Ireland, this article investigates the so-called revolution in work/life practices associated with the post-Fordist labour processes of the Knowledge Economy from the perspectives of workers themselves. Recent theorizations of post-Fordist work patterns emphasize a rearranging of work and life place boundaries; a reconfiguring of work and life time boundaries; and a dissolving of the gendered boundaries of work and life (production and social reproduction) (Adkins and Dever ; Morini and Fumagalli ; Gill and Pratt ; Weeks ; Hardt and Negri ). Our findings suggest that, instead of dissolving boundaries, workers constantly struggle to draw boundaries between what counts as work and as life, and that this varies primarily in relation to gender and stage in a gendered life trajectory. Work extensification is compensated for via a perceived freedom to shape one's own life, which is articulated in terms of individualized boundary-drawing. While younger men embraced 'always on' work, they also articulated anxieties about how these work habits might interfere with family aspirations. This was also true for younger women who also struggled to make time for life in the present. For mothers, boundary drawing was articulated as a necessity but was framed more in terms of personal choice by fathers. Although all participants distinguished between paid work and life as distinct sites of value, boundaries were individually drawn and resist any easy mapping of masculinity and femininity onto the domains of work and life. Instead, we argue that it is the process of boundary drawing that reveals gendered patterns. The personalized struggles of these relatively privileged middle-class workers centre on improving the quality of their lives, but raise important questions about the political possibilities within and beyond the world of post-Fordist labour.

Unfree Labor

This review examines the ambiguous condition of unfree labor in modern, Fordist, or postindustrial systems of exploitation. Unfree labor is reviewed across two multidisciplinary strands of research. The first pertains to forms of coercion and exploitation of labor in situations of human mobility or bondage—so-called modern-day slavery and human trafficking. The second attends to the effects of precariousness and dependency conceived at the interstice of recent theorizations of affect and belonging. Whereas the first case is framed as an exception, morally and legally condemned, the second is presented as a new ordinary form of inequality. A theoretical and empirical engagement that straddles both literatures under the prism of unfree labor consolidates this renewed anthropological focus on work. This review suggests that the objectification and dehumanization of labor should be placed back at the heart of anthropological reflection to pave the way for a refined scrutiny of exploitation, inequality, and dispossession.

Comparative models of American Indian economic development: Capitalist versus cooperative in the United States and Canada

The purpose of this article is to use a comparative case study method to evaluate the different existing economic development practices of American Indian peoples in the United States and Canada. The basis of comparison is the organizational structure of businesses with the comparison being between capitalist and cooperative forms. The goal is to understand how organizational type (or mode of production) is connected to the production of contemporary culture and social relations. The main conclusion is that, while not equivalent to traditional indigenous economies, cooperative structures are closer than capitalist ones to facilitating and reproducing traditionalist forms of sociality and cultural production.