Solidarity Cities

"Examining the impact of alternative solidarity-based community economic development, Solidarity Cities uniquely juxtaposes spatial patterns of solidarity activity with other demographic information, highlighting racial, class, and gender complexities in solidarity economies that are often missed or ignored. At the same time, the book does the double job of analyzing and celebrating how and where solidarity economies operate and thrive, providing ‘defense and resistance’ against society’s structural inequities."—Jessica Gordon Nembhard, author of Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice

"With studious theoretical and methodological frameworks, Solidarity Cities is a truly interdisciplinary study that knits together a solid foundation for understanding and studying alternative economies. This is remarkable, difficult, refreshing, and crucial scholarship."—Keally McBride, University of San Francisco

Mapping the transformative effects of America’s urban solidarity economies

Solidarity economies, characterized by diverse practices of cooperation and mutual support, have long played pivotal but largely invisible roles in fostering shared survival and envisioning alternatives to racial capitalism globally and in the United States. This book maps the thriving existence of these cooperative networks in three differently sized American cities, highlighting their commitment to cooperation, democracy, and inclusion and demonstrating the desire—and the pressing need—to establish alternative foundations for social and economic justice.

Collectively authored by four social scientists, Solidarity Cities analyzes the deeply entrenched racial and economic divides from which cooperative networks emerge as they work to provide unmet basic needs, including food security, affordable housing, access to fair credit, and employment opportunities. Examining entities such as community gardens, credit unions, cooperatives, and other forms of economic solidarity, the authors highlight how relatively small yet vital interventions into public life can expand into broader movements that help bolster the overall well-being of their surrounding communities.

Bringing together insights from geography, political economy, and political science with mapping and spatial analysis methodologies, surveys, and in-depth interviews, Solidarity Cities illuminates the extensive footprints of solidarity economies and the roles they play in communities. The authors show how these initiatives act as bulwarks against gentrification, exploitation, and economic exclusion, helping readers see them as part of the past, present, and future of more livable and just cities.

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Maliha Safri is professor of economics at Drew University. Her writing has been published in Antipode, Signs, and Environmental Policy and Governance.

Marianna Pavlovskaya is professor of geography at Hunter College and CUNY Graduate Center. She is coeditor of Rethinking Neoliberalism: Resisting the Disciplinary Regime.

Stephen Healy is associate professor of geography at Western Sydney University and coauthor of Take Back the Economy: An Ethical Guide for Transforming Our Communities (Minnesota, 2013).

Craig Borowiak is professor of political science at Haverford College and author of Accountability and Democracy: The Pitfalls and Promise of Popular Control.

Contents

Preface

Introduction: Solidarity Economies and the Unmaking of Racial Capitalism

1. Seeing Solidarity Cities: The Power of Mapping and Counter-Mapping

2. Making Cities with Solidarity through Time

3. Constructing the Solidarity City, Stone by Stone

4. Navigating Fault Lines in the Food Solidarity Economy

5. Edgework: Cooperative Encounters

6. Bulwarks: Build and Defend the Solidarity City

Conclusion: Horizons of Economic Solidarity and More Livable Worlds

Acknowledgments

Appendix: Glossary and Resources

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Open Access Manifold Edition