A Postcapitalist Politics

2006
Author:

J. K. Gibson-Graham

Presents compelling alternatives to capitalism—and strategies for achieving them

In this creatively argued follow-up to their book The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It), J. K. Gibson-Graham offer already existing alternatives to a global capitalist order and outline strategies for building alternative economies. A Postcapitalist Politics reveals a prolific landscape of economic diversity—one that is not exclusively or predominantly capitalist—and examines the challenges and successes of alternative economic interventions.

A Postcapitalist Politics is a remarkable contribution from so many perspectives, and anyone who is concerned with developing new kinds of economic and community relationships should absorb its messages.

Economic Geography

Is there life after capitalism? In this creatively argued follow-up to their book The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It), J. K. Gibson-Graham offer already existing alternatives to a global capitalist order and outline strategies for building alternative economies.

A Postcapitalist Politics reveals a prolific landscape of economic diversity—one that is not exclusively or predominantly capitalist—and examines the challenges and successes of alternative economic interventions. Gibson-Graham bring together political economy, feminist poststructuralism, and economic activism to foreground the ethical decisions, as opposed to structural imperatives, that construct economic “development” pathways. Marshalling empirical evidence from local economic projects and action research in the United States, Australia, and Asia, they produce a distinctive political imaginary with three intersecting moments: a politics of language, of the subject, and of collective action.

In the face of an almost universal sense of surrender to capitalist globalization, this book demonstrates that postcapitalist subjects, economies, and communities can be fostered. The authors describe a politics of possibility that can build different economies in place and over space. They urge us to confront the forces that stand in the way of economic experimentation and to explore different ways of moving from theory to action.

J. K. Gibson-Graham is the pen name of Katherine Gibson and Julie Graham, feminist economic geographers who work, respectively, at the Australian National University in Canberra and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

A Postcapitalist Politics is a remarkable contribution from so many perspectives, and anyone who is concerned with developing new kinds of economic and community relationships should absorb its messages.

Economic Geography

Lucid and engaging.

Political Geography

Packed with unpolished creativity, the book reads less like a treatise, and more like an invitation to join the authors on a wild road trip. It is an enticing opportunity.

Organization and Environment

The focus is on what local groups can do ‘here and now’ to develop non-capitalist relations without waiting for the system as a whole to be overthrown.

Journal of Australian Political Economy

J.K. Gibson-Graham’s A Postcapitalist Politics is relevant to sociologists, as well as other scholars and organizers, drawn to activist research.

Critical Sociology

The theory, language, and ethics that J.K. Gibson-Graham offer begins to corrode the iron cage and to imagine the contours of political economies to come. J.K. Gibson-Graham’s most recent book trumpets the possibility of a new and better political economic tomorrow while remaining admirably realistic about the present.

Environment and Planning A

A Postcapitalist Politics represents a continuing engagement by Gibson-Graham in forcing the recognition of an array of nurturing and sustaining activities, and the connections between them by reframing the language through which components of the economy are understood and talked about in academic and popular speech.

Geographical Review

Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments

Introduction: A Politics of Economic Possibility

1. Affects and Emotions for a Postcapitalist Politics
2. Reluctant Subjects: Subjection and Becoming
3. Constructing a Language of Economic Diversity
4. The Community Economy
5. Surplus Possibilities: The Intentional Economy of Mondragón
6. Cultivating Subjects for a Community Economy
7. Building Community Economies

Notes
Bibliography
Previous Publications

Index