Making geographies and histories? Constructing local ... - CiteSeerX

Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 2004, volume 22, pages 595 ^ 617

DOI:10.1068/d50j

Making geographies and histories? Constructing local circuits of value Roger Lee

Department of Geography, Queen Mary, University of London, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS, England; e-mail: [email protected]

Andrew Leyshon

School of Geography, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, England; e-mail: [email protected]

Theresa Aldridge

Department of Geography and Earth Sciences, Brunel University, Uxbridge, Middx UB8 3PH, England; e-mail: [email protected]

Jane Tooke

Centre for Urban and Community Research, Goldsmiths College, University of London, New Cross, London SE14 6NW, England; e-mail: [email protected]

Colin Williams

Department of Geography, University of Leicester, Leicester LE1 7RH, England; e-mail: [email protected]

Nigel Thriftô

School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol, University Road, Bristol BS8 1SS, England Received 19 October 2001; in revised form 19 November 2002 Abstract. Reflecting on findings from research conducted in the United Kingdom, we consider some implications for an understanding of economic geographies of the emergence of local currency systems (LCSs) within developed economies. LCSs are founded on the creation of local currencies and driven by localöbut contestedöcircuits of consumption, exchange, and production. In this paper we are concerned with three interrelated sets of issues: the intersections of social and material relations and practices in the construction of economic geographies; the possibilities öconstrained by these intersections öof creating alternative economic geographies; and the consequent possibilities of contributing to economic proliferation. We distinguish between three main forms of LCSö LETSystems, LETS schemes, and Time Dollarsödifferentiated along a range of institutional, organisational, ethical, and moral dimensions. These LCSs reflect and illustrate the diversity of meanings, understandings, and intentions brought to bear upon economic geographies. The existenceöeven if only temporaryöof LCSs is testament to the (limited) possibilities of local economic self-determination and organisation; but their material ineffectiveness, decline, and uneven geographical spread reflect their formative links with mainstream practices and social relations and their internal contradictions and barriers. These characteristics illustrate the vulnerabilities inherent in all economic geographies and not just in those that are locally constructed.

Introduction In his account of the fate of the Zambian copper belt after the collapse of the price of copper in world markets, the creeping decrepitude of its mining industry, and the burdens of external debt and IMF intervention, James Ferguson (1999, page 257) draws attention to the ways in which, as a matter of survival, individuals and households switch to seemingly forgotten and redundant modes of economic and social behaviour. Evoking the ideas of evolutionary theorist Steven Jay Gould, Ferguson argues that economic and social development does not proceed in a linear or successive fashion but is, rather, ô Life and Environmental Sciences Division, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3PD, England; e-mail: [email protected]

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R Lee, A Leyshon, T Aldridge, J Tooke, and coauthors

proliferative. A range of economic forms, often transferred from the global `periphery' to the `core', may be reconstituted or invented and put to use. These may involve improvisation within the realm of civil society as communities have experimented with practices and institutions that have worked sometimes as adjuncts to existing systems, but also, sometimes, as alternatives. And such innovations are not merely a function of economic crisis. They may arise for positive reasons to do with resistance to, and the desire to displace mainstream forms of, economic activity. Examples include the growth of the informal economy (Offe and Heinze, 1992), the construction of local circuits of consumption, exchange, and production (Lee, 1996), and the proliferation of informal financial institutions, such as rotating savings and credit associations, credit unions and the like (Ardener and Burman, 1995; Fuller, 1998; Sterling, 1995). The past twenty years or so have witnessed the widespread construction of localised circuits of exchange in the form of local currency systems (LCSs) in many countries of the developed world. The term `local currency system' is coined in this paper to refer to a range of local or community currency schemes, including LETSystems, LETS schemes,(1) and Time Dollars (see, for example, Bowring, 1998; Boyle, 1999; Croall, 1997; Douthwaite, 1996; North 1998; 1999a; 1999b, for detailed and critical discussion). In this paper, LCSs are interpreted as locally constructed economic geographies. They seek to foster and encourage circuits of consumption, exchange, and production founded on monetary networks which serve to define the spatial extent of the `local', and so to offer a locally run means of making a living independently of the mainstream economy. Thus LCSs are economic geographies designed to conform to social and material norms which are morally acceptable to their administrators and participants in the attempt to bring about what are considered to be `progressive' social and economic change. However, like all such economic geographies, they are founded on contested sets of social relations. Indeed, the contradictions and conflicts within LCSs, and between them and the social relations in the mainstream economy, are a major factor in their limited development. Although there were over 300 LCSs operating in the United Kingdom by the year 2000, the average size of their membership was only 72 people and their average turnover of »4664 per annum was equivalent to only »1.4 million in the United Kingdom as a whole (Williams et al, 2001). It is, therefore, immediately obvious that LCSs have only a limited material impact on the economy and on the localities within which they are constructed. So in what sense do they have any more than curiosity value? Whilst the emergence of such proactive, local, and bottom-up systems raises a range of critical questions concerning their significance as responses to uneven development and social exclusion (see Williams et al, 2001), their development also points to a wider set of questions. These concern the nature of the cultural constructions (Peet, 1996; 1997; Thrift and Olds, 1996) and conditions of existence (Cutler et al, 1977) of economic geographies; the place of economic activity in the various forms of sociability which give shape and meaning to social relations; and the constrained potential for people to make their own histories and geographies. These are, to say the least, big questions, but detailed empirical work on, and ethnographic involvement in, LCSs enabled at least an approach to an appreciation of their functioning as locally constructed flows of value, of the complex social understandings brought to bear upon them, and of the (1) LETS stands for local exchange and trading schemes. The distinctionöwhich is especially marked for their practitionersöbetween LETSystems and LETS schemes is elaborated below. When referring in this paper to both LETSystems and LETS schemes, we use the generic abbreviation LETS. At all other times, the specific terms LETSystems and LETS schemes are used.

Constructing local circuits of value

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intersections of local and nonlocal relations in forming the geographies in and through which people make a living.(2) However, in this paper we claim neither that the social complexity of LCSs is unusual nor that it is somehow commensurate with their economic effectiveness. Rather, we argue that: (a) LCSs are significant less for their material effectiveness than for their demonstration of the potential proliferation (see, for example, Gibson-Graham, 1996) of economic and monetary geographies, a multiplicity thought to have been disabled with the spread of modern, singular monetary systems and their ability to homogenise financial space (Dalton, 1965; Leyshon, 1997; Leyshon and Thrift, 1997; Zelizer, 1994; 1998); (b) an analysis of LCSs might help to elucidate the complex sociopolitical underpinnings of economic activity and the engagement of people in it; and (c) LCSs are a further reminder of the powerful political point that economic geographies are created by and for the people who make their livings through them. The remainder of the paper is in three sections. In the first of these we outline the nature of LCSs as locally organised and locally constructed circuits of reproduction and monetary networks. In the second we analyse three variants of LCSsöLETSystems, LETS schemes, and Time Dollarsödifferentiated around distinctive and contested sets of social relations and the economic activity shaped by them. The third section concludes the paper. In it we consider the gap between the ambitious economic, social, and political agendas of LCSs and their limited material effectiveness. Local currency systems LCSs are local circuits of consumption, production, and multilateral exchange facilitated by the provision, distribution, and use of an independent local currency. They are, therefore, nothing if not highly ambitious and intensely practical in intent. For many of their advocates, LCSs are intended to work in conjunction with the formal economy and to be connected to it in various ways in order to facilitate their extension and credibility. For others, however, LCSs are intended to operate in parallel to the formal economy. Notwithstanding this distinction, what is common to all LCSs öand what differentiates them from other innovatory financial systems such as microcredit systems or credit unionsöis that their objective is the construction of circuits of value that are independent of mainstream institutions or processes. The intention of their protagonists is that possibilities for production, consumption, and exchange suppressed by, or conducted in an unacceptable fashion within, the social and financial relations of reproduction in formal economic geographies, may be realised within LCSs via the use, outside such geographies, of an independent currency. Local currencies

The local currencies that act as the means of exchange within LCSs are not formally exchangeable with a national currency, although they may be related to such currencies in terms of nominal value. Indeed, such currencies do not have an independent existence, the supply of which may constrain levels of economic activity. Rather, they come into practical existence only through the agreement of participants to use them (2) The research on which this paper is based was conducted in the United Kingdom during the period 1997 ^ 2000. One of its objectives was to assess the potential of LETS for addressing problems of social exclusion. The research deployed a variety of action-based and qualitative research techniques, including interviews, focus groups, and ethnography in a number of locations: Stroud, Cheltenham, Stonehouse, and Newent in the South West of England, and Brixton in inner London. In addition, a series of shorter visits, interviews, and focus groups was used at a range of other LCSs at various locations within the United Kingdom [see Williams et al (2001) for details of the major findings and of the research sites used].

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to engage in exchange.(3) They may circulate physically, in the form of notes or cheques registered centrally, or virtually, as debits and credits within electronic accounting programmes made public to members of LCSs. The possibilities for exchange, along with the information transfers necessary to enable it, are registered centrally in a regularly published directory or through an e-based registry made available to all members. Trading within an LCS is, therefore, both very personalöin that offers and wants reflect individual skills and attributes öand very publicöin that these personal details and details of transactions appear in the published directory or registry. If exchange is based on direct contact between buyers and sellers, its value remains locked into the local system and cannot leak out beyond it. Access to formal money is not, thereby, a prerequisite for participation in economic activity within an LCS. LCSs as monetary networks Although it may be restricted in geographical scale, exchange within LCSs is multilateral and not constrained by the limitations inherent within the bilateral relations characteristic of barter exchange.(4) Rather, insofar as information about the LCS network is kept up-to-date and accurate, the local currency acts as a localised form of what Nigel Dodd (1994) calls `monetary networks'. Such networks offer information not just about the possibility of individual transactions (sale and purchase), but also about the extent (diversity, size, geographical range) of those possibilities and so offers at least some of the prerequisites for multilateral exchange. Dodd argues that all monetary systems are characterised by five essential abstract qualities (see table 1): accountancy, which enables `money' in the network to function as a medium of exchange, a store of value, and a measure of account; regulation, to protect and defend these functions of money; reflexivity, by which past experience of the network enables participants to develop expectations of the future. In combination with a system of regulation, such expectations enable the network to develop as a reproducible means of the circulation of value and so to project forward in time or, conversely, to disable it from so doing; sociality, through which it becomes possible for information about exchange and value to circulate between actors within the network; and spatiality, whereby monetary networks are embedded not just within particular territories but also in geographically differentiated frames of meaning and significance Table 1. Local currency systems (LCSs) and national currencies as monetary networks. Dimension

LCSs

National currency

Accountancy

medium of exchange; measure of value

Regulation Reflexivity Sociality Spatiality (length of network)

low to moderate low to moderate low to moderate short to moderate

medium of exchange; measure of value; store of value high high high very long

(3)

However, for some LCS practitioners, the notion of currencies regulating exchange between participants is abhorrent. They would interpret LCSs more as a weakly institutionalised system of favours. (4) Such limitations may, however, be overcome in commercially organised bartering.


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As monetary networks, LCSs differ from the formal, state-regulated mainstream monetary system along all five of the abstract properties identified by Dodd. The system of accountancy within LCSs revolves around special, local credit money which serves as a measure of value and as a medium of exchange, but does not function well as a store of value. No interest can be earned on credit accumulated, and the system is an accumulation of credits with no external value other than when they are activated through expenditure. LETS, for example, exist only in the act of exchange. As one leading UK advocate of LETSystems puts it, ``... the other big thing is money creation ... how money is actually created which is something that nobody, as far as I can make out, hardly ever thinks about. When you ask them they haven't the faintest idea, and that's very interesting. Whereas LETS is created at the point of use. As far as I understand [mainstream] money, it's created when you borrow it. Which is why it's highly inflationary ...'' (Angus Soutar, interview, 20 May 2000). The lack of a credit system and a means of accumulating capital places an inherent limit on the possibilities of LETS schemes as contenders for the creation of viable alternative economies. LCSs have an informal system of regulation and one of the difficulties that they face as networks is the considerable overlap between regulation and reflexivity. Regulation is not so much legal as moral, and relies primarily upon goodwill and the collective moral suasion of the LCS as a whole. A central regulatory problem facing LCSs is that of the `free rider': an individual who accumulates large debts through purchasing goods and services through the system, but who makes little or no attempt to reduce their indebtedness and/or who leaves the system or the area before doing so. The problem here is not so much that `debt' is being incurredöin a sense, that is the point of some LCSs at leastö but, rather, that credits in excess of what it is possible to spend in the system are accumulated by those energetically engaging in trade. As a result, the distribution of trading amongst members becomes increasingly skewed whilst the enthusiasts become demoralised, so hastening the burnout of the system as a whole. Without an automatic mechanism, rigorously applied, the only solution to these problems lies in persuasion and encouragementöboth activities which also take up a large amount of time. Thus, in terms of reflexivity, expectations of the long-term survival of LCSs into the future are brought into question whilst, in the short term, the issue of trust is crucialö especially in trades involving personal contact (such as childcare, for example). Here, questions of regulation become indistinguishable from those of reflexivity. The sociality of LCSs is partly institutionalised, especially at the local level. Many are linked to larger, national organisations but these have only limited scope to engage in the promotion or regulation of transactions. In some LCSs, a local office may help to encourage contact between members by advertising the goods and services offered and sought by members and by organising trading meetings, which act like a kind of trade fair for members, or socials intended to spread knowledge of the network by mutual face-to-face contact. However, it is active trading itself that is intended to drive the circulation of information and value through the network. Again, with skewed patterns of participation in trading, the dissemination of information is also skewed and so merely serves to intensify the problems of sociality and reflexivity and reduces the material effectiveness of LCSs. LCSs tend to have constrained spatial boundaries. Although they exist worldwide and, in that respect, are part of long networks, most operate as inherently local institutions. Thus, although LCSs are able to create financial spaces that are in many ways a parallel to the monetary mainstream, the majority do not extend very far and

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are tied to utilising the resources that exist within their area.(5) And, again, connections between spatiality and reflexivity are important. For manyöbut by no means allö participants, trading in LCSs has a predominantly communitarian purpose. Engaging in economic activity on a face-to-face basis is seen as a means of reigniting a sense of community within localities. This consideration of LCSs as monetary networks points to some of their inherent possibilities and limitations, serves to demonstrate their distinctive characteristics as monetary processes, and opens up some of the social and cultural underpinnings of economic geographies. LCSs as circuits of value However, in representing LCSs as monetary networks, there is a danger of underplaying their materiality. Local currencies and monetary networks are circuits of value involving flows of value through consumption, exchange, and production. In order to facilitate social and material survival, such circuits must sustain the delivery of such flows of value in appropriate quantities and distributions across space and time. In this sense, circuits of value are analogous to monetary networks. They point up not individual moments of consumption, exchange, and production, but the temporal and geographical extension of those moments (their reproduction) as critical features of any sustainable economic geography. Indeed, the reproducibility of economic geographies and the widespread belief in their reproducibility are their most fundamental conditions of existence (Lee, 2002). LCSs are no exceptions to this rule. Further, value is a social process as well as a material process: it is what is thought to be useful, helpful, uplifting, or, more narrowly but more generally, functional.(6) Thus, as circuits of value, LCSsölike all economic geographiesönecessarily involve intersections of material and social relations and practices in the formation and definition of value. In principle, the values embedded in the regulation and direction of circuits of reproduction may reflect a wide range of social objectives and influencesö environmental, religious, cultural, notions of social justice, and so on. However, the contemporary world is dominated by capitalist social relations which are, nevertheless, both diverse and contested. The uneven but expansionary historical geographies of capitalism serve to open up diverse localities whilst, at the same time, tending to reduce them to singular measures of value. It is not surprising, then, that there are reproductive limits to the promulgation of alternative values within LCSs, set by the social relations of capitalism. Finn Bowring (1998, page 106), for example, suggests that, on materially reproductive grounds alone, it is necessary to maintain the links between capitalist circuits of value and local circuits of value:

(5)

There is, of course, a real contradiction in putting undue focus and attention upon the selfsufficiency of the local. For many participants, it is precisely the shortness of the network that is the primary purpose and advantage of LCSs. This may be for explicitly communitarian reasons, or for reasons connected with a desire to keep money circulating locally. The intention is to limit uneven development associated with the emergence of geographies of comparative or absolute advantage, or with financial and corporate geographies of profitability. However, local circuits of value may be highly regressive and environmentally harmful. The geography of production based upon principles of comparative or absolute advantage may be more desirable in social and environmental terms than geographies of local autarky. Compare the social and ecological disasters of the Maoist `cellular economy' which was similarly motivated by a disavowal of comparative advantage over space. (6) In capitalism, for example, value is defined in terms of profitability although the precise measurement of profitability is contested and debated by financial consultancies amongst others (see, for example, Lester, 2000).


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`àlthough the self-limitation of needs is a vital cultural and political project, [it] is unlikely to succeed if people are not rewarded for their self-restraint with an expansion in disposable time. Given the meagre capital resourcesöand relatively low productivity levelsöof the local economy, it is unlikely that ... small-scale, selfsufficient communities ... would have much spare time to devote to labour-intensive, non-essential cultural pursuits or to pioneering entrepreneurial projects. Maintaining the tension between the micro-social activities of local trading systems and the more efficient and productive functioning of the macro-economic system is thus crucial to the protection of individual liberties and of the space for innovation, imagination, and experimental change.'' As practical attempts to create locally constructed values LCSs have the potential to open up a range of political possibilities (North, 1999a). However, as with all economic geographies, this potential is limited by uneasy and hotly contested fault lines between them and coexisting circuits of value, as well as by internal conflicts. The ways in which their participants attempt to negotiate this relationship reveal differences in their understanding of, and beliefs about, the èconomic' and the desirable nature and objectives of social reproduction. In the following section of the paper, three forms of LCS are used to illustrate the diverse ways in which these understandings and beliefs are translated into economic practice. Contradiction and reproduction: the practice of LCSs There are three main kinds of LCSs in operation in the United Kingdom: LETSystems, LETS schemes, and Time Dollars. This diversity reflects significant differences in the abstractions and systems of belief that inform their construction and objectives. It results in marked differences in the ways they operate as monetary networks (see table 2) and circuits of reproduction. In what follows, therefore, we explore the tensions and contradictions within and between LCSs. In so doing, we draw upon different kinds of information. In the case of LETSystems, we use information obtained directly from founders through a series of face-to-face interviews and e-mail interviews.(7) In the case of LETS schemes and Time Dollars, we draw upon detailed ethnographic work with both organisers and participants. Table 2. LETSystems, LETS schemes, and Time Dollars as monetary networks. Dimension

LETSystems

LETS schemes

Time Dollars

Accountancy

medium of exchange; measure of value low low to moderate low moderate to long

medium of exchange; measure of value low low low short

medium of exchange; measure of value moderate moderate moderate moderate

Regulation Reflexivity Sociality Spatiality (length of network)

LETSystems and amoral, libertarian geographies

Performing LETSystems The reemergence of LCSs towards the end of the 20th century was, initially at least, a result of a response to a process of economic disconnection brought about by uneven development within circuits of material reproduction. In the early 1980s, the Comox (7)

This was mainly a result of the fact that LETSystems have failed to make much of a foothold in the United Kingdom, although they have been more successful elsewhere, so there were very few active participants who we could recruit as respondents.

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Valley region in the province of British Columbia, Canada, was severely economically depressed. One response was the Comox Valley LETSystem, which was originally ``designed and implemented'' (Michael Linton, e-mail interview, 21 August 2000) by a dozen or so people, before others were drawn in to extend the influence of LCSs in the local area. Michael Linton, one of the founders of this system and a leading advocate for LETSystems, was succinct in describing the effectiveness of the scheme in counteracting local economic decline during the 1980s: ``First there was some money, then there was no money, then there was'' (e-mail interview, 21 August 2000). The ability of this system to take root owed much to the limited alternatives available within a natural-resource-dependent region of the province, and the existence there of a significant counterculture which had developed from the late 1960s onwards (Barnes and Hayter, 1992; Barnes et al, 1999). The significance of place and context in the construction of economic geographies is well exemplified in this historical geography. The designers of the Comox Valley LETSystem define a LETSystem in the following way: `À LETSystem Local Exchange Trading System is a self-regulating network which allows its users to issue and manage their own money supply within the boundaries of the network. The LETSystem accounting service maintains a system of accounts for its users. A LETSystem has the following essential characteristics: 1. A service in the community. Administrative costs are recovered, in the internal currency, from each account according to the cost of service. The service operates on a not-for-profit basis. 2. Consent is required at all times. There is never any obligation to trade. It is the account holders who have control over the movement of money into and out of their accounts. The administration can act only on the instructions of the account-holder who is making a payment. All accounts start at zero, no money is deposited or issued. 3. Key information is available to all account holders. Any account holder may know the balance (the degree of commitment) and trading volume (the level of participation) of any other account on the system. 4. A convenient measure. The unit of account is a measure equivalent to pound sterling (within the United Kingdom). 5. Your money belongs to you. Your money is personal, in every way your own money. No interest is charged or paid on balances. A personal money network that adopts all of the above criteria and agreements is a LETSystem'' (see http://www.gmlets.u-net.com/design accessed September 2001). LETSystems are accurately named: they represent an attempt to develop an efficient and effective system to transmit information about exchange in a community currency across a network. They are, in effect, very similar to the monetary transmission services provided by the formal financial system, and, within LETSystems, these services are provided at cost. LETSystems do not rely on the goodwill of volunteers.(8) LETSystems are set up to form trading links and developmental resources with local business and the voluntary sector.(9) Their quest for efficiency has led to the (8)

This is quite different from the way in which most LETS schemes and Time Dollars schemes work and is a major point of conflict between advocates of LETSystems and LETS schemes. (9) Peter North (1999b) provides a critical account of the possibilities and constraints facing LETS in this regard.


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promotion, as local money, of electronic technologies such as smart cards, examples of which are already in use for many forms of local interaction within certain communities. Such developments have the potential to enable money within the LETSystem monetary network to interact relatively freely with other monetary networks and, insofar as LETSystems moneys generate benefits for locally controlled processes of economic development, they are capable of challenging the hegemony of (national) money. Advocates of LETSystems are keen to emphasise the possibility for local proactivity presented by LCSs but, at the same time, also argue that an institutional and transactional infrastructure should be designed and implemented so that it is largely self-sustaining: ``... what we're doing has got to be practical and viable'' (Angus Soutar, interview, 22 May 2000). For the designers of this system, the overriding objective is to ``Do it well, do it so that it pays for itself. The performance of the system is probably less than 1 per cent of capacityö BUT it still pays its way. A money system that needs grants or volunteers to operate is a boat that don't float'' (Michael Linton, e-mail interview, 21 August 2000). This emphasis upon practicality and viability raises an important distinction within the world of LETS. It is the difference between planning and design: ``... with planning you're trying to influence everything that goes on all the time. But with design, you're trying to set something up that is inherently self-manageable'' (Angus Soutar, interview 20 May 2000). LETSystems are concerned primarily with design whereas LETS schemesödescribed in more detail in the next section of the paperöare concerned more with `planning', or at least with intervention. Indeed, the desire of LETSystem designers to establish the basic principles of the network and then to step back to allow it to unfold in its own way, contains more than an echo of complexity theory and notions of self-organisation, and of the attempt to establish `èmergent order in complex and unpredictable phenomena'' (Brian Goodwin, quoted in Thrift, 1999, page 33). This raises a deeper issue. The construction of monetary networks that work, in terms of sustaining a monetary system in which confidence (10) is largely unquestioned, is no easy task. The infrastructural fabric of conventional money networks extends from central banks and their international cooperation down to the probity and effectiveness of financial and retail institutions. An efficiently functioning infrastructure enables money to circulate in relatively unproblematic ways that appear almost invisible to its users. Such an infrastructure is difficult to replicate outside the framework of state regulationöwith all the resources devoted to itöand without the complex and extensive network of financial institutions which, for self-interested reasons, maintain (but also often undermine) the effectiveness of the mainstream monetary system.(11) Thus, a major preoccupation of those involved in LETSystems remains the provision of appropriate infrastructure (see, for example, http://www.driveout.demon.co.uk/ mrs2.html accessed September 2001). And the primary purpose of this infrastructure is to facilitate the emergence and practice of multiple currencies to break the power (10) Confidence rather than, for example, trust is seen by LETSystems designers as a crucial ingredient of their success. (11) Some measure of what is involved in purely material terms in establishing an appropriate monetary infrastructure may be gained from an appeal to banks and building societies launched in September 2000 by the Association of British Credit Unions for `àbout »15 million to establish a national organisation ... providing computer systems, treasury management, payment services and marketing support'' (Willman, 2000, page 3). As indicated above, however, there is rather more at stake than mere material support.

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relations associated with dominant currencies. The infrastructure of LETSystems is designed to transmit information between participants and to facilitate trading. And it is intended to be almost entirely (but not quite) neutral with respect to the social objectives of involvement in LETSystems. LETSystems as alternatives The point of this infrastructure (e-mail and other forms of electronic communication, smart cards, etc) is to facilitate multiple networks of interactions within multiple currencies. This is what Michael Linton calls `à means to pure exchange'' (e-mail conversation, 29 August 2000): ``LETSystems should be considered as essentially value free mechanisms that enable the community to realise their own directions'' (e-mail interview, 21 August 2000). Similarly, for a leading UK-based advocate of LETSystems, ``[It is] the philosophical thing that attracts me ... [it] is still the idea of Adam Smith's invisible hand, so that you don't get things like the state trying to interfere too much in people's daily lives ... one of the reasons I get attracted to things like LETS [is] because ... it's more a tool box approach for me'' (Angus Soutar, interview, 20 May 2000). The notion of community here is neither predetermined, for `à community is what its elements do'' (Michael Linton, e-mail conversation, 29 August 2000), nor is it necessarily defined only in terms of its place boundedness. In short, the objective of LETSystems is monetary diversity for use in ways that people who wish to make use of it see fit. This is a powerful libertarian political message, concerned with issues of personal autonomy, responsibility, and community: ``... there's the thing about individuality as well as the State. There's the thing about personal freedom as well as the advantages for people acting collectively and in terms of community ... nobody in LETS should be coerced into doing anything, and so it's about freedom of choice, freedom of association, but it's also about the benefits of collective activity'' (Angus Soutar, interview, 22 May 2000). Thus, the objective of multiple community currencies is to overcome the power relations and constraints inherent in the scarce medium of state-regulated mainstream money. The objective is to unlock the development potential and political freedoms of local economic geographies. ``The potential for the full space of exchange to be filled/fulfillable is only consistent with multiple currency options. Anyone can then do what they want, unrestricted by any lack of a suitable medium'' (Angus Soutar, interview, 22 May 2000). ``We are so accustomed to a singular money that we tend to bundle conventional monetary values into exchange as a whole without seeing what relates to the means and what to the matter of exchange. My view of community money systems ö IN PLURALöis that they reduce the politics to close to nothing. This is, I agree, very political'' (Michael Linton, e-mail interview, 6 September 2000, original emphasis). ``... exchange is (possibly) never value free, but the mechanism is. This is because it isn't singular and constrained, as with conventional money. Conventional money, as a commodity in itself, introduces power relations. Community money IF PLURALödoes not ... the consequences of the scarce medium are power relations'' (Michael Linton, e-mail interview, 29 August 2000, original emphasis). It is important to stress here that this project is indeed `very political' and not merely because of the power relations inherent in the scarcity and singularity of official currencies. Rather, the political character of plural moneys derives from the


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significance of mainstream moneys as a means of carrying and imposing capitalist relations of social reproduction across diverse geographies, and from associated practices of regulationöincluding monetary regulationöin the capitalist state. The provision of multiple currencies serves to contest the dominance of state-regulated capitalist social relations sustained and extended across exchanges in mainstream money. This is not a simplistic attempt to challenge capitalist relations of production and the imperatives of accumulation by means of regulating exchange relations. It is, much more ambitiously, an attempt to demonstrateöin practical, reproductive termsö that, given the convincing availability of a multiplicity of currency systems from which one can choose with confidence, it is possible to practise different forms of social relations in production and consumption. The objective here is not `pure exchange'ö an impossibilityöbut a challenge to the singular constraint of, and Foucauldian disciplining carried out by, conventional money and the power relations that are reproduced through it. The point is to provide multiple currencies and an efficient and effective means of exchange as an alternative to formal money. The implication, of course, is that LETSystems reject, or are at least hostile to, certain formal state structures and centralised policy prescriptions and administration. Indeed, there are strong echoes here of the arguments made by monetary libertarians such as Friedrich Hayek and Lawrence White. Both have advocated that the control of currencies be located in the hands of nonstate institutions, although in each case the justification has been in the interest of controlling inflation and monetary stability, rather than in the promotion of local economic and political self-determination (see Dodd, 1994, pages 36 ^ 40). Their arguments for making nonstate institutions responsible for the issue of currency is to place the process in the hands of economic actors that are less powerful than states and that, therefore, are more easily disciplined by the amoral `market', in order to ensure that the management of currencies is not subverted for `noneconomic', `political' purposes. The parallels between these arguments and those advanced by advocates of LETSystems are striking in this regard. Contradictions and ambivalence The amorality inherent in the construction and objectives of LETSystems is reflected in the failure or reluctance to take them up within national or local policy agendas, and the hostility generated by attempts to proselytise the LETSystems model. Consider this exchange with a leading UK proponent of LETSystems: A: `Ìt's a subversion. It's not good enough. For some people in this country, it's not good enough to have something innovative that attempts to re-engineer what's basically a social construct, this thing `money'. It's not good enough to do that, to improve the financial relationship between individuals, to give individuals and organisations a chance to increase their business and liquidity and their personal well-being. That's not good enough.'' Q: ``Why?'' A: `Ìt's not moral enough. We're adopting a systems approach. We're a bunch of engineers, right? We've got no morality. I've talked to people in the City of London ... [who say] Ì really like this work you are doing. It's such a change to help you out doing this'. It's not good enough that I'm adopting the systems approaches, because I'm still working within a market framework. I'm still advocating enterprise. I'm advocating freedom of association ... but the other big thing is `not invented here' ... you've got to be very careful about it. `Not invented here'.(12) You put those two things togetheröand the third thing is, because LETS has got (12)

That is, in the United KingdomöLETSystems originated in Canada.

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into this awful voluntary sector positioning, we're seeing the systemic problems of a sector in there'' (Angus Soutar, interview, 20 May 2000). This exchange highlights a double process of resistance to the incorporation of LETSystems within the wider economy and polity. On the one hand, it reveals the tendency within LETSystems to reject formalised state involvement in community development for the libertarian reasons outlined above and, on the other, it reveals a resistance to the incorporation of spontaneous institutions like LCSs into state policy: ``... in a LETSystem, it's not my job to carry out the government's social exclusion agenda. It's the same with the credit unions. Why is it the job of these people who are volunteers ... why is it all of a sudden our job to deal with social exclusion?'' (Angus Soutar, interview, 20 May 2000). This rejection of social engineering is not a million miles from arguments within neoliberal economics which both rejects overt attempts at social change and advocates the untrammelled market as the means through which questions of regulation and uneven development may be resolved. Such hostility towards `voluntary sector positioning' and attempts to combat social exclusion are also thinly veiled attacks upon the second form of LCS that we consider in this paper, LETS schemes. LETS schemes and moral geographies (13)

Performing LETS schemes Whereas the architects of LETSystems are concerned with their efficiency and the development of confidence in the multiple currencies made available through them, for those involved in LETS schemes it is the cultivation of personal trust and the search for an alternative to the impersonal nature of the formal economy that offers an important motive for participation: ``... when you phone someone in the Yellow Pages [you] are purely communicating on an economic level. I might want something that you've got ... [but] we don't have to get involved with each other personally ... . With LETS you join a community, where trading, by its very nature, takes place in and involves society. You 'phone somebody up, invariably on Friday. You may speak to the wife or the husband ... you may get their children. They may only be able to do the things that you want them to do, or you for them, in private ... so what's happening is (13)

The following analysis of LETS schemes is drawn from in-depth research undertaken in Stroud and Brixton. The Stroud LETS was founded in 1991 in a distinctive semirural market town within the relatively affluent southwest of England. Stroud is located in the Cotswolds between Bristol and Gloucester, and acts as a dormitory town for both cities. Despite this, 71% of LETS members were jobless. The town has a history of political radicalism, and has previously returned Green politicians in local elections. This was reflected in the membership of the LETS, where 60% of members indicated that their political preference was for the Green Party. The LETS was relatively successful, and was often held up as a beacon for the wider movement in the United Kingdom. It had some 350 accounts in the late 1990s that included 15 businesses, 2 community organisations, and 5 voluntary organisations. As a result, there was a relatively high turnover, with 50% of members trading more than 10 times per annum. The local currencyöStroudsöwas not linked to sterling, nor was there any debt limit or minimum wage rate. In comparison, the LETS in Brixton was more strongly regulated in this regard. The local currencyö Bricksöwas linked to sterling through a floating rate of (nominal) exchange, individual debt was limited to 250 Bricks, and there was as a minimum-wage rate of five Bricks per hour. However, despite being formed only a year later than the Stroud LETS, in 1992, the LETS in Brixton was only half the size. By the late 1990s Brixton LETS had 170 accounts, which included 2 registered businesses, 4 community organisations, and one church. Despite being located in a deprived area of inner London with a significant AfroCaribbean population, the membership contained a lower proportion of unwaged individuals than did Stroud (55%) and nonwhite members were underrepresented. Levels of turn-over were also lower, with only 20% of members trading more than 10 times a year, and 20% of members not trading at all.


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[that] trading activity is taking place in another time and space than it normally takes place.'' ``... people are able to share things within the LETS community that they wouldn't otherwise contribute or share. I mean sharing ... in a sharing environment. Even [obtaining] services that sterling buyers would be looking for'' (Stroud case study, interviews, Winter/Spring of 1998 and 1999). This draws attention once again to the difference of approach not only to the practices of LCSs but also to their objectives. For LETSystems, there are, as we have seen, no or minimal moral obligations; for LETS schemes, the alternative moralities of exchange are paramount. Thus, against the desire within LETSystems to design a formalised but unincorporated infrastructure for exchange, those who advocate LETS schemes argue that monetary integration with the formal financial system, and the concern for the provision of a pure means of exchange at cost, would destroy the very basis of the attraction of LETS as alternatives. Indeed, it is the notion of morally alternative, rather than multiple parallel, currencies that motivates many LETS schemes. They are practical, action-orientated, and performative responses to economic and social problems within the communities in which they are based. The economic practice of LETS schemes is based not on fitting into a preexisting set of economic and social relations but upon the practice of matching wants and needs with the skills and time to satisfy them, whilst using notions of value that conform with desired local norms. These may reflect, for example, ecologically sustainable values, a desire to foster social capital within local communities, or the forgoing of efficiency and choice in favour of a lower material standard of living in order to free up time to engage in alternative activities. By contrast, within LETSystems, the question of the social objectives of engaging in a LETS is hardly relevant. Furthermore, LETS schemes are run in a more or less dirigiste fashion by volunteers who may form a core group to direct and facilitate the LETS. Compared with LETSystems, LETS schemes are, therefore, in certain ways more coercive: concerned with intervention, in the running of local economic geographies. The `socials' and `trading days' characteristic of many LETS schemes are intended to facilitate trade and certain kinds of social objectivesösuch as the social inclusion of various marginal groups. Indeed, social agendas of this sort may compete with trade as the driving force within the scheme. LETS schemes have, therefore, a far more pronounced moral agenda than do LETSystems. They reflect a response not merely to the lack of money, scarcity, and the power relations inherent in a singular, highly regulated monetary system but to the perceived social inadequacies of the prevailing monetary systems. Thus, whereas LETSystems are underpinned by notions of libertarianism and selforganisation, LETS schemes are animated more by sentiments of mutuality, and directed communitarianism.(14) LETS schemes as alternatives The economic development of LCSs beyond a desire for greater social contact within a community is a response not only to the failures of circuits of value but to the positive possibilities generated by their construction for conducting economic activity in ways more acceptable to their participants. In the face of what is seen as a loss of control in making their livings, participants see LETS schemes as offering some alternatives and a means of resistance öalbeit in a mundane and `slow-burn' manneröto prevailing economic norms: (14)

The desire for the creation of a more humane and supportive community expressed by many of the respondents in LETS schemes is strongly reminiscent of arguments for greater levels of communitarianism made by the likes of Amitai Etzioni (see, for example, Etzioni, 1995).

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`Ì think the main thing that grabbed me about it in the beginning, was just that feeling of somehow taking control ... I had a feeling that eventually, at some point, [formal] currencies would get into a mess ... I had a feeling there'd be crashes and ups and downs and inflation and all that sort of thing, and I just thought that with LETS you can be separate from that really. So, you're taking some responsibility, because you feel so helpless don't you? And I suppose, in everything that I'm doing, I like to feel I'm kind of ... I'm doing it, I'm not having it done to me. I suppose that's what I felt about LETS really. And I thought, well, if you get a scheme going now when things are reasonably okay ... and then if things do suddenly get bad you've got it there ready to blossom and expand, whereas if you suddenly got it going in a kind of crisis, I thought it would be a lot more difficult'' (Stroud case study). ``... I suppose that I've always been involved in radical politics since, I guess, the early '60s in many ways, and this, to my mind, the whole market global economy, seemed something that wasn't doing local economies very [much] good, and [there was a] need to look for other ways of ... how to relate to one another but to keep the economy within the local community ...'' (Stroud case study). More positively, LETS schemes also facilitate the pursuit of alternative forms of economic geography. ``Well, we don't agree with the kind of society we've got now, the economic or the social ideas that are about. We feel that there should be as much equality as possible in society, and the idea of LETS as an alternative trading system or a kind of barter was very appealing [as was] community. I like that aspect of meeting people and helping each other and the informality, in a way, that [we are] trading through'' (Stroud case study). Within LETS schemes, there is the possibility not merely of creating economic relations on the basis of some preferred social norms but of redefining value itself. Value is very much a social construct. Material things are endowed with social value as a result of prevailing social norms. For example, individuals who may have difficulties gaining access to a formal labour market based on exchange value might be accommodated more easily within the informal atmosphere and stress on the use values of work within a LETS scheme. This is especially true of work carried out for the LCS itself. However, the personal challenge of selling goods and services across the LCS may act as a disincentive to engagement. It is for reasons such as these that certain LCS practitioners actively reject the notion of currencies as mediating relations, preferring to see LCSs as a relatively (but only relatively) formalised means of favours. Similarly, single-purpose LCSs, or schemes with a single, clearly identified focus within a more general scheme, may reflect the deliberate attempt to sidestep the evaluations inherent in the mainstream economy and use a local currency to enable those otherwise marginalised to engage in informal activity.(15) Contradictions and ambivalence However, the effective performance of economic activity depends upon a widely based understanding and acceptanceö even if that acceptance is imposed by some kind of force ö of what economic activity is, what its objectives are, and how its achievements or lack of them will be assessed.(16) But such social relations are contested. Within LETS schemes, for example, there is a great deal of debate about (15) For example, since the mid-1990s Stirling and Alloa LETS has run an internal project, LETS Make it Better, dedicated to developing ways in which individuals with mental-health problems can participate within the LETS (see Manley and Aldridge, 1999). (16) See, for example, North's (1999b) discussion of the potential of and contradictions involved in linking local currencies and local business.


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the value of time ö (whether more highly `skilled' people should be paid more per unit of time than less `skilled' ones (17); about quality (what the significance of qualifications may be in terms of pricing); and about efficiency (how the quality and efficient organisation of economic activity may be real drawbacks to the extension of LETS schemes). It is clear from the comments of practitioners that conflict over pricing policy (should skill, for example, be recognised as a major factor in pricing?) is a real disincentive to trading and hence to the extension and intensification of activity in LETS schemes: Q: ``Do you think that there ought to be a standard rate introduced in the LETS?'' A: `Ì am in two minds about that. I can see that in an ideal world, yes, there would certainly be a standard rate. Or you may find that if you did that then the more professional people, who have had to lay out considerable sums and time to acquire certain skills, would find it not worth their while, but I can perfectly see that in a socialist world there should be an equal rate for everything. But that's not the way ... . People are conditioned by the present capitalist system and [one cannot] assume that you can just switch it on and off. I don't think that's possible.'' Q: ``Do you think that there are some groups of people, for example, someone who hasn't been employed for a while, who'd have problems actually pricing their skills, and maybe undervaluing their skills?'' A: ``No, because, I mean, everyone knows what shop workers get paid, or unskilled workers get paid.'' Q: ``Do you think that LETS should challenge those values?'' A: ``No, it's like a market-place isn't it? So, you know, you've got to say. Ì'll work for this much', and if no-one will employ you, you've got to drop your price haven't you? So, LETS is still working in the real world.'' `Ì know [that] in Mendip LETS the view there was ... [that] an hour of one person's time is worth an hour of another person's time, it doesn't matter what you are doing. And I was doing acupuncture then, and I had a babysitter, and in some way it didn't feel quite balanced for me, because somebody could come and do four hours of babysittingöand that's quite niceötwo hours you're sitting reading a book, and I mean, that's fine, but for me to do four acupuncture treatmentsö four peopleöyou can't [do it]. You know, it's not quite the same. So, to me that's one of the difficulties, which is just the nature of life. You have to address these issues'' (Stroud case study). Although many of those involved in coordinating LETS schemes envisage the creation of economic systems with values differing from mainstream norms, such findings suggest that LETS trading is, in fact, drenched in mainstream conventions. This tension produces conflict within those individuals who wish to further the aims and objectives of the LCS, but who wish to avoid selling themselves short: `Ì just pitch [my rate] roughly, at what everybody else is doing, on the grounds that you don't want to be undercutting people, because that's an un-neighbourly thing to do, but on the other hand, you don't want to price yourself out of the market. So I see that as straight economics really, that you price yourself roughly in the middle of the range. I tend to be down the lower end of the range, and I must admit that I (17) The use of time as the basis for pricing exchange, thereby equalising skills and compensating for pay rate differentials within the mainstream economy, was adopted in only one LETS in our nationwide survey and was resisted by those that saw LETS schemes as parallel rather than alternative economic entities.

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don't update it often enough, so I think that I'm still charging about 10 or 12 LETS an hour, which is probably far below the professional rate by now. I expect [that] in the big outside world people are charging at least »15, if not »20 an hour for professional services of all kinds ...'' (Stroud case study).(18) More prosaically, the spontaneity of exchange that is integral to LETS schemes depends in part on the extent to which trading is possible and this, in turn, is a function of the size of the group and, especially, of its diversity (the range of goods and services traded) and the intensity of involvement (the regularity and amount of trading) by its participants. The personalised nature of economic transactions in LETS schemes increases the need for central coordination and proactivity. There is a constantly felt need to try to stimulate and extend trading in order to achieve the objectives of the group more effectively. As indicated above, such pressures frequently elicit a response from a `core group' which, in turn, is then subjected to pressures of time, as they work on a largely voluntary basis, thereby producing and revealing a sense of being an institution that is stretched so thin that it is almost at breaking point. Furthermore, the emergence and activities of the group produce a vertical element of power relations, which sits uneasily alongside the intended horizontal and mutually, negotiated relations of exchange generated amongst its participants.(19) And these autocentric leanings and explicit opposition to the mainstream also tend to create a divide which limits the ability of LETS schemes to forge alliances with actors and institutions in the mainstream economy, and to draw upon extra-institutional resources to support their development. Paradoxically, then, there is relatively little institutional and informational infrastructure in LETS schemes. It involves a centrally issued directory and a computer-based accounting system normally maintained centrally by volunteers. The regulatory weakness of such arrangements is revealed over and over again by participants not knowing, for example, how to record transactions, or being unaware of the central administration, and by frequent complaints amongst those who are aware of the inadequacies of the central processes of administration and of the people that staff the office. Here, then, is evidence that bureaucratic understandings and attitudes influence the way in which apparently spontaneous trading takes place. In Stroud, for example, administration is carried out by an office with a distinct location, staffing, and institutional setup. A number of interviews revealed that `the office' practised a view of LETS that was far more like that found within the formal economy, especially in relation to attitudes to debt: `Ìt has happened that people have gone off, [with] small amounts [of debt] actually. I don't think it's a big problem really. ... It could be just as much of a problem, in a sense, if they went of with a big credit ... but I think what they say in theory, the practicalities of it are, that you distribute that minus or plus throughout the group just to make the numbers balance up. Whether they are actually doing that ...? I don't think they are in the office ... you do have to change your whole way of looking at money, I think. It is very easy to get stuck in old patterns of thinking ... you really need that same feeling to permeate throughout because, if it doesn't, the wrong messages get put out really, and I think that's happened in Stroud LETS (18) These values and conventions are, of course, also influenced by geography and, in particular, by spatial variations in the availability of different kinds of labour. Ideological commitments to LCSs aside, a relative shortage of certain skills means that these are less likely to be exchanged in a LETS, whereas a surplus is more likely to result in practitioners viewing LETS as sources of supplementary income. (19) However, the existence of power relations is often denied by major participants in LETS schemes.


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actually. And I don't want to actually get to the office folk too much, because I think it's a bit sad really, their attitudes. But equally I don't want them to walk out, because I don't want to go and do what they do all the timeöI haven't got time! [laughs]'' (Stroud case study). Thus, of all the forms of LCSs, LETS schemes suffer most from a failure of sociality. This is more than a little ironic, given that inducing a greater degree of sociality within local communities is one of the prime motivations for founding and joining LETS. It is along this dimension that LETS schemes differ markedly from the final variant of LCSs considered in this paper, Time Dollars. Indeed, compared both with libertarian LETSystems and with communitarian LETS schemes, Time Dollars reflect a far more interventionist moral agenda. Time Dollars schemes: building `social capital' and `community'

Performing Time Dollars The first Time Dollars scheme was developed in the late 1980s by US academic, Edgar Cahn, in Washington, DC (Cahn and Rowe, 1992; Douthwaite, 1996). Within this type of LCS, the unit of exchange is an hour of time expended in working for someone else. Therefore, to this extent at least, Time Dollars are potentially the most economically radical and socially progressive of all LSCs. They equalise skills and pay rates through the measure of time. Like LETS schemes, Time Dollars pursue the goals of fostering social inclusion, mutuality, and self-help within local communities. Moreover, at least to gauge from Cahn's stress on Time Dollars existing outside the market economy and their distance from the surveillance and influence of the Inland Revenue Service, they would seem to share with LETS schemes a rejection of the values and morality of the market, but alsoöand with LETSystemsöa rejection of the panoptic tendencies of the welfare state.(20) However, in practice, two distinctive organisational features of Time Dollars schemes reveal a more directed and centralised monetary network than is apparent in LETS schemes or LETSystems. First, trading is centralised. Each Time Dollars scheme has a central office that acts as a clearinghouse for the scheme as a whole. When people want jobs done, they telephone into the office, which then attempts to put wants and offers together, usually through a series of telephone calls. This brokerage function differs from the decentralised reliance upon a registry or printed directory and the issuance of cheques in LETSystems and LETS schemes, respectively, or the need to negotiate directly with counterparties. This enables the administrators of Time Dollars schemes to exert a strong influence in, for example, attempting directly to accelerate turnover by putting members in contact with one another. Such a task is made easier by the use of a bespoke software program which contains information on all the members of the scheme, their wants and offers, and their current balance of Time Dollars. Second, and relatedly, the high level of central control both makes possible, and is reinforced by, the regulation of members. All members are required to produce references before joining, and those who offer child care are subject to further checks and scrutiny by police and the local state. In undertaking these regulatory tasks, the administrators of Time Dollars schemes argue that participants are more likely to engage in trading with counterparties that have effectively been `preapproved', thus providing a degree (20) This implicit critique of the role of the state in local development and its surveillance tendencies are particularly interesting in light of Roy Boyne's (2000) wider argument that state surveillance, welfarism, and social democracy run hand-in-hand. According to Boyne, `ìt may follow that the ethical and philosophical underpinning for a substantial critique of surveillance may not exist in a welfare-type society, that we can see surveillance as an ineluctable facet of social democracies, which are therefore bound to be surveillance societies'' (page 292). Without surveillance, Boyne suggests, it is impossible for democratic states to administer welfare.

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of institutionally generated trust that is missing in the other LCSs considered in this paper. This centralised and paternalistic approach to trading activity is amplified in the case of Fairshares, a Time Dollars project based in three communities in Gloucestershire in the west of England.(21) A major function of the scheme appeared to be to act as an unofficial adjunct to the welfare state. Participants spent a good deal of time assisting sick or elderly members getting to and from appointments with various branches of the National Health Service, or otherwise sought to circumvent the isolation and loneliness that disablement and age can bring: `Ì've been in Fairshares for about two months ... I basically moved into the area [a local-authority housing estate] after becoming disabled and didn't want to be stuck in the house, and also recognising the needs that I had and finding ways of meeting those needs. It was the Health Resource Centre that got me involved with Fairshares'' (Fairshares focus group 1, 23 February 2000). `Ì have needed help because I've needed to get about. I've needed to go to the hospitalöFrenchay [Bristol] and Gloucester öand I've needed transport because both my daughter and her husband work and so I can't call them. I've got a little battery runabout which I can run round and do my own shopping and that kind of thing, but I wouldn't like to go to Gloucester in it because I don't know whether I'll get back!'' (Fairshares focus group 3, 25 February 2000). Time Dollars as alternatives Time Dollars are explicitly designed to encourage the growth of what Cahn describes as `social capital' within often deprived and marginal communities: ``People earn Time Dollars by helping others. They can then either spend the Time Dollars to get help for themselves or their families, or they can donate their Time Dollars to individuals or groups in need of help. Computerized Time Dollars accounting systems help mobilize human resources to provide direct service. Programs operating in 38 states and three countries are generating hundreds of thousands of hours, reinforcing a norm of reciprocity, rewarding altruism, and building trust among strangers. Time Dollars are more than simply an inexpensive way to expand specialized social service programs with volunteers. They do something else. The Time Dollars currency enables human beings to redefine themselves as assets, each and every one with something special to contribute öregardless of what the market economy says. When all hours are valued equally, when the tasks are essentially those which families and neighbours have always done for each other, when the obligation to repay is backed by a moral norm of reciprocity rather than a legal norm of coercion, one is outside the realm of the Internal Revenue Service, outside the market economy, and outside the constraints of feasibility imposed by market wages and the availability of tax dollars on building social capital'' (Cahn, 1999).

(21)

Fairshares was in its second year of operation when we undertook interviews and focus groups with the coordinators and participants. It was the least established of all the LCSs we studied. Overall, there were around 100 accounts across the three sites. The locations in which the scheme was based included a deprived local-authority housing area of the otherwise affluent city of Cheltenham, and the semirural market towns of Newent and Stonehouse. The scheme had strong links to the local state. It was being underwritten by a local authority for the three-year trial period and its main coordinator was an employee of Gloucestershire County Council who had been seconded to oversee the scheme.


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Cahn's explicit identification of social capital as an objective of Time Dollars systems requires some clarification. Social capital has become one of the most contentious words in the social science lexicon in recent years. Ben Fine (1999) has argued that not only has the term become a convenient catchall, but that it is also an ambiguous concept that is ``fundamentally misconceived''. The microsocial origins of social capital have enabled the concept to act as a ``missing link'' within a broad range of social theories. Put simply, social capital is seen to help explain how the ``non-economic, or nonmarket, makes the economic work, or work better'' (page 13). However, the enthusiastic multidisciplinary adoption of the concept means that it has become an ambiguous, chaotic conception that has encouraged studies to proceed ``from the individual to the social'', bypassing any analysis of the ``conceptual issues and the causal mechanisms and processes by which the social is produced'' (page 6). Indeed, in many ways the concept of social capital has become as used and abused as that of community, with which it is so closely associated. Cahn's use of the concept of social capital is similarly uncritical. However, this is not altogether surprising because, although Cahn is an academic, his use of the concept is overtly political and justificatory; he uses it as a way to export Time Dollars beyond an academic constituency to encompass policymakers keen to identify institutions with the capacity to foster local, community development. Contradictions and ambivalence Fairshares was seen to be adequate as a framework through which people felt able to ask for (paid) favours to be done for them, and to create the possibility to reciprocate such favours across the scheme as a whole. However, the standard hourly rate for all work, integral to the idea of Time Dollars and its progressive ambitions, was constrained once more by the realities of local labour-market conditions. High-value skills and services were in short supply. This was a result, in part, of the fact that these schemes were still small and recently formed, but also a result of a recognition that those in possession of sought-after abilities would be unlikely to offer their services in any case. As was witnessed in the case of LETS schemes, the conventions of the market were taken for granted by many of the participants in Time Dollars schemes too: Q: ``What about ... the shortages of people like the electricians and plumbers and carpenters. How would you get those sorts of people into Fairshares? Why aren't those people joining Fairshares?'' A: ``Well, partly I should think, to be honest, if it's your trade you're not going to do it for free are you? I mean, quite honestly, you might go and put an old lady's electric light bulb in or mend a fuse for somebody, but you're not going to do anything really serious in the way of electrical work. It wouldn't be fair on the trades people.'' ``... if we had a solicitor, we could get him to give some advice of what procedure we could take on a certain case ... he could tell us what to do and where to go and his service may be valued at »25 an hour or »30 an hour, but he would give you a few minutes telling you what you could do. That's if we had a solicitor ...'' (Fairshares focus group 3, 25 February 2000). But of course, this LCS did not `have' a solicitor, nor was it likely to, if the following response is any guide. In some cases, people within the scheme clearly had valuable skills that were in demand, but they were not prepared to trade them in the fear that to do so would mean forgoing `real' income: `Ì'm a translator and I was asked, `Could I translate [for someone]?' And I said that for teaching I would come and give a hand happily, but I certainly wouldn't do [translation] on a professional basis ...'' (Fairshares focus group 3, 25 February 2000).

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Thus, for some participants, a standard rate for work at one hour per unit so devalues the currency that it is not worth the effort of work. This problem was exacerbated by the fact that participants who worked full-time had much less free time. Although these relatively cash-rich but time-poor individuals might have welcomed the use of other people's time to undertake certain tasks and services on their behalf, they discovered that they did not have the time fully to participate, to reciprocate, and to earn Time Dollars, particularly when, as above, they were unable to make their professional skills available for purchase within the scheme. These observations reveal something of a gap in expectations and values between the organisers of and participants in LCSs. Whereas the administrators of LCSs appear to view the setting of a standard hourly rate, for example, as a progressive means of overcoming the exploitation of the unskilled, many of the participants would seem to be of the opinion that to subvert the existing conventions of the labour market does not bring about the end of exploitation, but merely the replacement of one kind of exploitation by another: namely, the exploitation of the skilled by the unskilled. Further, the recent success of Time Dollars and Time Banks and the demise of LETS schemes reflects in part the greater radical öindeed subversiveöpotential of the latter and the conservatism of the former. Time Dollars and Time Banks fill a gap. They support mainstream economic geographies by providing a mechanism within civil society for dealing with their many lacunae. By contrast, LETS represent an alternative to the mainstream. Although they may be incorporated in order to offer a means of combating social exclusion (see Williams et al, 2001), the social relations of LETS also challenge mainstream practices and ideologies. Conclusions All economic geographies are simultaneously practised sets of social relations and material processes. LCSs are no exception. Indeed, precisely because of their small scale and the prior and highly self-reflexive thought that inform their practice, LCSs open a window onto the nature of the complex social and material relations of economic geographies and the contested diversity of practice and political possibilities to which they give rise. Although the challenge issued to capitalocentrism by LCSs is weak and limited, the very fact of their construction and existence reveals the possibility of a pro-active response to prevailing economic norms(22) and elucidates some complex questionsöof value, for exampleöat the root of economic geographies. However, LCSs also reveal the nature of constraints on the ways in which economic geographies may be practised. All economic geographies are exploitative in the sense that they are designed to extract value from human labour. They therefore require some form of implicit utopian promise to sustain the involvement of people in them (Lee and Leyshon, 2003). Within capitalism this is, as the financial journalist, Peter Martin (2002, page 19), puts it, offered by, ``the motivational link [which capitalism] provides between present action and future reward. It provides a stimulus to human action thatöunder other ideological systems öcomes from an overriding political or religious purpose.'' When this link is brokenöas it was, for example, during the summer of 2002 in the aftermath of the financial accounting scandals which not only revealed widespread malfeasance but served to destroy the accounting truths on which capitalism (like any form of economic activity, including LCSs) dependsö`ìndividuals have to fall (22) LCSs continue to emerge in various forms around the world: see, for example, Jonathan Watts (2002) on the emergence of `loves' and `thank yous' in Japan.


615

back on their own sense of purpose''. This is an especially telling point. Capitalism provides a kind of financial morality and motivation in the forms of particular kinds of compensation for present effort. If this financial morality no longer holds, or is considered to be unacceptable, material reproduction must rely upon personal moralities. It is difficult to imagine a more fundamental demonstration of the significance of the social construction of economic geographies and the lack of autonomy of the economic. The emergence of LCSs, the often exaggerated claims for them, and their diversity reflect this verity. Their own development is constrained not merely by their material (in)effectiveness but, like diverse capitalism, by the unevenly developed acceptability and reproducibility of the social and material relations which shape them. Thus it may well be that the major barrier to LCSs as developmental alternatives lies as much in their conflictual identity as institutions of membership and social solidarity(23) as in their institutional and economic shortcomings as monetary networks and circuits of value. As predominantly bottom-up and, in some cases, antistate initiatives, the existence of LCSsöto say nothing of their reproductionödepends upon a self-consciously reflexive view of locality and a critique of, or dissatisfaction with, prevailing social relations and modes of social reproduction within these localities. However, like all economic geographies, LCSs require not only the institutions and infrastructure to enable them to work but the capacity to translate critique into the construction of do-it-yourself economic geographies. And yet, Time Dollars schemes apart, they resist encroachments by the state (local or national) whilst institutions like trades unions, for exampleöeven in their potentially emergent form as community unionsöhave not recognised the symbiotic relations that might exist in the development of links with LCSs (through the deployment of trades-union resources, the scope for using LCSs to access `community', etc). Thus, although their emergence and development may be seen, from one perspective, as `spaces of hope' (Harvey, 2000), involving a radical break with the norms and evaluations of mainstream economic practices, or even, from another perspective, as freeing individuals from the regulatory mechanisms surrounding formal economic geographies, LCSs are, in material terms at least, reformist activities. They act as safety valves in the face of the buildup of uneven development and resistant pressures within the formal economy. And, in this respect, they are merely one of many forms of communitarian processes. In short, unlike the more clearly contradictory relations embedded within what are, nevertheless, divergent forms of capitalism, LCSs are no less ambivalent than all economic geographies. In this sense, they reveal, yet again, the significance of Karl Polanyi's (1957) `great transformation'. This involved the apparent separation of economic and political relations as a vital, even determinative, context for contemporary economic development and social reproduction. And yet, as we have argued, following Polanyi, this separationöwithin both mainstream economic relations as well as within LCSs öis more notional than real. It merely involved the replacement of one set of social relationsölocal, familial relations, for exampleöfor anotheröthe geographically uneven and diverse social relations of capitalism. However, it is precisely the intrusive, insistent, and apparentlyöbut only apparentlyöamoral social norms of these social relations that contribute to the less and less silent and more and more violent threats to their reproduction. Under these conditions öand despite the manifest practical, material, and social weaknesses of LCSs, the consequently severe limitations (23)

Such considerations again raise wider questions of the nature and direction of the causal relations between culture and economy (see, for example, Amin and Thrift, 2000; Antipode 2001; Lee, 1989; Ray and Sayer, 1999 for some discussion).

616


on their reproducibility and the exclusivity of communitarian social relations öthe possibilities that they represent may be of wider political significance. They demonstrateöalbeit in a very specific fashion öthe continuing opening up of political debate and the never-finished business of the making of geographies and histories. Acknowledgements. We are grateful to ESRC who funded this research (ref 000237208) and to all those who gave so freely of their time to assist in it. References Amin A, Thrift N, 2000, `Ìntervention: what kind of economic theory for what kind of economic geography?'' Antipode 32 4 ^ 9 Antipode 2001, ``Debating economic geography: (more than) responses to Amin and Thrift's'' (special issue) 33(2) Ardener S, Burman S (Eds), 1995 Money-go-rounds: The Importance of Rotating Savings and Credit Associations for Women (Berg, Oxford) Barnes T J, Hayter R, 1992, ``The little town that didöflexible accumulation and community response in Chemainus, British Columbia'' Regional Studies 26 647 ^ 663 Barnes T J, Hayter R, Hay E, 1999, `` `Too young to retire, too bloody old to work': forest industry restructuring and community response in Port Alberni, British Columbia'' Forestry Chronicle 75 781 ^ 787 Bowring F, 1998, ``LETS: an eco-socialist initiative?'' New Left Review number 232 (November ^ December) 91 ^ 111 Boyle D, 1999 Funny Money: In Search of Alternative Cash (HarperCollins, London) Boyne R, 2000, ``Post-panopticism'' Economy and Society 29 285 ^ 307 Cahn E, 1999, ``Time Dollars, work and community: from `why?' to `why not?' '' Futures 31 499 ^ 509 Cahn E, Rowe J, 1992 Time Dollars (Rodale Press, Emmaus, PA) Croall J, 1997 LETS Act Locally: The Growth of Local Exchange Trading Systems Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, 98 Portland Place, London, W1B 1ET Cutler A, Hindess B, Hirst P, Hussain A, 1977 Marx's Capital and Capitalism Today volume 1 (Routledge and Kegan Paul, London) Dalton G, 1965, ``Primitive money'' American Anthropologist 67 1 Dodd N, 1994 The Sociology of Money: Economics, Reason and Contemporary Society (Polity Press, Cambridge) Douthwaite R, 1996 Short Circuit: Strengthening Local Economies for Security on an Unstable World (Lilliput Press, Dublin) Etzioni A, 1995 The Spirit of Community: Rights, Responsibilities and the Communitarian Agenda (Fontana, London) Ferguson J, 1999 Expectations of Modernity: Myths and Meanings of Urban Life on the Zambian Copperbelt (California University Press, Berkeley, CA) Fine B, 1999, ``The developmental state is deadölong live social capital?'' Development and Change 30 1 ^ 19 Fuller D, 1998,``Credit union development: financial inclusion and exclusion'' Geoforum 29 145 ^ 157 Gibson-Graham J-K, 1996 The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy (Blackwell, New York) Harvey D, 2000 Spaces of Hope (Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh) Lee R, 1989, ``Social relations and the geography of material life'', in Horizons in Human Geography Eds D Gregory, R Walford (Macmillan Education, Basingstoke, Hants) pp 152 ^ 169 Lee R, 1996, ``Moral money? LETS and the social construction of local economic geographies in Southeast England'' Environment and Planning A 28 1377 ^ 1394 Lee R, 2002, `` `Nice maps, shame about the theory'? Thinking geographically about the economic'' Progress in Human Geography 26 333 ^ 355 Lee R, Leyshon A, 2003, ``Remaking geographies and the construction of `spaces of hope' '', in Alternative Economic Geographies Eds A Leyshon, R Lee, C C Williams (Sage, London) pp 193 ^ 198 Lester T, 2000, ``Valve ratios need a rationale'' Financial Times 13 October, page 18 Leyshon A, 1997, ``Geographies of money and finance II'' Progress in Human Geography 21 381 ^ 392 Leyshon A, Thrift N, 1997 Money/Space: Geographies of Monetary Transformation (Routledge, London)


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