Gibson-Graham (pen name of Katherine Gibson and the late Julie Graham). ... Robert Snyder & Kevin St. Martin in chapter 1 and Elizabeth S. Barron in chapter ...
BOOK REVIEW: Making Other Worlds Possible by Gerda Roelvink, Kevin St. Martin and J.K. Gibson-Graham, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2015, ix + 362 pp., US$35.00 (paperback), ISBN: 9780816693290 The variegated contributions in Making Other Worlds Possible are united in their commitment to practically and discursively perform diverse economies. Already hinted at by the use of the progressive verb forms in the title, the book does not simply tell the reader how “to make” other worlds possible, but is already part of a performative project. This is in line with the diverse economics research program that is – as much as it contributes to a theoretical and scholarly debate – about the performance of economic difference. Analogous to the multitude of economic relations explored by the contributors, the collection consists of a plethora of different takes on the diverse economies research program, pioneered by J.K. Gibson-Graham (pen name of Katherine Gibson and the late Julie Graham). In their widely cited works The End of Capitalism (as we knew it) (1996) and Postcapitalist Politics (2006), Gibson-Graham lay the foundation for rethinking the identity of the economy and working towards a “world of economic difference” (pp.2). By overcoming “capitalocentrism”, diverse forms of enterprises, transactions and laboring are made visible and seen on par with the formal, monetized economy. Beyond simply providing a more complete or detailed picture of the economy, diverse economic researchers engage in a performative ontological politics, seeking to effect other ontologies to make economies work differently (pp.8). This includes a reflective engagement with participatory methods, to collaborate with people and communities in exploring and building new economic subjectivities and performing community economies that “emerge when ethical coordinates are being negotiated” (pp.306). The contributions in Making Other Worlds Possible build on and expand the diverse economies research program in theoretical as well as empirical terms. Most notably, a turn towards assemblage
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thinking to engage with the more-than-human world, constitutes non-human entities as economic subjects in their own right. In chapter 9, Gerda Roelvink enters the dialogue with the ecological humanities to explore posthumanist community economies. Drawing on Freya Mathew’s concepts of conativity (“the innate impulse of living things to maintain and increase their own existence”) and synergy (“a form of relationship between two or more conative parties [of which] something new and larger then either of them […] is born) (pp.235), she thinks towards including non-humans (e.g. rivers, ginger) into ethical economic decision making. In chapter 6, Sarah A. Moore & Paul Robbins turn towards political ecology to explore its anti-essentialist accounts of socio-natures. While providing complex socio-material accounts the authors criticize the predominance of capitalocentric modes of explanation in political ecology. Similar to Roelvink, Moore and Robbins, explore the potential of the dialogue between diverse economic and ecological practices. Robert Snyder & Kevin St. Martin in chapter 1 and Elizabeth S. Barron in chapter 7 offer more empirically grounded accounts of human and more-than-human relationship. The fishermen in Snyder and St. Martin’s account face individualistic and self-interested framings, resulting in “neoliberal” measures (such as the rationalization of production capacity, consolidation of ownership and corporatization of social relations (pp.28)). Through experimentation with new sociotechnical arrangements that consist of human and nonhuman actors, participants have reconfigured the relations between fish, fishers and markets. Furthermore, a diverse economies perspective makes fishing visible as a way of life, i.e. as a culture, heritage, and family affair and not a mere business. Barron develops the concept of “econo-ecological ethical practice” to extend the “econo-sociality” (pp.173) developed by Gibson-Graham and Roelvink to nonhuman biota. In her account of diverse economic practices of wild product gathering, she presents a variety of “active relationships between people and the more-than-human” that are “co-constituted through interdependence among humans and more-than-humans […] at multiple temporal and spatial scales” (pp.186).
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Whereas the involvement with assemblage thinking constitutes a rather new focus in the diverse economies literature, other theoretical strands that repeatedly surface in the book – such as Foucault’s subjective ethics, Nancy’s writings on community and Lacan’s psychoanalysis – are part of a longer conversation. They continue to be rich sources of inspiration for researchers of the Community Economies Research Network. In chapter 4, Stephen Healy engages with the quite different traditions of ANT and psychoanalysis and explores their respective potential contributions to economic transformation. While ANT transcends the dichotomy of human and more-than-human, psychoanalysis provides a tool to grasp the “more-than-reason” (pp.122), attenuating the divide between subject and society. Looking at ex-prisoners, Healy describes processes of resubjectivation as traversal of fantasies, through the gap that “emerges between the subject’s conscious selfrepresentation and a truth that resides in the unconscious” (pp.118f.). Projects like Empower – a for profit worker owned enterprise growing out of a community group of ex-felons – have the potential to create such ruptures from which other economic subjects can emerge. Besides theoretical insights, the edited volume also holds an empirical extension of the diverse economies research program. Karen Werner (ch. 3) and Katherine Gibson, Amanda Cahill & Deirdre McKay (ch. 8) apply the diverse economies framework to Time Banking and a Buddhist Community (ch. 3) and a rural municipality in the Philippines (ch. 8) respectively. Furthermore, the abovementioned contributions by Snyder & St. Martin, Healy, and Barron, looking at fishing communities, a worker owned for-profit enterprise and non-timber products, add on to a growing number of empirical instantiations. In chapter 11, Marianna Pavlovskaya applies a multiple economies perspective on social welfare in post-soviet Russia, analytically separating economic practices across formal/informal, private/state and monetized/non-monetized divides. Making Other worlds possible is an inspiring collection, reinforcing the importance of a diverse economies perspective in search for “just sustainabilities” and urging us to (continue) think(ing) about
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processes of ethical decision making, performativity, subjectivation, politics, the (perceived) divide between academia and activism, and much more. Providing a variegated vocabulary to describe economic difference, an overuse of coinages such as “meterological interventions” or “econoecological diversities”, however, makes the book a laborious read in some places, in particular for those new to the diverse economies literature. Furthermore, while readings for economic diversity are compelling, they are at times overstrained by what is read, for instance, into rivers or mushroom picking. Meanwhile, turning towards the more-than-human is a refreshing strand that needs to be further developed. In this respect, Making Other worlds possible is an important cornerstone in the conversation between the diverse economies and environmental justice literatures.
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