Alternative Economic Spaces. This item is unavailable.Alternative Economic Spaces

`A hopeful but nonetheless hard-hitting analysis of alternative economic spaces proliferating in the belly of the capitalist beast. In this book Leyshon, Lee and Williams convene fascinating studies of exchange, enterprise, credit and community. They invite us onto a new and promising discursive terrain where we can analyze, criticize and above all recognize actually existing economies of diversity in the wealthy countries of the West′ - J K Gibson-Graham, Australian National University and University of Massachusetts, Amherst

In the context of problems in the `new economy′ - from dot.com start-ups, high-technology, and telecoms - Alternative Economic Spaces presents a critical evaluation of alternatives to the global economic mainstream. It focuses on the emergence of alternative economic geographies within developed economies and analyzes the emergence of alternative economic practices within industrialized countries. These include the creation of institutions like Local Exchange and Trading Systems, Credit Unions, and other social economy initiatives; and the development of alternative practices from informal work to the invention of consumption sites that act as alternatives to the monoply of the `big-box′, multi-chain retail outlets.

Alternative Economic Spaces is a reconsideration of what is meant by the `economic′ in economic geography; its objective is to bring together some of the ways in which this is being undertaken. The volume shows how the `economic′ is being rethought in economic geography by detailing new economic geographies as they are emerging in practice.

Andrew Leyshon is Professor of Economic Geography at the University of Nottingham.

Roger Lee is Emeritus Professor of Geography at Queen Mary, University of London. He is an economic geographer interested in the connections and contradictions between the presumed hard logics of economy and their socio-cultural practice and in the possibilities for progressive change that might ensue from the latter.