Introduction to The Handbook of Diverse Economies: inventory as ethical intervention

When economies are discussed today the looming image is the capitalist economy – the system of production, exchange and finance that has grown exponentially over the last 200 years. It is hard not to be awed by the rapid spread around the globe of market relations and industrial production associated with capitalism. It is also hard not to be alarmed by growing levels of inequality and the devastating environmental impacts that the growth in commodity production, material consumption, population and urbanization has had, especially since the 1950s when what has been dubbed ‘The Great Acceleration’ took off (Steffen et al. 2015). The research presented in this handbook offers a head-on challenge to narratives that valorize a monolithic neoliberal capitalism and the assumed benefits that are purported to stem from it. It presents a range of strategies for ‘doing economy’ differently – starting with an understanding of the economy as diverse and heterogeneous (rather than monolithic) and mutable rather than fixed in form. It is our view that empowering and supporting these differences can promote ethical and solidaristic modes of interdependence and help mitigate some of the key challenges of our time (such as environmental destruction and increasing inequality). Underpinning this handbook is an observation – that the attention given to a monolithic capitalism belies the diversity of economic activities. If 90 per cent of the world’s fishing activity is conducted by small-scale fishers (FAO 2015, p. ix), on boats where labour and compensation are organized by community or kin relations, why do so many commentators focus only on the capitalist fishing industry? If almost 10 per cent of the world’s employed population (some 274.9 million) work ‘in or in the scope of’ cooperatives (Eum 2017) and 61 per cent of the employed population (some two billion) work in informal activities and businesses (Bonnet et al. 2019) why do capitalist enterprises command so much attention? If so much care work is done by unpaid workers in homes and neighbourhoods, why is the focus so often on waged employment or its loss or lack? If gifting and reciprocity are used to share wealth and effort, and ethical fair-trade networks are gaining ground, why does economic theory foreground abstracted market exchanges governed by competitive logics of supply and demand? There is something going on with the representation of economies that allows for certain activities to be highlighted and thus valued, and others to be made less visible. The Handbook of Diverse Economies takes up this issue. It introduces a body of work that challenges the ways economies are represented and counters the powerful effect of these framings with research that prompts other imaginaries and actions. One effect of representing the capitalist economic system as so dominant is that people assume it is insurmountable. Despite the social inequities and degraded ecologies it produces, capitalism appears to many as a system that is here to stay and to which ‘there is no alternative’ (TINA). Indeed, despite its crises and breakdowns, capitalism appears to be resilient, seemingly immune to revolutionary transformation. At the same time critics point to the way this ‘system’ fails to cater to the material needs of the majority world, or how the 1 per cent