Contesting boundaries: navigating the exclusions of community economies

This thesis engages with Gibson-Graham’s concept of community economy. I argue that for the concept to be effective in creating more equitable and sustainable worlds, we need to understand when and how exclusion happens within the very economic practices that are designed to create these new worlds. Furthermore, in the ethical decision-making that accompanies these economic practices we need tools to foreground, navigate and manage the different exclusions that invariably occur. This thesis takes a twofold approach. First, the thesis engages with the work of several theorists to explore the inevitable exclusions that are at the heart of any attempt to be inclusive. In addition to Gibson-Graham, chief among these theorists are Derrida, and Laclau and Mouffe. Second, this thesis uses the results of empirical research with food sovereignty collectives in the Asturias region of northern Spain to explore the ways in which community economy practitioners are developing ways and means to address the inevitable exclusions. Overall the aim of the thesis is to deepen understandings of how interdependence is enacted in community economies in ways that address the inevitable exclusions. The thesis draws on empirical research that is made up of 20 semi-structured interviews, three focus groups and three months of participant observation with three Asturian food sovereignty collectives. Each chapter draws on a separate theoretical framework to understand the potential for exclusion in the economic practices of a community economy. Also, in each chapter, I demonstrate how the economic practices of these food sovereignty collectives align with Gibson-Graham’s notion of a community economy and illustrate how the necessary exclusions that are part of the process of building a community economy are being navigated.