Dec 14, 2011
The Poor Peoples’ Economy
Oftentimes, the poor are already engaged in realizing alternative forms of social, economic and political life. Even as they live amidst considerable scarcities of resources and various forms of exclusion, there can be found novel livelihood strategies and arrangements through which they make daily ends meet. Such initiatives often include, but are surely not limited to, social enterprises, cooperatives, solidarity economies, community development foundations, land trusts, community-friendly trade and so on.
Rather than dismissing these as quaint endeavours, these initiatives and the people behind them should be followed closely— for it is here that new socioeconomic possibilities are being developed in the concrete. Even as limitations in these projects clearly exist, they point the way forward to alternative ways of arranging and structuring our present-day, inequitable and crisis-prone political economy. These alternatives that should be harnessed and built upon by advocates and policymakers, as they seek to eliminate the structural origins of poverty and marginalization.