Democratizing Essential Reliance Systems

Bernd Bonfert ()
Additional contact information
Bernd Bonfert: Aarhus University [Aarhus]

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: The increasingly obvious unsustainability of neoliberal capitalism creates an urgent need to understand how societies can meet their needs in a just and sustainable fashion. The new theoretical framework of the "Foundational Economy" may provide answers, as it explores a holistic transformation of essential reliance systems, such as food provision, energy, care, and housing. However, its conceptualization of democratic agency needs to be strengthened.This article addresses this need by expanding the Foundational Economy framework with insights from the literature on social reproduction theory (SRT) and the solidarity economy (SE). SRT highlights the gendered and racialized hierarchies of essential reliance systems as key targets for transformation, while the SE encompasses participatory and non-capitalist practices that can democratize those systems. This expanded framework is applied to the UK agroecology movement, which aims to build democratic, sustainable, and non-capitalist alternatives to the food system, while subverting its classed, gendered, and racialized inequalities.

Keywords: Solidarity economy; Social reproduction; Foundational economy; Essential systems; Economic democracy; Agroecology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-06-01
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-05394960v1
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in Democratic Theory: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 2024, 11 (1), pp.68 - 91. ⟨10.3167/dt.2024.110104⟩

Downloads: (external link)
https://hal.science/hal-05394960v1/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05394960

DOI: 10.3167/dt.2024.110104

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().