In recent times, Europe (and elsewhere) has perceived a (re)valorization of Economy of Proximity, with the articulation of citizens regarding local resources and difficulties. In this context, Portugal has witnessed a spread of exchange fairs as a way to deal with the crisis, and to create spaces for dialogue and coordination between citizens. These exchange fairs differ from other initiatives in the sense that they are, usually, directed by another conception of consumption and development of local economy, in which other underlying political agendas can be found, such as food sovereignty, the seed-sharing struggle, the struggle against pesticides and participatory democracy.
In the absence of money, solidarity markets based on social currency promote the exchange of, not only, what is produced by people, but also of different services and knowledge. Forgotten skills within the domestic and local economies and community activities and principles of mutual aid are revalued. In this context, it has been common for local authorities to, in turn, begin to realize the value of these initiatives in local territorial development policies.
In this paper I discuss four points regarding the possibility of institutionalization of these citizen articulation experiences in the Portuguese case. The issues that mobilize this work are: (1) can the circuits of exchange with social currency stimulate the creation of new community routines channeled towards the direction of local demands to Public Power? (2) Whereas some fairs stem from municipal policies aimed at the development of local economy, is it possible that this correlation implies the mitigation of more complex community demands, reducing potential conflicts between citizens and municipalities? Consequently, what could be the benefits and risks of such activities being promoted and conducted by Parish Councils and Municipalities? (3) To what extent can such initiatives confront the territorial development discourse sustained by local development associations and the municipalities? (4) Can social currency integrate a public policy? If so, how can this be done without interfering with shared management mechanisms and in specific time logics that typify these community initiatives?
Observing the configuration of the exchange fairs using social currency in continental Portugal, I argue that we should pay attention to the emancipatory sense and political dimension that such experiences can evoke, given their potential for promoting relative economic autonomy (in the absence of money), denouncing and countering the social invisibility of minorities and rescuing citizenship (in the arendtian sense of the disclosing power of action and speech). Similarly, I call attention to the risks of silencing this emancipatory potential if the temporalities of the communities are not properly respected and if they are subsumed to the technical knowledge and the specific temporality of the institutions. For this reflection, I dialogue with authors who discuss the emergence of other economies and economic imaginaries, such as Boaventura de Sousa Santos, J.K. Gibson-Graham and Richard Wolff. At the same time, building on the dialogue between the Post-Colonial Studies and Economics - with authors such as Thimothy Mitchell, Gayatri Spivak, Antonio Callari, Eiman Zein-Elabdin and S. Charusheela – I aim to discuss the epistemic and political invisibility of the potential of these new collective local arrangements whose logic does not fit into the standard economic theory.
Keywords: exchanging circuits; social currency; solidarity economy
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