The Routledge Companion to Alternative Organization

Despite the Great Recession, slightly different forms of global capitalism are still portrayed as the only game in town by the vast majority of people in power in the world today. Unbridled growth, trade liberalisation, and competition are advocated as the only or best ways of organizing the contemporary world. Unemployment, yawning gaps between rich and poor, political disengagement, and environmental devastation are too often seen as acceptable ‘side effects’ of the dominance of neo-liberalism. But the reality is that capitalism has always been contested and that people have created many other ways of providing for themselves. This book explores economic and organizational possibilities which extend far beyond the narrow imagination of economists and management theorists. Chapters on co-operatives, community currencies, the transition movement, scrounging, co-housing and much more paints a rich picture of the ways in which another word is not only possible, but already taking shape. The aim of this companion is to move beyond complaining about the present and into exploring this diversity of organisational possibilities. Our starting point is a critical analysis of contemporary global capitalism is merely the opening for thinking about organizing as a form of politics by other means, and one that can be driven by the values of solidarity, freedom and responsibility. This comprehensive companion with an international cast of contributors gives voice to forms of organizing which remain unrepresented or marginalised in organizational studies and conventional politics, yet which offer more promising grounds for social and environmental justice. It is a valuable resource for students, activists and researchers interested in alternative approaches to economy and society in a variety of disciplinary and interdisciplinary fields.

Part I: Introduction 1. Advanced Capitalism: Its Promise and Failings (Martin Parker, George Cheney, Valerie Fournier andChris Land) 2. Alternatives: Past, Present and Prospective(Martin Parker, George Cheney, Valerie Fournier and George Land) 3. Imagining Alternatives (Martin Parker, George Cheney, Valerie Fournier,Chris Land and Geoff Lightfoot) Part II: Work and Labour 4. Between Class and the Market: Self-Management in theory and in the Practice of Worker-Recuperated Enterprises in Argentina (Maurizio Atzeni and Marcelo Vieta) 5. Worker-Owned-and-Governed Cooperatives and the Wider Cooperative Movement: Challenges and Opportunities within and beyond the Global Economic Crisis (Tom Webb and George Cheney) 6. Communes and Intentional Communities (Donald E. Pitzer with Donald E. Janzen, Docey Lewis, and Rachel Wright-Summerton) 7. Non-Commodified Labour (Colin C Williams) 8. Family and Household Reproduction (Karen Dale) 9. Immigrants and Immigration (Josiah Heyman, Nicholas Fischer, and James Loucky) 10. Toward a Politics of Anonymity: Algorithmic Actors in the Constitution of Collective Agency and the Implications for Global Economic Justice Movements (Ned Rossiter and Soenke Zehle) Part III: Exchange and Consumption 11. Fair Trade: Social Justice and Production Alternatives (Laura T. Raynolds and Jennifer Keahey) 12. Complementary Currencies as Slternative Organisational Forms (Peter North) 13. Gifts, Gifting and Gift Economies – On Challenging Capitalism with Blood, Plunder and Necklaces (Alf Rehn) 14. Voluntary Simplicity (Seonaidh McDonald) 15. The Bioregional Economy: Reclaiming our Local Land(Molly Scott Cato) 16. Organizing Transition: Principles and Tensions in Eco-Localism (Shiv Ganesh and Heather Zoller) Part IV: Resources 17. Credit Unions (Leanne Cutcher and Peter Mason) 18. Alternative and Social Accounting (Kelum Jayasinghe and Dennis Thomas) 19. The Commons (Massimo De Angelis and David Harvie) 20. Scrounging and Reclaiming (Jeff Ferrell) 21. Free and Open-Source Appropriate Technology (Joshua M. Pearce) 22. Education: By the People for the People (The Trapese Collective) 23. Social Movements and Global Governance (Marianne Maeckelbergh) 24. Horizons of Possibility: Challenge, Co-Optation and Transformation (Martin Parker, George Cheney, Valerie Fournier and Chris Land)

Martin Parker is Professorat the School of Management, University of Leicester, UK George Cheney is Professor of Communication Studies and Coordinator of Doctoral Education in Communication and Information at Kent State University, Ohio, USA Valérie Fournier is Senior Lecturer in Organization Studies at Leicester University, UK Chris Land is Senior Lecturer in Work and Organisation at the University of Essex, UK