‘Indigenous’ (Latin ‘self-generating’) fractal economic practice from the bottom-up.
Douglas Jack
RE-INDIGENIZING, ANIMATING OUR PRESENT HUMAN & PHYSICAL RESOURCES: To address Ecological-Economics or ‘what-everyone-can-do’, from the bottom up, where 70% of people live in Multihome-Dwelling-Complexes (eg. Apartment, Townhouse & Village). We are all originally ‘indigenous’ (Latin ‘self-generating’) people from everywhere on earth for at least many 10s of 1000s of years. Worldwide our indigenous ancestors organized according to the ‘Great-Good-Way-of-Kindness’ aka ‘Great-Law-of-Peace’ aka ‘Constitution’. The great-good-way includes 3 basic practices of 1) Multihome-Living, 2) Time-based Accounting, 3) Council Process. The average size of multihomes, today is 32 dwelling units or ~100 people, which is the same ‘fractal’ used by all humanity’s indigenous ancestors to organize loving, intimate, intergenerational, female-male, interdisciplinary, critical-mass, economies-of-scale Circular Economy. 20% of Multihome-dwellers are extended-families who live intentionally in proximity for social & economic collaboration. Extended-families in Multihomes contribute many trillions of dollars per year to the Turtle-Island (N. America) essential-goods-&-service ‘economy’ (Greek ‘oikos’ = ‘home’ + ‘namein’ = ‘care-&-nurture’) per year. Extended-family & neighbour contributions are the largest essential economy sector, albeit unrecognized by institutions & government. All humanity’s indigenous ancestors organized Circular Economy in these ~100 (50-150) person fractals through time-based, equivalency accounting recognition for all contributions on the String-shell Value system (e.g. Wampum on Turtle-Island, Quipu in S. America, Cowrie in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia & all islands. ~100 person, Extended-families organization, keeps families integrated in the Multihome, with young, middling, old, injured, sick, and handicapped active, appreciated & engaged for their individual & collective complementary strengths, which respond to needs. Our Sustainable Development Association (Canadian Non-Profit since 1994) & Indigene Community (1983) have developed DO-WE-KNOW-WHO-WE-ARE-? web-based, Community-Economy software with: 1) CATALOGUING talents, goods, services, resources & dreams, 2) MAPPING relationships & capacities for collaboration, 3) ACCOUNTING for contribution, buying, selling & investment, 4) COMMUNICATION both-sided, equal-time, recorded & published dialogue for achieving economic agreements & conflict resolution.
Transformative theories of money in the era of climate change.
Karin Schönpflug
Calls for more “feminist” economic policies have intensified since the financial crisis and even more so since the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the significance and precarity of reproduction and care in jobs and household activities (that still remain largely invisible in national GDP accounting). The re-design of money as a structuring economic and socio-political institution is usually absent from these agendas. This project, therefore, offers a systematic critique of the institution of money from a queer decolonial feminist economics perspective, and furthermore investigates transformative, care-based, future-oriented, and environmentally sustainable constructions of money. The interdisciplinary approaches needed to tackle this project combine a feminist economics perspective (itself a transdisciplinary project of gender studies and economics), ecofeminism (combining ecology and feminism), a biophysical approach (combining neoclassical economics and physics), economic anthropology, sociology, and cultural studies, history of economic thought and political science perspectives on money. With these approaches, the project discusses money’s origins, functions, and shortcomings. It critiques and expands the notion of money as a social compact (initiated by contract theorists and solidified in overlapping generations modelling of neoclassic economics), links it with considerations of social and economic values, and finally, estimations of ethical versus descriptive considerations associated with intertemporal carbon discounting, one of the most important issues facing current climate policy. Considering that the practices of (current) monetary policy are closely linked to monetary theory, this project further on explores the logics of intergovernmental and central banking institutions from a perspective of future-oriented policy making. Financing, distribution, and steering effects of monetary policy in today’s poly-crisis world are explored and complemented by visions of care-based monetary policies designed for a sustainable future.
Cities for Seven Generations: Recognizing, Reconciling, and Reimagining our past, present, and future in Canadian urban centers.
Lisa Ditschun
How do we make our cities better? A Google search will return 2.6 billion results in half a second. A scan of those results reveals multiple ‘top 10’ lists—maybe an article on how to revitalize Main Street. These solutions lack systems-level interventions, which this research proposes is necessary to move beyond ‘top 10’ solutions that merely add a façade over inequitable systems and policy, and over infrastructure and resource-usage that damages our earth. This research focuses on disrupting how the interrelations of culture, race, gender, economics, and politics affect the level of benefit someone experiences in a system (e.g., city policy) and aims to challenge assumptions inherent in existing systems.
The current juncture of global social, economic, and environmental crises offers a unique opportunity to rethink how we live and reconsider our urban centers’ design. Previously, I reimagined a city block in Vancouver, designing a carbon-neutral women’s shelter and social enterprise that shared economic resources, social supports and ‘green’ energy with an adjacent Longhouse. My current PhD research imagines the impact of this synergy at a city-wide scale—What if buildings included free social purpose space? What if adjacent structures shared green energy infrastructure? What if…?
This research will co-create a decision framework enmeshed within Indigenous worldviews to offer a way to reimagine our cities. This framework (“Cities for Seven Generations Model”) is based on four key social and worldview concepts: place, language, governance, and social cohesion. This research will focus on commonalities across multiple worldviews, and research alongside urban Indigenous communities to co-design localized adaptations. The Cities for Seven Generations Model prioritizes Indigenous worldviews and ways of knowing while being compatible with Western ones. It will inform cooperative, culturally-appropriate, and diverse approaches towards equitable decision-making in city planning, governance, policy, and resource allocation.