Increasingly destructive global crises demand the questioning of economic knowledge and politics as well as the creation of more sustainable economies. Recent years have seen a surge of envisions, practices and analyses concerning economies that come after capitalism. Postcapitalism and a utopian imagination have emerged as key categories of activism and research.
Alternative economies are often portrayed as initiatives set towards a reality after capitalism. What has often received less attention is how such alternatives carry on problematic legacies within: how they reproduce – and not only transform – inherited restrictions in their understanding and practicing of economies. The post-prefix of postcapitalism has largely been treated as a given. The post-prefix has represented a rupture and a task of unlearning compared to capitalism.
This study resists such ruptures in order to practice a form of self-critique emerging from within alternative economies approaches. It asks how inherited problems live on in economic alternatives, and how they can be identified and worked with. These concern, for example, the limitations and exclusions of economic discourse, how the work and livelihoods of different groups is valued in political economy, and how the power relations of global economy are treated as pertaining (or not) to political decision-making. The study concerns how different restrictions of imagination and practice are reproduced in the understanding of alternative economies.
