The Human Economy An ongoing international project Keith Hart London School of Economics

1. The Human Economy An ongoing international project Keith Hart London School of Economics 27th January 2011

2. Keith Hart Goldsmiths, University of London University of Kwazulu-Natal, Durban University of Pretoria Paris Email: johnkeithhart@gmail.com Website: http://thememorybank.co.uk Open Anthropology Cooperative http://openanthcoop.ning.com

3. History of the collective project Launched at World Social Forum, Porto Alegre, 2001 Linked to anti- and alter-globalization What alternative principles for another kind of economy? Need to combine theory and practice Dictionary of the other economy In Portuguese, Spanish, French and Italian Mainly Latin American and Francophone networks

4. My personal relationship to the project African development and the informal economy The strength of contemporary French economic sociology Review of the Dictionnaire A bridge to the Anglophone world An English-French-Brazilian collaboration University of Pretoria post-doctoral program on “the human economy”

5. The book The Human Economy: A Citizen’s Guide Edited by Keith Hart, Jean-Louis Laville and Antonio David Cattani Polity Press, Cambridge, 2010 First English language version in the series 32 chapters by authors from 14 countries: One-third translated from Dictionnaire de l’autreeconomie(2006) Britain , France 6 Belgium, Switzerland, USA 3 Brazil, Canada, Germany, Norway, Peru 2 Argentina, Austria, Denmark, South Africa 1

6. The contents Organization by themes, not alphabetic order: World society Economics with a human face Moral politics Beyond market and state New dimensions Editorial guidelines for individual chapters Some examples: Alter-globalization Geoffrey Pleyers Feminist economics Julie A Nelson Fair trade Alfonso Cotera & Humberto Ortiz Third sector Catherine Alexander Social moneyJérômeBlanc Digital commons Felix Stalder

7. Lessons of the twentieth century • Democracy in complex societies means reconciling freedom and equality • Both the free market and state socialism sacrificed democracy • Markets left uncontrolled in name of individual freedom generated huge inequality • Public bureaucracies practised coercion in the name of equality • We need markets to circulate commodities within limits.... • ....states for redistribution and to guarantee social rights.... • ....and the voluntary reciprocity of self-organized groups.... • ....while extending society to a more inclusive level in the interest of humanity

8. What is economy? English dictionaries: 1. Order, management 2. Efficient conservation of resources 3. Practical affairs 4. Money, wealth 5. The market From house to market: domestic and political economy Manorial estates, monasteries, temples and palaces extended the household principle to society (kingdom, city, nation, world) Putting ones house in order in a world shaped increasingly by markets Economy “pulled in two directions at once: inwards to secure local guarantees of a community’s rights and interests, and outwards to make good deficiencies of local supply by engaging more inclusively with others through the medium of money and markets”. More to it than a choice between controlling the market in the name of society and the market as society’s sole means of development

9. To be published by Polity Press 18thFebruary 2011

10. From the other economy to the human economy Anti-capitalism is driven by negation and caricature Economies are more alike than contrastive stereotypes imply Everywhere people combine reliance on state, market, associations, family, mutuality, self-help, crime etc Lindiwe’s life and mine.... The human economy is not a dream – it is everywhere We need to build on what people are doing already, but with a new emphasis and direction

11. Why a human economy? Need for a pragmatic economics that people can understand and use Economy is made and remade by human beings Abstraction should be replaced by a focus on complex particulars More holistic conception of everyone’s needs and interests Address humanity as a whole and the world society we are making

12. Building the human economy We must avoid the two pitfalls of current progressive politics: The centre-left swallows neoliberal recipes for wealth-creation while adopting slightly less restrictive social policies; The far left wants to break with capitalism, but has no definite program for the transition. We take our inspiration from Marcel Mauss and Karl Polanyi. We conceive of social change as self-expression, as “by no means committed to revolutionary or radical alternatives, to brutal choices between two contradictory forms of society, (but which) is and will be made by a process of building new groups and institutions alongside and on top of the old ones” (Mauss).

13. The next stage Feedback from taking the book’s message to the public A new Brazilian edition of The Human Economy The need to extend the project’s reach to Asia and Africa Environmentalism : green markets or green vs. market? South-South , North-South and East-West dialogue Is the idea of the human economy central to development? Suggestions??