Les économies alternatives dans les Corbières et la Haute Vallée de l'Aude: vers le travail non aliéné et l'approvisionnement communautaire

The Aude, a rural département in southwest France, is the site of one of the longest-lived European concentrations of counter-cultural practice. Here, villages abandoned by the devastating rural exodus post WWII were discovered by enthusiastic radicals of the '68 generation, who were able to establish themselves because property was cheap. From ethnographic research, we find that a receptive community, inexpensive resources and a strongly interventionist welfare state provide a fertile ground into which practitioners of plenitude may enact a non-normative approach to work and money, which takes root, grows and spreads. We identify a continuum of alternative economic practices encompassing a range of approaches to work itself— some privileging a life of radical simplicity and autonomy, and others interested in developing more successful artisanal businesses. We find a place for neo-medievalists/ruralists who fetishize practices like the horse-drawn plough, and large-scale organic farmers. Finally, we show that the plenitude practices among the Aude alternatifs are tied together by communal reliance—by networks of support and cooperation that rely on being amongst and caring for others. Gifting and 'lending a hand' are key to these economies, enabling them to flourish. While this raises questions about the cost of living for those who do not participate for whatever reason in this exchange network, we see gifting as fundamental to long lasting alternative economies. This case refines our understanding of long-standing debates around the necessity and desirability of selfsufficiency. Key words: alternative economies, communal reliance, sustainable agriculture, l'Aude, alienatio

What’s Social Capital Got to Do with It? The Ambiguous (and Overstated) Relationship between Social Capital and Ghetto Underemployment

This article draws on qualitative fieldwork with unemployed African-American men in St. Louis to demonstrate some of the manifold problems in attributing their marginality to ‘low social capital’. I show how Putnam’s extraordinarily popular formulation obscures the complex, double-edged effects of social capital across a segregated and highly unequal region. Extremely low levels of economic and educational capital blocked any conversion of the men’s broad web of friendship and acquaintance into prosperity. Much more effective was the high (white) social capital concentrated outside the city, which continued to reinforce the spatial and economic marginality of African-American St. Louis, leaving residents with little advancement to offer each other beyond the volatile and destructive local drug industry. </jats:p