Anthropology 397EC - ST- Building Solidarity Econ

Community groups and networks of organizers, activists, and developers coalesce around efforts to create cooperative, democratic, and socially just ways of being in the world involving "alternative" economies: things like cooperatives, land-trusts, community-owned finance, fair trade networks, and so on. These projects are both grounded in local communities and linked into global networks including the solidarity economies movement aimed at creating economies that put people and planet before profit. This class will work with two solidarity economy networks in Massachusetts. Our aim is to do work - a combination of engaged service, research, and community dialogues - that helps to perform, inform, and strengthen local efforts and the solidarity economy movement more broadly. We approach this work from the perspective of Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR); a research process in which communities guide the work at hand.

Students are required to enroll in Anthro 397S (02) Community Service Learning: Solidarity Economies