Local Exchange and Trading Schemes: A Useful Strand of Community Economic Development Policy?

Abstract

We identify local exchange and trading schemes (LETS) as a social movement rooted in the alternative milieux of greens, feminists, new agers, and so on, comprising those committed to experimenting with new ideas and identities. LETS have the potential to strengthen these milieux and thereby reinforce civil society within a locality, enhancing the benefits from a web of personal networks and extending them through weak links. LETS might also act as seed beds for new skills and practices which spill over into wider social and economic networks. Thus, by promoting networks which facilitate flows of information and innovation, and thereby building the capacity for responding to social change, LETS could contribute to community economic development. LETS form part of a cultural rather than technological innovation milieu. Our fieldwork in Stroud, Bristol, and environs suggests that, given the typical member's preference to remain distanced from the state, it is likely that a hands-off approach would be most successful in realising the potential of LETS. To tie such schemes to specific policy goals would ignore the symbolic meanings attached to membership of them.

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