Solidarity Economics

Organizers all around the world are working to build ways of managing resources that serve human and ecological needs. But how can these projects be more than small islands of solidarity and sustainability surrounded by oceans of domination and environmental destruction?

Solidarity Economics: Building Sustainable Social Relations lays out the landscape of these projects aimed at building a better world, and explores the institutional frameworks needed for them to expand. It asks broader questions about what is needed to help them build toward just and sustainable societies based on relations of solidarity. Drawing on indigenous economics and anti-capitalist theory, this book critiques the idea of an economy as something autonomous from the rest of society and helps us see practical pathways to building systems which ensure that everyone’s needs are met.

This accessible book provides an important overview of key issues around social theory, the environment, and practical social action to investigate new ways of overcoming the cultural and social issues around class, race, gender, climate change, human identity, and economics.

Author Biography

Cynthia Kaufman is the Director of the Vasconcellos Institute for Democracy in Action De Anza College and is the author of Consumerism, Sustainability, and Happiness (2023), The Sea is Rising and So Are We (2021), Challenging Power (2020), Ideas for Action (2016), and Getting Past Capitalism (2013).