Our celebration of Small is Beautiful continues in September with the theme of Democratizing Monetary Issue: Tools for Resilience. Our participants for this online conversation are introduced below.
Join us Thursday, September 21st at 2PM (EDT). As with all 2023 Schumacher Conversations, registration is free.
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The growing local currency movement is providing a positive way to respond to the alienation from the natural world fostered by an expanding global marketplace, and to restore the possibility of regional economies based on social and ecological principles…
— Susan Witt, “Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered: 25 Years Later… With Commentaries”
SEPTEMBER PARTICIPANTS
Christine Desan is a Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. She teaches on political economy, the constitutional law of money, and the international monetary system. Her research, including Making Money: Coin, Currency, and the Coming of Capitalism, concerns money as a legal and political project.
Will Ruddick, Founder of Grassroots Economics Foundation, is a development economist focusing on currency innovation. Will has pioneered community currencies in Kenya since 2010, and is the founder of the award winning Sarafu-Network and Bangla-Pesa.
Susana Martín Belmonte is an independent economist focused on the digitization of money for the transition to a fair and low-carbon economy. She has led several monetary innovation projects, including the REC citizen currency in partnership with the city of Barcelona.
Eric Harris-Braun, designs and builds software infrastructure for the new economy. He is a co-founder of Holochain, which will host a full array of asset-backed, value-stable currencies, setting a new class of cryptocurrencies to foster a more regenerative world.
Each panelist is invited to reflect on themes in Small Is Beautiful that connect with their own thinking and activism. These reflections then open up a broader conversation on the topic of place-based currencies. An audience Q&A will follow, moderated by our host, Eric Harris-Braun.
The theory, history, and practice of the Schumacher Center for New Economics’ work with local currencies is detailed in Community Issued Currency: a Tool for Relocalizing Economies (2023) by Susan Witt.
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A reminder that our August Conversation, Implementing U.B.I.: Meeting Needs Unconditionally, may be viewed here.