Grassroots Economics. Meaning, Project and Practice in the Pursuit of Livelihood
Coordinators: Susana Narotzky (ERC AdvGrant PI Grassroots economics [GRECO])
final_programme.pdfDescription of the meeting
The Grassroots Economics Project
The Grassroots Economics Project proposes a major shift in perspective in the understanding of economic processes, one that takes into account real life possibilities and strategies for making a living. This project seeks to take into account the models and theories about economic processes that ordinary people develop through reflecting on their experiences and evaluating their opportunities against the backdrop of state policies and expert discourses that saturate the social field. The observation of ordinary people’s everyday practices and understanding of economic constraints and opportunities will provide a better picture of the grounds where the coordination of economic agents takes place.
Research questions are based on the premise that we need to understand how ordinary people’s projects and those of the economic elites and institutional power holders are co-determined. By acknowledging grassroots economics and comparing it with expert models of the economy new theoretical ground will be opened that will shed light on present-day economic insecurity affecting the political stability of European political communities.
Our experience in Oñati
Our meeting at the IISJ in Oñati was the final conference of the ERC funded Project “Grassroots Economics. Meaning, Project and Practice in the Pursuit of Livelihood”. We gathered 37 scholars from Europe and the Americas which included early career as well as more senior scholars and various disciplines: anthropology, sociology, geography, and economics. The workshop was extremely fruitful and everything ran smoothly thanks to the masterful organization of Malen Gordoa and the IISJ staff.
The Grassroots Economics Project proposes a major shift in perspective in the understanding of economic processes, one that takes into account real life possibilities and strategies for making a living. The observation of ordinary people’s everyday practices and understanding of economic constraints and opportunities provides a better picture of the grounds where the coordination of economic agents takes place.
Prof. Susana Narotzky, Dept. Antropologia Social, Universitat de Barcelona
PI Grassroots economics [GRECO] ERC AdvGrant http://www.ub.edu/grassrootseconomics
