Global tools enhance local exchange through community currency in an alternate economy

So... the thesis - outline of issues to address as follows:

The thesis will look at the way in which Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), traditionally renowned for enhancing global reach, can be used to build and strengthen local exchange systems using community currencies. I will look particularly at the Community Exchange System (CES), an initiative of the South African New Economics Network (SANE). The CES is a community-based, global trading network using an “alternative, parallel, local, community or complementary currency system.” The system is currently used by 123 exchanges in 17 countries, with Australia (35 exchanges), South Africa (23), America and New Zealand (20 each) most active. The relevance of the CES in today’s economic climate is stressed by its coverage in CNN Time’s business pages, where it is noted that “[al]ternative means of trade often surface during tough economic times.”

The Internet has long stimulated thought and discussion around the idea of an alternate economy based on reciprocal exchange. When Barbrook first noted the emergence of what he termed a ‘high-tech gift economy’ emerging in cyberspace in 1998 he was considered controversially leftist. Today the terms ‘giving’ the ‘gift economy', ‘reciprocity’ and ‘relationship economics’ are featured regularly in the mainstream media and technology blogs, all the more in the light of the ‘conventional’ economy’s plight.

To date however the benefits of this gift economy have been largely virtual, exchanging gifts of knowledge, information, ideas and comments. Examples of gifted ‘goods’ include contributions to the development of open source software, specialist advice published online, wikipedia, reciprocal comments shared on blogs, and in online social and business networks. Yet, despite the dramatic changes in social interaction and exchanges facilitated by online networking, and the evolution of what may be referred to as the “high-tech gift economy”, the potential of the Internet to really revolutionize economic systems has been limited, as the gifting involved did not extend beyond the realms of cyberspace.

By contrast to this global, virtual, gift economy that has developed online, the CES, which is closely related to the Local Exchange Trading Systems (LETS) model developed by Michael Linton in the early 1980s, is very much focused on physical, local, community-based exchange. Local trading systems have traditionally operated offline, posing obstacles in terms of administration as well as establishing sufficient ‘connectedness’ between members to facilitate easy exchange. The impact of the Internet has revolutionized their scope in a number of ways, including:

• Reduced administrative burden of record keeping
• Search engine functionalities for goods and services offered and required
• Communication tools providing the ability to instantly connect with others’ wants and offerings
• Networking tools to build community between users, in turn strengthening the network and the types of services that are exchanged. Social features were originally built into the CES trading site, but are now primarily concentrated in the the communityexchange.ning group. This forum encourages discussion and educates members on how to establish community exchanges in their area.
• A web-based system allows for transparency, as users have instant access to each others’ trading records and account balances. This encourages a spirit of reciprocity which is essential in exchange systems where users can take out, but must also give back to, the ‘community pool’ of goods and services.
• The geographical scope of a community exchange is extended, allowing for certain types of services (notably the virtual kind more commonly associated with the online gift economy) to be exchanged globally, and making it possible to use community currency while traveling, connecting with users of local currencies in distant destinations.

While the last point above notes the advantages of global scope, community currencies essentially retain a local focus. In this light the research will focus specifically on the Cape Town Talent Exchange (CTTE), which was the first exchange established under the CES network.

The principle of social justice forms a crucial foundation of the CES philosophy. In this regard the digital divide must be considered as a critical limitation of a ‘gift economy’ using tools only accessible to some. Yet it has been shown in the evolution of New Social Movements (NSMs) like the Zapatista in Mexico and the South African Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) over the past decades that even the disconnected can benefit from ICTs through mediators providing indirect access to Internet utilities. In a similar manner the CTTE has expanded the CES to include those without access to the Internet through the use of a parallel paper-based system on which transactions are recorded, and then entered into the web-based system by administrators. The thesis will explore such online-offline linkages, noting how the system aims to encourage community-building across the digital divide, and the extent to which it succeeds in doing so.