Time against time

Normative temporalities and the failure of community labour in Local Exchange Trading Schemes

Bibliographic Data

ID4356316
AuthorsD Cooper (0000-0002-1175-433X, University of Kent, corresponding author)
Year2013
Volume22
Issue1
Pages31-54
Publication date2013-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueTime & Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0961-463X • E-ISSN: 1461-7463
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0961463x11422279
OpenAlexW2102572902
LanguageEN
Citations received11
References cited47

Why did Local Exchange and Trading Schemes (LETS) fail to realise their promise in 1990s Britain? This article argues that a core reason was the inability to make community labour, a concept at the heart of LETS logic, function as a self-perpetuating dynamic, in which community bonding would encourage trade and trade in turn would build community. In exploring reasons for this failure, the article focuses on the centrifugal pull of two contrasting temporalities: community time and labour-market time. And in understanding why these two, normative, temporal orders were unable to combine, cohere or simply to coexist, the article addresses three factors: failure in design; individual member responsibility; and wider temporal pressures

Core (optical fiber · Economics · Epistemology · Function (biology · Law and economics · Normative · Political economy · Political science · Sociology · Temporalities · Temporality · Computer Science · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Law · Political and Economic history of UK and US · Urban Planning and Governance