Moral Money? Lets and the Social Construction of Local Economic Geographies in Southeast England

Bibliographic Data

ID4139034
AuthorsR Lee (0000-0002-9698-810X, University of London, corresponding author)
Year1996
Volume28
Issue8
Pages1377-1394
Publication date1996-08-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEnvironment and Planning A Economy and Space (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0308-518X • E-ISSN: 1472-3409
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1068/a281377
OpenAlexW2047056780
LanguageEN
Citations received84
References cited13

Local exchange employment and trading systems (LETS) have spread rapidly throughout the United Kingdom during the 1990s. Like all economic geographies, they are socially constructed and are more than a simple response to social exclusion. The economic activity generated by and conducted through LETS is based upon direct forms of social relations and a local currency which facilitate locally defined systems of value formation and distinctive moral economic geographies. Nevertheless, LETS take on some of the class and gender characteristics of the wider economy. Furthermore, the ways in which LETS are represented-not least in the media-may serve to stereotype them as exclusionary and marginal to the needs of those most in need and so to distance them from those excluded from the formal economy

Currency · Economic geography · Economics · Economy · Local currency · Monetary economics · Moral economy · Political science · Social distance · Sociology · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Labor Movements and Unions · Law · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy · Social Psychology