It appears that a few UK towns – after Totnes now also Lewes – are adopting community currencies as way to counter loss of currency value due to the global financial crisis as well as to stimulate local consumption.

The initiative was started by member of the Transition movement, which is concerned with the impact of rising oil prices and consumption. Their notion of transition  is not to be confused however with the academic notion of transition as used within transition management. See also here for more information and videos.

Community currencies, although valid within a limited perimetre, are not economic islands however. There are points at which they touch, like other barter-like p2p currency systems or local exchange trading systems (LETS), the national and global monetary systems. The English examples are by far not the only ones, as the Complementary Currency world map shows. In a kind of socio-economical response to the effects of globalization, they portray glocalised economies.

Via BBC news

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 10th, 2008 at 11:48 and is filed under future. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.