Diverse Economies

“Diverse economies” is a field of research inspired by the work of feminist economic geographer J.K. Gibson-Graham. They strive to reframe “the economy” by seeing it as a site for ethical action, and highlighting that there is no such thing as a global singular capitalist economy, but rather a complex network of multiple systems that work to sustain their livelihood. On that basis, alternative economic imaginaries are created and theorized.

Particularly interesting to us is that it talks about the necessity to rethink how we frame more-than-human agents, or “Earth Others” in their wording. Human capitalism relies on interspecies production activities such as the reproduction of plants and animals in agriculture or photosynthesis. Through that, more-than-human agents participate in economies sustaining human activities. To date, economic theory, however, mainly offers a focus on human livelihoods functioning at the expense of planetary livelihoods. Diverse economists, therefore, see a need to consider more-than-humans as we draw up models of earthly economies.

Additionally, we’ve interviewed Ethan Miller, a diverse economist turned sustainable apple farmer, on his theory of more-than-human agency. Based on these inputs, we speculated what diagramming diversely could mean.