This article discusses solidarity economy initiatives as instances of grassroots organizing, and explores how ‘values practices’ are performed collectively during times of crisis. In focusing on how power, discourse and subjectivities are negotiated in the everyday practices of grassroots exchange networks (GENs) in crisis-stricken Greece, the study unveils and discusses three performances of values practices, namely mobilization of values, re-articulation of social relations, and sustainable living. Based on these findings, and informed by theoretical analyses of performativity, we propose a framework for studying the production and reproduction of values in the context of GENs, and the role of values in organizing alternatives.

This paper presents findings from my PhD research project titled "Exchange networks and parallel currencies: Theoretical approaches and the case of Greece", which aimed to investigate the initiatives and schemes whose members transact among themselves without the use of the official currency-in this case, the euro. Of course, we women receive training for and we also practice every day to be "economic agents" without official currency. The paper however, focuses on the participation of women in the non-official currency or non-monetary economic spaces created outside households. In many cases women have founded or they are coordinating the initiatives, and in most cases their role is essential for the schemes to function and develop. Therefore, this paper attempts to study the research findings from the point of view of women: why they participate in this activity, what economic responsibilities, roles and powers they acquire through the schemes, how they perceive their own activity, what are the implications of this activity for their economic life in general and what economic knowledge they create themselves and make it available to all of us.

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One of the major challenges of urban development has been reconciling the way cities develop with the mounting evidence of resource depletion and the negative environmental impacts of predominantly urban-based modes of production and consumption. The book aims to re-politicize the relationship between urban development, sustainability and justice, and to explore the tensions emerging under real circumstances, as well as their potential for transformative change.For some, cities are the root of all that is unsustainable, while for others cities provide unique opportunities for sustainability-oriented innovations that address equity and ecological challenges. This book is rooted in the latter category, but recognizes that if cities continue to evolve along current trajectories they will be where the large bulk of the most unsustainable and inequitable human activities are concentrated. Drawing on a range of case studies from both the global South and global North, this book is unique in its aim to develop an integrated socialecological perspective on the challenge of sustainable urban development.Through the interdisciplinary and original research of a new generation of urban researchers across the global South and global North, this book addresses old debates in new ways and raises new questions about sustainable urban development that will be of interest to researchers, city managers and a wide range of policy actors in government, civil society and the private sector.An electronic version of this book is available Open Access at www.tandfebooks.com. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license.

Over the past decade, the term bioeconomy has emerged in both policy and academic discourse. Implying a technology-driven approach to wealth generation from organic materials, the term has taken hold with so far limited critical engagement. It is a contestable rather than contested term. Noting the rise of numerous other ‘economies’ (blue, green, circular) on a similar timeframe, this paper undertakes a critical discourse analysis of academic literature and UK/EU policy documents using the term ‘bioeconomy’ to produce a contextualised understanding of how it is used in both theoretical and practical contexts. Our analysis shows that bioeconomy, as with the other ‘sustainability’ economies, which we term the ‘S-economies’, prioritises the economy and the markets as the solution brokers for the environmental and economic problems they seek to address. The apparent fragmentation of the theory and policy concerning the environmental sustainability of economic activity is expressed through the variability of terms that aspire to establish multiple economies functioning at the same time. Limited empirical analysis of the existing ‘bioeconomy’ is symptomatic of the dissociation between theory and practice, emphasizing technological approaches favouring capital intensive approaches over local solutions. The S-economies, including the bioeconomy, are an attempt to bypass economic structural realities that otherwise would need to be addressed.