Beyond the consumerist-financial exchange

the sustainable-contributory exchange

Mauro Magatti

Laura Gherardi

pp. 3-39

in: Mauro Magatti (ed), The crisis conundrum, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017

Abstract

Capitalism has featured a different exchange of material and symbolic resources between society, economy and politics at each stage of its development. After analysing neoliberal exchange (1989–2008), considered as financial-consumerist exchange with its heavy social and economic consequences, we focus on the possible new exchange arising after the 2008 crisis. This is a 'sustainable-contributory exchange": economy and politics now enable resources sustainability—for instance, towards new business models—and citizens' contributions towards institutional innovation. Experiments in this sort of exchange are taking place in different contexts: if spread, it can drive a new prosperity in the Western economy in terms of both economic and social plans.