Harnessing Grassroots Innovations: Complementary Currencies and Sustainability

Résumé :

Complementary currencies have been researched from a variety of perspectives, including as tools to promote environmental sustainability. This paper argues that in fact there are multiple and overlapping ways in which currencies can be linked to more ecologically sustainable development pathways, but in most cases this potential has yet to be fulfilled. It

outlines a theoretical approach that treats civil society as a site of grassroots innovation from which alternative ‘systems of provision’ such as complementary as complementary currencies can potentially emerge. Adopting this perspective enables us to apply innovation related theories that have the potential to shed light on the scaling up, replication and

translation of currency systems.