Researching Postcapitalist Possibilities

Tag: research project

  • Introducing a new project: Reduce, Reuse, Repair: Emerging waste subjectivities for postcapitalist economies

    Introducing a new project: Reduce, Reuse, Repair: Emerging waste subjectivities for postcapitalist economies

    By Dr Lila Laird, Postdoctoral Researcher, Massey University

    What is the project about?

    We are embarking on a project that traces how groups of people move up the ‘waste hierarchy’ and how such transformations shape people’s sense of self in relation to waste. This matters because issues like microplastic pollution, environmental contaminant leaching, and dwindling landfill space continue to negatively impact ecosystems and communities. In order for Aotearoa to avoid further waste crises, our use and disposal of material goods must change. Despite warnings and ample evidence, plastic, metal, organic material, food, excrement and building waste continue to grow.

    Shifting  towards ‘circular economies’ is often proposed to stop such crises and to avoid the linear take-make-dispose model. Instead, a circular economy keeps resources in use for as long as possible, and the waste hierarchy (pictured below) conveys the kinds of actions that are most beneficial in circulating materials for reuse. Near the top of the waste hierarchy includes reduce, reuse and repair, and these are the forms of circular economy we are most interested in investigating.

    The Waste Hierarchy — we should be doing more the top and less of the bottom!

    Circular economy research often points to high tech advancements, hoping to deal with our waste and also create business value from it. However, these ‘solutions’ do not often lead to less waste! Instead, they often end up adapting to the current flows of waste being produced. Social scientists researching circular economy practices have found that in order to reduce, reuse, and repair materials, large amounts of often invisible or undervalued labour is required.

    In simple terms, it takes a fair amount of people-power to wash, sort, clean, store and transport resources for their reuse. Or to undertake research, connect with knowledgeable people, upskill oneself, and foster patience to repair an item to keep it in use. And it takes a significant amount of effort to avoid waste altogether. Therefore, because a circular economy is a matter of who is engaged and what kinds of action they are taking, our research is interested in meeting with people focused on being less wasteful and keeping their items in use.

    Waste  is a culturally situated concept. Different cultural groups have different norms and taboos with regards to waste, including what is considered necessary waste. Different cultural groups also have different kinds of relationships to land and the ways land is currently used to ‘deal with’ waste. For example, in te ao Māori, understandings of tapu and noa might guide waste disposal in different ways from western norms. All of this difference is an important part of the ways people approach waste, and what moving up the waste hierarchy may look like for them. And these differences provide important insights into the challenges and solutions to current waste crises.

    What does the project involve?

    We have partnered with three important organisations who help people in Aotearoa to become less wasteful.

    Para Kore is a Māori zero-waste organisation. Para Kore educates and advocates from a Māori worldview for zero carbon and zero waste in Māori communities and beyond. They run sustainability programs across Aotearoa, working with marae, iwi, early childhood centres, churches, community organisations, businesses and more.

    Repair Network Aotearoa is a charitable trust that works with repair cafes and similar projects like tool libraries and maker spaces across Aotearoa, advocating for the right to repair legislation in Aotearoa.

    Zero Waste Aotearoa is  an organisation that supports over 150 groups across Aotearoa that are working towards zero waste in their local community.

    To explore our interests in waste and identity, we are undertaking field work with our research partners and collectives engaged in practices at the top of the waste hierarchy. We will also be undertaking cooperative inquiry groups that enable us to bring together like-minded people to explore their practices relating to waste and to items that could become waste, their concerns and feelings surrounding waste,  and what they would like to change in relation to waste practices for themselves and their wider collectives.

    Who is this research for?

    By the end of the project, we will have co-created an action plan with our community partners that identifies how government and community can invest in social innovations needed for circular economies in Aotearoa. The action plan will support practices at the top of the waste hierarchy and will be directed at waste decision-makers in community and government. As many people grapple with the waste that enters their households, workplaces, marae, community centres and the nature surrounding them, we hope that our action plan can help to bring us one step closer to a waste-less Aotearoa.

    What’s next?

    We are currently connecting with collectives on the ground who are engaged in actions of reduce, reuse and repair. This includes repair cafes, textile recovery groups, resourceful-craft organizations, makerspaces, tool libraries, community composters, and more. We look forward to keeping you informed of what we find out in the process!

    You can find out more about who is involved in the project here:

    Gradon Diprose | Kelly Dombroski | Lila Laird | Matthew Scobie

     

  • Left behind or left out? A case study of economic subjectivities in Pātea

    Left behind or left out? A case study of economic subjectivities in Pātea

    Economic subjectivities in Pātea are not about catching up with capitalist norms but about sustaining inclusive, diverse economies rooted in cultural values and local agency. The town’s identity and resilience challenge dominant narratives of decline.

    Ben Lilly researched Pātea for his Master’s of Arts in Geography at Massey University in 2024. Over the last year, he has been working on turning his thesis findings into an article for New Zealand Geographer. This week it was published — you can read it here.

    Ben interviewed community leaders in Pātea showing them the results of a media analysis he had conducted and getting their thoughts on the way their town was represented. He also explored a range of ‘more-than-capitalist’ cultural and care practices that had enabled Pātea’s ongoing survivance. Many of us have seen this showcased in one of the nation’s informal anthems — the hit song “Poi E” released by Pātea Māori club in the 1980s.

    Pātea Māori Club released the hit song Poi E in 1983, not long after the freezing works closed.

    Ben argues that when we label small towns as ‘left behind’, we buy into a linear trajectory of capitalist economic development where local autonomy and values are minimized. He suggests we shift to the language of ‘left out’, to highlight that the issue at hand is exclusion from decision-making rather than a failure for small towns to ‘keep up’. He provides examples of ways that Pātea residents have emphasized economic self-determination and autonomy after previous encounters with paternalistic industry relationships.

    Ben Lilly is PhD candidate at Waikato University. He is the co-chair of the Early Career Research Network of the New Zealand Geographical Society, and is a member of the Community Economies Research Network.

  • When we think about circular economies, we must consider social innovation

    When we think about circular economies, we must consider social innovation

    This is a plain language summary for the article Expanding Circular Economies Through Transformative Community Investment authored by Gradon Diprose, Kelly Dombroski, Dean Stronge and Alison Greenaway. There are 50 free copies available from here.

    This article is all about how we can make our economies more circular and sustainable. It’s not just about fancy new tech or being super efficient with resources. It’s also about social innovation and making sure everyone benefits.

    Key Points:

    • Three Cool Examples: The article looks at three different enterprises in New Zealand – one in transport, one in energy, and one in food. There’s a regular business, a social enterprise, and a charity. Each one is doing awesome stuff with their profits to help people and the planet.
    • Reinvesting Surplus: Instead of just pocketing the profits, these enterprises are putting their extra money back into circular economy innovation. They’re supporting social equity and helping to build a circular economy where waste is designed out. This is NOT about designing new products for consumption, but about innovation in services: car-sharing, energy hardship programmes, and vegetable distribution.
    • Social Innovation: These businesses are coming up with creative ways to use their surplus. They’re challenging the old-school, take-make-waste model and showing that we can do things differently. The innovation is in the organisation and logistics, rather than new materials or tech.
    • Equitable Practices: They’re all about refusing, reducing, re-using, sharing, and repairing. It’s not just about recycling – it’s about changing how we think and act to create a fairer, less wasteful world. The organisations have an eye to equity and justice, making sure that a wider range of people can be empower to use more ‘circular’ and low-waste services.

    By documenting what’s happening in these examples, the article shows how enterprises can use surplus in smarter, fairer ways to support the transition to circular economies. This article contributes to the goals of moving towards a caring, postcapitalist economy — but uses contemporary business language like ‘innovation’ and ‘investment’ in order to reframe these ideas for people and planet!🌱

  • 🌿 Transitions in Action: A Field Guide to the Wellington Region’s Emerging Future

    🌿 Transitions in Action: A Field Guide to the Wellington Region’s Emerging Future

    We wrote this guide because we could feel something stirring across the region.

    Recently I was part of a project documenting awesome projects in the Greater Wellington Region. In our work as researchers, community collaborators, planners, and advocates, we kept coming across people doing the quiet, determined, and deeply hopeful work of transition. These included composters and kai growers, local energy innovators, housing cooperatives, council staffers working behind the scenes, artists hosting place-based experiments, iwi-led projects regenerating whenua. As someone born in Wellington and who grew up in Wairarapa, I was really keen to connect with projects in this region but also to connect them with each other!

    Often, these efforts were siloed or invisible to each other. But taken together, they point to something larger: an emerging transition infrastructure already in motion. Transitions in Action: An Urban and Regional Transitions Guide for Te Upoko o te Ika / Wellington is our attempt to document, honour, and connect these efforts.

    What the guide is (and isn’t)

    It’s not a plan. It’s not a blueprint. We explored a few different ideas for titles (I suggested ‘look book’), but it was Amanda that came up with the idea of a ‘field guide’.

    So it’s a field guide—something that invites attention, orientation, and learning. It draws on interviews, workshops, and mapping work to identify over 50 projects across six transition domains: housing, energy, mobility, ecosystems, economy, and community.

    To me, what is important is that these are not hypothetical futures—they’re already underway. And they’re reshaping our shared sense of what’s possible here.

    What we’ve learned

    Writing this guide affirmed a few things we suspected, and clarified many things we hadn’t yet articulated. A few key insights:

    • Transitions are already happening, but they’re uneven, precarious, and sometimes invisible to themselves.
    • Place matters. Transition in Wellington looks different than in other regions—it’s shaped by wind, faultlines, iwi relationships, governance structures, harbour edges, and long-standing networks of resistance and repair.
    • Community and institutional work are entangled. The most promising initiatives weren’t either grassroots or top-down—they blurred those lines.
    • Transitions need time and infrastructure. Many of these projects operate on goodwill and temporary resourcefulness. Without scaffolding—funding, policy shifts, relational infrastructure—they risk burning out or being co-opted.

    Who we wrote it for

    We wrote this guide for people already doing the work, to help them find each other. It was so awesome to see a range of the people who feature in the book turn up to the launches and meet each other!

    We also wrote it for funders, public servants, and elected officials—those who say they want climate action or community wellbeing, but often don’t know where to start. The guide shows what’s already in motion, what’s needed, and where policy or funding could shift to support grassroots capacity without overriding it. We have had such a great response from local and central government — with Masterton councillor Stella Lennox, Wellington City Councillor Yadana Saw, MPs Celia Wade-Brown and Tamatha Paul appearing at our two launches!

    Finally, we wrote it for ourselves. To better understand the ecology of transition in our home region. To see the patterns, the synergies, the tensions, and the possibilities.

    What’s next?

    Our hope is that the guide becomes a resource for conversation and connection. That it helps to legitimise and amplify the work already being done. And that it invites deeper reflection on what kinds of transitions we’re part of—and for whom.

    We’re already hearing from local councils, community groups, and educators who want to use it in their work. And we’re in ongoing conversations with collaborators about how this guide might seed similar efforts in other regions.

    You can download the full guide here:
    📘 Transitions in Action (PDF)

    You can find out more about the authors here:

    Amanda Yates | Gradon Diprose | Kelly Dombroski | Thomas Nash

    The book was launched in Wellington in March and in Wairarapa in May

  • Caring for Life: New book release challenges us to learn from places often considered ‘undeveloped’

    Caring for Life: New book release challenges us to learn from places often considered ‘undeveloped’

    In February 2006, 6 months pregnant, I left Palmerston North NZ for Canberra, Australia to pursue a PhD with Katherine Gibson (of JK Gibson-Graham). Thus began a journey of research and learning in Australia, China, Aotearoa NZ, through the birth of four children and homes in five different cities. And in February 2024, some 18 years later, I celebrate the monograph that emerged from all that work!

    When I went into the project 18 years ago, I was really interested in how the processes of Westernisation and globalisation were playing out unevenly around the world. I was particularly interested in pockets of resistance to corporate globalisation. In my fieldwork in the far west of China in the province of Qinghai, I studied the relationship between the local nappy-free infant hygiene practice, space, place and cultures of health and wellbeing. During that time, I discovered a whole online community of westerners also trying to learn the nappy-free infant hygiene practice but without the support of their local environments or cultures. In both groups, there was a resistance to the use of disposable nappies, and the deliberate cultivation of embodied practices of hygiene that required less material (and plastic) stuff.

    Fieldwork was conducted in the city of Xining, in Qinghai province in the far west of China

    Hygiene is social, material and spatial

    As a book project, Caring for Life: A postdevelopment politics of hygiene speaks more to our post-pandemic hygienes, as well as the broader question of how does social change happen. In the revisions made for the monograph, I significantly rewrote and retheorised most of the material to build an argument about hygiene assemblages.

    Hygiene assemblages is a term referring to the social, material, cultural and spatial practices that come together to keep hygiene. In the Qinghai examples, these assemblages gathered around strong social and spatial practices — caregivers learned the specific signals for baby’s wee and poop, and held them out over appropriate places — wee against a tree, on the concrete, on the tiles, or over a drain. Poop over a newspaper, a basin, a toilet or a pile of ash from the fire (in rural areas). But they worked to keep hygiene nevertheless. In the Australian examples, caregivers were trying to learn these signals too, but with less historical and cultural knowledge to draw on. Their assemblages gathered around the material aspects of the practice: potties, bags, nappies, wipes, toilets, containers and more.

    Of course, all hygiene assemblages have both social and material practices, and all have a spatiality and cultural component. What I was interested in was the possibilities of learning and assembling new hygiene practices and assemblages through cross-cultural learning. Could these practices from the far west of China influence hygiene assemblages in Aotearoa, Australia and other places in the West? In asking this, I developing thinking around hybrid research collectives to argue that the early adopters of ‘elimination communication’ (as the nappy-free hygiene practice was called) were researchers, experimenting and documenting their hygiene assemblages in ways that made it more possible for others to pick up the practice.

    It has been interesting to work on the book over such a long period: things that were not normal 18 years ago have become normalised. During this time, elimination communication has become more mainsteam, as have other alternative hygiene practices such as using menstrual cups, reusable pads or period panties, and a whole range of modern cloth nappies. We have also had a global pandemic where the first response was not really medical, but social — in the form of social distancing and changing behaviours and habits before vaccines were produced.

    Photo by Eric Lafforgue, from Flickr

    What does Caring for life have to say about transition?

    So what does the book tell us about transitioning to caring economies? Here’s three thoughts on that:

    1. Transition and social change is material, social and spatial. It’s not about individuals, although individuals and their behaviours matter. It’s about the broader assemblage of these materialities, socialities and spatialities.
    2. Passionate collectives of individuals experimenting with different material, social and spatial arrangements can spark and seed change. In the area of economic change, this means paying attention to what collectives of community groups are doing — degrowthers, community economy organisations, artist collectives, Indigenous economies, regional and local economies and more. It’s not that these experiments have to be scaled up ‘as is’, but that they produce important knowledge that can inform change.
    3. We can and should learn from places that are considered ‘less-developed’, ‘out of the way’ or ‘undeveloped’. For it is in these places where different diverse forms of cultural, social, material and spatial arrangements can be found that might be better adapted for transition.

    If you are interested in taking a look at the book, see here.

    I’m also available to give talks on the book this year, just get in touch!

    The author holds up a copy of the book Caring for Life: a postdevelopment politics of hygiene
  • Introducing Ben — Researching changing economies in Taranaki

    Introducing Ben — Researching changing economies in Taranaki

    Ben is a co-funded Masters student studying economic change in the small town of Pātea, Taranaki. I’m part of his supervisory team and took a trip out to Pātea to meet up with Ben and have a look around South Taranaki.

    Tell us a bit about your background and how you got interested in economic geography

    I’m originally from North Taranaki, in fact I’m currently there now studying by distance. I went to study geography at Massey Manawatū straight out of school. I came to the topic because geography allows for academic diversity, being able to address topics and borrow ideas from other physical and social sciences. Economic geography is a particular interest as I can explore impacts of and solutions to capitalism’s flaws.

    What are you working on now?

    I’m currently completing my Masters’ thesis, where I am exploring people’s responses to change in the context of a small town, Pātea. This project includes a media analysis and semi-structured interviews with community leaders.

    What do you think the biggest challenges will be?

    One of the biggest challenges in my research is the interviewing. Having never done anything like this before, I have found it a difficult process to work through: planning interview questions, conducting interviews, and then discovering mistakes or oversights made, during transcription and analysis. It has definitely been one of those skills that can’t be just read about – it has to be continuously tried and improved for oneself, but I do think I am much better at interviews now than I was before my first.

    What are some of the surprising or interesting things you have discovered in your fieldwork so far?

    An interesting part of Pātea is the culture which stands in contrast to statistics and some media coverage. It has been evident with everybody I’ve talked to that they understand their community is sometimes called ‘lower socioeconomic’ by others. But they reject this as a sole identity and instead have embraced an engaging community lifestyle where local people and families can thrive peacefully and cooperatively. While there are certainly economic challenges, to identify a community like this only as ‘poor’ is to miss the point entirely. It is also clear that this identity is constantly shaped by the community leaders I talked to, who are passionate about their place, and inspire others to share in that passion.

    Ben Lily is researching people’s responses to change in Pātea as part of a Master’s project funded by the John McArthur Scholarship in Geography
  • PhD Scholarship awarded – introducing Swarnima Kriti

    PhD Scholarship awarded – introducing Swarnima Kriti

    Great news! We are now able to confirm the PhD scholarship in Transitioning to caring economies has been awarded to Swarnima Kriti.

    Swarnima is an action researcher in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh. She has both lived and worked in a small Indigenous village with a group of young women interested in questions of gender, development and ecology. Together, Swarnima and the other young women have set up a cooperative called Chinhari: The Young India (www.chinhari.co.in). Swarnima has completed an MPhil in Development Practice, and published some articles. Her latest published article is “Hegel and India” at The GCAS Review. 

    Swarnima will join the caring economies project and be based at Massey Palmerston North, while living in Porirua and back in Chhattisgarh for parts of the PhD project. Her project includes enabling a creative and constructive exchange of learning between communities doing community-based economic innovation in India and New Zealand. Our research partners in Porirua are Te Hiko centre for economic innovation. I asked Swarnima a couple of questions in the lead-up to her big shift to Aotearoa New Zealand.

    What attracted you to the Transitioning to caring economies project? 

    The Transitioning to caring economies project attracted me because of two reasons. One, it gave me the opportunity to learn about collective economic subjects, their actions and institutions. And two, it focused on “writing rights” i.e. writing about efforts communities put into finding sustainable ways of life than  “writing wrongs”. These learnings become important for action researchers like me to create a confluence of alternatives nurturing post capitalist practices.

    What do you think the biggest challenges will be in completing your PhD at Massey?

    I believe my biggest challenge in completing this PhD would be my field work in New Zealand, especially building a relationship with communities there. My work in the past has been largely based on my strong relationships with the community. It may be challenging to juggle between understanding the community, living with them, creating relationships and minimizing the cultural gap. 

    We look forward to having Swarnima arrive and join us at Massey and the Community Economies Research Network NZ, beginning in November 2023!

    Swarnima is an accomplished action researcher interested in community-led economic innovation.

  • Annual reporting

    Detail from painting by Inge Flinte — hopefully it will feature on the cover of one of the books coming out!

    It’s hard to believe that it’s been a year already since I started at Massey and began working on this project fulltime. Recently I had to complete an annual report, which provides a nice opportunity to reflect on what I have been doing. Here are the highlights:

    Transforming the way we think about economies

    • Finished off and submitted Caring for Life: A postdevelopment politics of infant hygiene. It’s now in production with University of Minnesota Press and will be available by the end of the 2023. While infant hygiene might not seem related to economies, the book develops an approach to studying places built on pluriversal thinking. Nappy-free hygiene practices in the Global South are understood as important innovations for Global North communities who need to rethink their resource use.
    • Finished off an submitted Introducing Human Geographies, 4th edition, co-edited with Paul Cloke, Mark Goodwin, Junxi Qian and Andy Williams. This global textbook is in production with Routledge, and was a complete revision and redesign of the text that included a diverse range of authors from all over the world. I worked particularly on the ‘Collaborations’ section, which envisions the next generation of geographic education and research.
    • Taught the Aotearoa node of the intensive winter school Researching Postcapitalist Possibilities. PhD and early career scholars from NZ and Australia converged on Palmerston North for 10 days of immersive learning in poststructural action research, community economies, and researching with postcapitalist possibilities in mind.

    Inventorying diverse economies with postcapitalist potential

    Case studies of transition

    • The in-depth case studies have emerged from partnered work from my Building Better Homes, Towns and Cities work.
    • We have completed in-depth case studies of composting and organic waste initiatives, which we published this year.
    • We have completed an in-depth report on the wellbeing outcomes of the work of Life in Vacant Spaces in a post-disaster context in Ōtautahi Christchurch.
    • Did some experimental work with a quantitative version of a Community Economy Return on Investment tool, with the help of a wonderful intern from Norway. We will continue to work on developing this in both quantiative and qualitative versions as part of this research programme.
    • I have begun a new case study of Christian and post-Christian postcapitalist subjectivities and activism, with ethics approval, a book contract and co-author all lined up!

    Key findings in 2023

    • Communities are already investing in transition to postcapitalist and caring economies and there is extensive innovation that is not yet present in the literature. Part of the issue is that social innovation is not always recognised, particularly if it is done in marginalised and low-income groups, regions or nations.
    • Global interconnections are being made, particularly between networks in the Global South, that have well-developed bottom-up theories of economic change.
    • Subjectivities (or sense of self as an actor) play a role in community investment – we have found this in particular with alternative waste infrastructure that contributes to more circular community economies.
    • New metrics are needed and desired by community organisations who want to represent the transformative work they do outside of monetary frameworks.
  • Recruiting a PhD student interested in transitioning to caring economies

    Recruiting a PhD student interested in transitioning to caring economies

    One of the cool things about getting some funding for this project is the ability to offer a scholarship! You can read more about my advertised scholarship here, including how to apply. I’m keen for people to bring their own passions, interests and communities to the project.

    The whole process highlighted how our economies are in dire need of transition, however. The funding was approved in 2021, and since then the PhD scholarship rates were increased (yay!), but I was not allowed to increase the scholarship rate for the one I am offering (boo!). However, I have managed to ring-fence some funding for PhD fieldwork, including international travel if appropriate, and a paid part-time research assistant job on this project. While this is still not ideal, it does mean that any part-time work the PhD student is doing will be relevant to their PhD – rather than going to work in a petrol station or supermarket or work in an unrelated course tutoring.

    I guess this also highlights the things that we can and do already do to create opportunities for care ‘in the meantime’. And how much we need to make this the norm, if PhD students are able to survive on more than two-minute noodles. If you would like to find out more about the scholarship, please get in touch via my Massey email.

    Photo by Ekrulila on Pexels.com