ABSTRACT
Recent years have seen an effervescence of British local currency initiatives (Boyle 1997) such as Local Exchange Trading Schemes, (LETS), whereby a non-sterling economy operates through the use of local currencies named and created by the communities that agree to use them, and set, roughly, at parity with national currency. LETS represents a call for sustainable community economic development (CED) to be taken seriously, and a critique of conventional growth-orientated conceptions of economic development (Dauncey 1988; Douthwaite 1996; Lang 1994; North 1997a; 1997b; Pacione 1997). Consequently, they are increasingly being taken up within local economic development, anti-poverty, and Local Agenda 21 programmes (Barnes et al. 1996; North 1996; Walker 1997; Williams 1996).
