ABSTRACT
The process of neoliberal sociocultural and economic globalization, the priority of free trade, market concentration, privatization of public institutions and of life goods creates an increasing dependency of regions in relation to work, finance, goods, and services, and it leads to pressure on the local economy, social systems, and the environment. A growing part of the world’s population eats the same food, buys the same fashion items from the same shops, listens to the same music, drives the same cars, and lives and works according to the same lifestyle. With the emergence of these economic monocultures, regions are losing their self-reliance, their singularity, and the knowledge base for their specific economic cultures, predominantly formed through historical and regional resource pools. They are also losing their resilience and end up depending on market competition shaped by global fluctuations and uncertainties. While people in developing and transforming regions of the world are trying to defend their local livelihoods against global corporations, there is simultaneously a growing social movement in the more prosperous regions to restore regional production and consumption and the local supply of basic goods, especially of food. New community-based cooperatives of local producers and consumers are coming together to gain a stronger position. Regional currencies can help to strengthen economic transactions and political rules giving priority to local providers within the existing legal frame.
