ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the extent to which the benefits that activists claim spring from trading with Bobbins, an experience altogether different from trading governed by mainstream values, are realisable. It aims to establish the extent to which anarchist Heterotopians can operationalise their aims of building a space that operates under the cultural codes. The chapter considers whether, if the codes produced could be actualised, Local Exchange Trading Schemes (LETS) can best be conceptualised as effective micro-political politics. Central to LETS is the core claim made by activists that money is a simulacrum, socially created and thereby socially creatable by members of LETS. The small scale of trades that takes place, when contrasted with the magnitude of economic and social interactions governed by mainstream logic, severely limits the amount of cultural innovation possible. The Heterotopians recognised that community needs to be built because connections through trading are too tenuous for community to evolve spontaneously.
