ABSTRACT
This chapter builds on ethnographic work with extended family households in Australia, to understand sharing in Minority World extended family households, and amidst complex interplays of socio-economic and environmental crises. Distinct patterns of sharing were documented at the height of the global financial crisis, and at a time when climate change had become the preeminent national political issue (upon which a Federal election had been decided). The research intersects conceptually with the growing literature on practices of sharing, gifting and pooling of material resources. In addition to clothing, the affordances of close physical proximity in shared domestic spaces were apparent in relation to cooking practices. Extended family living also meant improved quality of life amidst financial constraints. Extended family households generate living spaces with potentially more capacity to foster sharing and pooling practices, thus cultivating noncapitalist circuits of exchange of material goods and services in ways that reduce environmental burden, and respond to conditions of hardship and resource scarcity.
