Self-Analysis: Do Members see LETS as a Social Movement?

This chapter discusses the extent that members of Local Exchange Trading Schemes (LETS) who see what they are doing as social movement activity, see it as being capable what Melucci called 'breaking the limits if the system'. It shows the extent that members have a consciousness of their historicity. The chapter examines whether LETS members identified any opponents, who these opponents might be, and what they might do to challenge LETS or prevent it developing. The differences came between Transformers who did see LETS as capable of changing mainstream institutions if they adopted the use of LETS, and Heterotopians who had less faith in the likelihood of LETS being adopted by the mainstream. The Humaniser saw LETS as being quite subtle in not offering any opportunity for a backlash of any sort, and felt that what was happening was an uncontroversial change in consciousness – as what Touraine called a 'self-limiting movement'.