In each other we trust: reimagining community, economics and the region in central North Carolina

In each other we trust: reimagining community, economics and the region in central North Carolina Public Deposited

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Creator

Lepofsky, Jonathan David
- Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Geography

Abstract

This dissertation examines the creation and circulation of a complementary currency, the PLENTY, within four contiguous counties in central North Carolina. Using a participatory research action model, this dissertation argues that the production of community through the PLENTY’s monetary space and alternative economic function creates an opportunity for residents within this region to rearticulate their relationship to people and places within and outside of the region. This alternative regional form is different than the dominant conception of the region as “the Triangle,” which is based around the global connections that meet up in Research Triangle Park and which have concretized over the past 50 years. The dissertation stresses the ambivalence with which this alternative regional form is realized either in idea or in practice due to the discursive limits PLENTY users put on the geography of community. While the PLENTY provides the possibility to practice a spatial ethics in which one’s sense of responsivess and care follow the complex lines of connection fostered by a diversely global sense of place, this potential remains latent when conventional relations between community, economics and place are not deconstructed.

Date of publication