Alternative Currency Movements as a Challenge to Globalisation? : A Case Study of Manchester's Local Currency Networks

Over the past 15 years, local money networks, which are essentially trading networks using a community-created currency, have emerged in countries as far apart as Argentina, Australia and New Zealand, Canada and the US, continental Europe and Japan. They range from Local Exchange Trading Schemes (UK), to Time Dollars (US), Green Dollars (New Zealand, Australia and Canada), Trading Circles (Hungary), Barter Networks (Argentina) and Talents (Germany). Drawing on an ethnographic case study of alternative currency movements in Manchester, UK, this book provides an analysis of the motivations, aims, successes and failures of alternative currency networks. It also raises questions such as the contribution of the alternative currency movement to current debates about alternatives to neoliberalism. While it is theoretically informed, critical and grounded in fieldwork, it is also sympathetic to the political aims of the protagonists and cognisant of the non-economic benefits that arise from their development.

Since World War II, the British Labour Party has played a central role in dealing with complex international issues. Achieving real power in parliament for the first time, Labour governments have acted responsibly, and are usually in accord with the views of a substantial majority of the British people. Such was not always the case. In British Labour Seeks a Foreign Policy, 1900-1940, Henry R. Winkler synthesizes twenty years'' study of the subject to offer the first full-scale treatment of the Labour Party''s evolution in foreign affairs.The Labour Party came into existence at the beginning of the twentieth century to deal with the domestic problems of the working class, and it showed relatively little interest in foreign policy issues. In the aftermath of World War I, however, small groups of moderates made the case against the bitter rejection of the Versailles Treaty by many in the Labour Party and the trade union movement. Most of these argued that the League of Nations could be used to remedy some of the deficiencies of the settlement and that such a League must have the sanction of force if it was to be effective.During the 1930s, the failures of the League--in the Far East, Abyssinia, Spain, and Central Europe--compelled some of its advocates to conclude that, League or no League, the threat from Nazi Germany mandated support for a program of preparedness and rearmament even under the aegis of a hated National Government. The result, by 1937, was the final formal abandonment of many of the radical illusions of the twenties and thirties, as Labour reluctantly but formally assumed a posture that enabled it to share in the governance of wartime Britain and to take a key role in dealing with the international issues that emerged in the aftermath of the Second World War.This volume contains valuable lessons on the responsibilities of political parties as well as the pros and cons of specific policies. It is essential reading for und