1. What are "Economies"?

This part of the module might seem quite specific, but in reality, it is a very holistic and general area of learning! If you expect that there will be an explanation of such notions as Trade, Markets, Industries, Commerce, Business, Money, Currency, GDP, Inflation, Employment, Investments, Consumption, and Production... you might be a bit disappointed! It is true that those phenomena influence your Network and yourself in the World. Nevertheless, the word "economy" has its origins in ancient Greek. It comes from the Greek word "oikonomia" (οἰκονομία), which is a combination of two words: "oikos" (οἶκος), meaning "house" or "household," and "nomos" (νόμος), meaning "law," "custom," or "management."

Originally, "oikonomia" referred to the management and administration of a household or a family estate. It involved the organization of resources, labour, and finances within a household to ensure the well-being and prosperity of its members.

Today, "economy" is a central concept in the field of economics, which studies how societies allocate scarce resources to satisfy human wants and needs. Here, we would like to reconnect to the original meaning of the word "economy" and even talk about many different "economies" as stated in the title of this chapter.

Therefore we will mention words such as Finance, Care, Gift Economy, Circulation of Goods, Empowerment, Barter and more... which are related to understanding economies as care for the common good.

In this part, you will:

♥ learn about the approaches to the economy known in the ecovillage and sustainable communities movement

♥ get interesting tools to introduce the topic of economy to your network

♥ get rid of the fear of the word "economy" and understand why it is important to maintain stability in the ecovillage network.