J. K. Gibson-Graham

In the late 1970s, Katherine Gibson moved from her home country of Australia to the US to undertake her doctorate at Clark University. Prior to the move, Gibson had completed an undergraduate degree in geography at the University of Sydney and postgraduate studies in community development at Macquarie University. During her studies in Australia in the early 1970s, Gibson had undertaken research among working-class communities in inner-city Sydney. Gibson is currently Emeritus Professor at the Institute of Culture and Society, Western Sydney University, and co-director of the Community Economies Institute. Julie Graham (born 1945) was from the US, and came into the discipline of geography after a degree in English literature from Smith College. She completed her PhD in 1984 and served as Associate Department Head for Geography at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst between 1999 and 2006. During her time in Amherst, she collaborated with the economists Stephen Resnick and Richard Wolff, among others. Gibson and Graham's first collaboration and co-authorship came in their second semester of graduate studies, as part of a course on regional development taught by the geographer Richard Peet. Subsequent collective work as J. K. Gibson-Graham was influenced by poststructuralist feminism and queer theory, and attempted to break from the image of the heroic individual scholar. The collaboration emerged from “a theoretical and political commitment to knowledge production as a shared and creative practice of care for self, for others, and for communities.” ==Work==

At Clark University, the doctoral research of both Gibson and Graham was deeply influenced by Marxian political economy, focusing on processes of economic and industrial restructuring in Australia and the US, respectively. Another strand which has emerged are ecological and more-than-human perspectives, as seen in the book Manifesto for Living in the Anthropocene, co-edited by Katherine Gibson. Capitalocentrism In 1996, Gibson-Graham popularized and furthered discussion on a concept called "capitalocentrism":This term refers to the dominant representation of all economic activities in terms of their relationship to capitalism—as the same as, the opposite to, a complement of, or contained within capitalism. Our attempts to destabilize the hegemony of capitalocentrism have included a number of theoretical strategies: 1) production of different representations of economic identity, and 2) development of different narratives of economic development. Their work focuses on moving beyond a "capitalocentric" viewpoint and recognizing the wide range of economic practices that co-exist, even in so-called "capitalist" or "socialist" economies. that will contribute to our understandings of possible economic structures. The "diverse economies iceberg" is a key visual tool used to represent this economic diversity. This work also related to the development of an anti-essentialist understanding of class, explored in two collections co-edited with Stephen Resnick and Richard Wolff, Class and Its Others and Re/presenting Class: Essays in Postmodern Marxism. This body of work treats class as a historically variable relation, not a fixed, homogeneous identity or subject position. Community Economies Based on the insights from a diverse economies approach, Gibson-Graham elaborated a "politics of possibility" that explores alternatives to exploitative economic practices. These have been termed "community economies" and refer to sustainable and equitable forms of livelihood guided democratically by ethical coordinates. "Community" in this use transcends only human community, to incorporate all life forms, and "economy" refers to "the practices that allow us to survive and care for each other and the earth." Community economies are framed around a cluster of ethical concerns: • Survival: What do we really need to survive well, in balance with the well-being and needs of others and the planet? • Surplus: How do we distribute any surplus to enrich social and environmental health? • Transactions: How do we conduct ethical encounters with human and non-human others? • Consumption: How do we consume sustainably and justly? • Commons: What do we share with human and non-human others, and how do we maintain, replenish, and growth this commons? • Investment: What do we do with stored wealth? How do we invest this wealth so that future generations may live well? ==Significance==

J. K. Gibson-Graham are widely cited across multiple disciplines and have provided significant contributions to understandings of community economies and economic geography. The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It) was named a "Classic in Human Geography" by the journal Progress in Human Geography. In 2019, they received the Thomas F. Divine Award, "presented annually to someone who over a lifetime has made important contributions to social economics and the social economy." Katherine Gibson and Julie Graham also established—and published as part of—the Community Economies Collective (CEC), composed of former and current students and collaborators. The Community Economies Research Network (CERN) was established in the 1990s and now has over 400 members. In 2018, the Community Economies Institute (CEI) was founded as a non-profit organisation to advance "research, education and action around ethical economic practices that acknowledge and act on the interdependence of all life forms, human and nonhuman". In 2024, the CEI was endorsed as a charitable organisation by the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission. Gibson-Graham's work also forms the basis for the Diverse Economies and Liveable Worlds book series published by the University of Minnesota Press. ==Publications==

Books • • • • • • Articles and chapters • • Shorter version of the 1993 article • • • • • • ==See also==