Search

This thesis explores the discursive barriers to the feminist development of alternative monies, particularly in the post-2008 era. In a rapidly shifting environment of currency and financial innovations, the role of gender in re-thinking how money might operate – materially and relationally – has yet to be fully unpacked. After a literature review of critical feminist writing on money since the 1970s Wages for Housework movement, the four research articles feature: (1) an institutional analysis of money in the sustainability paradigm, (2) a critique the role of fiat currency in the state/citizen relationship, (3) a single-case study analysis of community economic practices in Scotland, UK, and (4) a postcolonial analysis of money as a tool of feminist translation.The set of interdisciplinary research papers concerning feminism, money and social innovation are then brought to bear on some crosscutting objectives for the development of critical theory and socio-economic change. The first objective provides a framework for the role of money in theories of feminist political economy – both as an object of critique and as a space for the proposition of alternatives – concerning language, power, and sexuality. The second objective explores how contemporary developments in intellectual culture (briefly summed up as “postmodern” conditions) affect the epistemological underpinnings of economics in a manner that makes it difficult for money to be re-imagined, at this current time in the West. The third objective is to experiment with different ways of imagining what the ‘innovative development’ of feminist monies might look like – in other words, to let feminist theories permeate the very systems of excavation and measurement that we use to assess alternative monies.Ultimately, I situate the problem for feminist monetary development in the crux of challenges set by the “abstraction” and “monoculture” of contemporary currency relations. The thesis argues for embracing a post-structural account of money as intertwined with language. I argue that the symbolic biases of these systems can be worked against through the use of different semiotic models, including feminist aesthetics and translation, and through making post-modern amendments to the theory of social innovation. The thesis closes with discussing contributions to the research fields of feminist political economy, monetary sociology and social innovation.

This essay explored the normative and epistemic effects of dis/ability arts organizations in the UK and Sweden. With the development of a discourse for the Arts and Health movement and Art Entrepreneurship, a gap emerges for socially-entrepreneurial ventures whose innovation value is outside the well-engrained parameters of ‘work integration’ for persons with dis/abilities. Using theories of kynicism and sensemaking – from aesthetic and organisational studies – an analysis is framed of how these Arts innovations – largely lead by non-dis/abled entrepreneurs – navigate and disrupt institutional understandings of dis/ability.