This important book brings together critical analyses of alterity from across the social sciences and humanities, refining and advancing what alternative economies and polities are, how they are formed, what difficulties and problems they face, and how they might be sustained. A central theme is the need to examine critically both the material contexts and the conceptual categories deployed in the making of alternative economies.

I: On Alternatives and Diversity; 1: 'Alternative' This, 'Alternative' That ...: Interrogating Alterity and Diversity 1; II: Alternative Spaces of Finance, Production and Innovation; 2: The Longevity of Alternative Economic Practices: Lessons from Alternative Currency Networks; 3: Alterity's Geographies: Socio-territoriality and Difference in Islamic Banking and Finance; 4: Finding Alterity in Innovation or Finding Innovation in Alterity?; 5: Mutual Dependency, Diversity and Alterity in Production: Cooperatives, Group Contracting and Factories; 6: On the Alternativeness of Alternative Food Networks: Sustainability and the Co-production of Social and Ecological Wealth; III: Alternative Markets and Spaces of Consumption; 7: How Fair is Fair Enough? Negotiating Alterity and Compromise Within the German Fair Trade Movement; 8: On Not Keeping up with the Joneses: Is it 'Alternative' Not to Shop?; 9: 'Something Different for the Weekend' 1 Alterity, Performance, Routine and Proficiency at Farmers' Markets in the Northeast of England; 10: Are You Alternative? 'Alternative' Food Networks and Consumers' Definitions of Alterity; 11: The Danish Organic Movement: From Social Movement to Market Mainstream and Beyond...?; IV: Alternative Spaces of Social Enterprise and Development; 12: Time Banking: A New Economics Alternative; 13: Where is the 'Social' in Social Enterprise?; 14: Social Enterprise and Socio-legal Structure: Constructing Alternative Institutional Spaces for Economic Development; 15: Housing in Common: In Search of a Strategy for Housing Alterity in England in the 21st Century; 16: Diverse Present(s), Alternative Futures; V: Conclusion Critical Reflections on Alterity and Diversity; 17: Spiders, Bees or Architects? Imagination and the Radical Immanence of Alternatives/Diversity for Political-Economic Geographies