The diversity of Community Economies Financing in support of postgrowth: Finance as an ethical tool put into practice

By the example of Community Economies (CE) financing practices, this research scrutinizes existing examples of ethical forms of finance and thereof derives a clearer understanding of the underlying decision-making process and values in accordance with postgrowth ideals.
The objective is an economic paradigm that aims at ecological and social justice, decidedly shifting from a growth-focused economic system (see Schmelzer, Vetter, and Vansintjan (2022)). However, in our current capitalist economy, finance plays a dominant role, mainly used for individual rent extraction and wealth accumulation. Consequently, this dissertation aims at re-reading finance in its current form as an ethical tool to be used for the common good. By the example of CE as my object of study and their financing practices, this research inquires how far CE are able to obtain financing outside of conventional financial markets that follow capitalist market logics and are able to align their financing practices with their values.
Through a qualitative methodological approach, 64 interviews were conducted to inquire on CE values, their purpose and financing obtained within the two regional case studies of Luxembourg and Saxony, Germany. My empirical findings suggest that CE financing exhibit a spectrum from market-based forms of financing to non-market forms of financing that resemble conceptions of finance as a commons as outlined by Safri and Madra (2020) and are rooted within the respective community. Due to CE inevitably operating within the current market setting, they are obliged to strategize and carve out spaces for their postcapitalist practices which leads to diverse choices in their respective financing strategies. These are dependent on the context and CE needs with respect to their community, their purpose, ideas of profit distribution and conceptions of commons. Furthermore, my results demonstrate how the choice of CE financing is based upon transparent, just and collective decision-making processes.
As such, this research contributes to a more thorough understanding of the dimension of finance as regarded from a CE perspective and thereby offers a more detailed understanding of ethical forms of finance for postgrowth.