Bringing the Food Economy Home

Local Alternatives to Global Agribusiness

Steven Gorelick, Todd Merrifield, Helena Norberg-Hodge

There has been much discussion about the quality of food being provided by global agribusiness and the serious environmental impact it produces. The benefits of fostering a local food production are often dismissed, but it would address a range of health, social and environmental problems. The authors argue if the trend of large agribusiness were thought about rather than accepted without question, then local food production would be seen as a viable means of supplementing this existing system.… (more information)

Crimes, Laws and Communities

John McMullan, David C. Perrier, Stephen Smith, Peter D. Swan

In this book, McMullan and his colleagues have provided much needed information and analysis on “unconventional” crimes by researching fire for profit, illegal fishing and business crime in Atlantic Canada. The three essays fill an information gap left by scant media reports, conflicting government statistics and, in the case of crimes of capital, wilfully concealed information. (more information)

Doing Community Economic Development

Edited by John Loxley, Kathleen Sexsmith, Jim Silver

Challenging traditional notions of development, these essays critically examine bottom-up, community economic development strategies in a wide variety of contexts: as a means of improving lives in northern, rural and inner-city settings; shaped and driven by women and by Aboriginal people; aimed at employment creation for the most marginalized. most authors have employed a participatory research methodology. The essays are the product of a broader, three-year community-university research collaboration… (more information)

In Their Own Voices

Building Urban Aboriginal Communities

Parvin Ghorayshi, Peter Gorzen, Joan Hay, Cyril Keeper, Darlene Klyne, Michael MacKenzie, Jim Silver, Freeman Simard

In Their Own Voices is an examination of the urban Aboriginal experience, based on the voices of Aboriginal people. It is set in Winnipeg’s inner city, but has implications for urban Aboriginal people across Canada. While not glossing over the problems that confront urban Aboriginal people, the book focuses primarily on innovative community-based solutions being created and run by and for urban Aboriginal people. Separate chapters examine Aboriginal involvement in community development, adult… (more information)

Mining Town Crisis

Globalization, Labour and Resistance in Sudbury

Edited by David Leadbeater

Sudbury is the largest hardrock mining centre in North America and among the largest in the world. Given the enormous mineral wealth that exists in the Sudbury Basin, one might think that prosperity would abound and that cultural, educational, health and social-welfare institutions would be of the highest order, existing within a well-maintained and attractive physical infrastructure. But this is not the Sudbury that people know. This book explores key aspects of Sudbury’s economic, health… (more information)

Recasting Steel Labour

The Stelco Story

June Corman, D.W. Livingstone, Meg Luxton, Wally Secombe

This is a local study of steelworkers employed at, or aid off from, Stelco’s Hilton Works in Hamilton, Ontario. This local study has been situated in the context of the global restructuring of capitalism. The authors content that more than ever before the dynamics of the whole world economy limit and shape the actions of its past – a process referred to as “globalizing the local.” Restructuring is taking place in response to global demands. As the global net tighten,… (more information)

Social Economy

Health and Welfare in Four Canadian Provinces

Edited by Louise Tremblay, Yves Vaillancourt

The fundamental principles of the social economy are solidarity, democratic organization of work, and user and community participation. Based on a three-year study carried out by researchers at the Université du Québec “ Montréal, Université de Moncton, the University of Ottawa and the University of Regina, the essays here testify to the value and diversity of the social economy sector in four Canadian provinces. Researchers explore the realities of the third sector… (more information)

The People’s Co-op

The Life and Times of a North End Institution

Nancy Kardash, Jim Mochoruk

Located in the heart of Winnipeg’s Northend, the most class-conscious and ethnically diverse part of the city, the People’s Co-op was always a different kind of institution. Founded and then successfully run for over sixty years by members of Winnipeg’s vibrant left-wing Eastern-European community, this co-op mixed Marx, milk and the masses into a heady brew of social activism and co-operative enterprise. Beginning with a small coal and fuel yard in 1928-and a much larger dream… (more information)

Transforming Communities

William L. Luttrell

An extraordinary exploration of the dangers, and possibilities, facing human communities today, Transforming Communities rejects the current myth that capitalism, led by global corporations, is providing the solutions we require to survive and prosper in the decades ahead. Quite a different path is offered to us by Mother Earth, Dr. Luttrell suggests, and it is the best hope for life on this planet, our own lives included. The book is an effort to outline the direction this path would take us, and… (more information)

Under One Roof

Community Economic Development and Housing in the Inner City

Lawrence Deane

Under One Roof is a case study of an innovative and alternative model of community economic development, one quite at odds with the conventional “export/free market model” of CED. Using the North End Housing Project in Winnipeg as his focus, Lawrence Deane assesses the strategy of housing as the centrepiece for CED. The people in William Whyte neighbourhood founded and ran NEHP to buy, renovate, rent and sell housing to residents in one of the lowest-income locales in the city. Their… (more information)

When the Fish Are Gone

Ecological Collapse and the Social Organization of Fishing in Northwest Newfoundland, 1982-1995

Craig T. Palmer, Peter R. Sinclair

The Gulf Coast fisheries off Northwest Newfoundland provide a graphic example of the social and biological consequences of the failure to create conditions that would allow for fishing on a sustainable basis. This book shows how an ecological crisis has produced a social crisis threatening the viability of fishers, the fish plants where they sold their fish, and the communities in which they live. It is set in the context of the North Atlantic fisheries and of primary resource producing rural areas… (more information)