"An Ensemble of Possibilities": Enunciating the Geography of New York City's Solidarity Economy. Lecture by Lauren Hudson, on September 30th, 2020.

Ms. Lauren Hudson, is a doctoral candidate in Earth and Environmental Sciences and the recipient of the prestigious national Society of Woman Geographers Evelyn L. Pruitt National Fellowship for Dissertation Research-New York Group Fellowship. She has taught courses on urban geography and world regions in the Department of Geography and Environmental Sciences.

Her recent talk on the solidarity economy in New York City revealed some of the finding from her dissertation. According to Ms. Hudson, the Solidarity Economy (SE) refers to the myriad of ways people collectively meet their needs based on values of mutualism, cooperation, ecological sustainability, justice, and democratic control. These collective forms of production, distribution, consumption, and redistribution vary in model, ranging from worker, food, financial, and housing cooperatives to community gardens, and collectives. These models join together in New York City to create a ‘movement space’--a geography of relationships between SE sites that is both politically and materially produced.

In her work, Ms. Hudson is drawing on in-depth interviews with the solidarity economy activists and their sketch maps to understand how the solidarity economy movement space is organized and sustained. The talk was one of the most engaging and revealing, with numerous questions after the lecture from the numerous and highly interactive audience. Ms. Hudson discuss the production of physical Solidarity Economy space in New York in three ways: SE spaces as entry points or barriers to Solidarity Economy analysis, the ways that practitioners regulate these spaces, and what new spatial relationships are made possible through Solidarity Economy work. How do these gardens, credit unions, or food cooperatives create a values-centered geography in New York City?

Great job, Lauren, and best of luck with finishing up your work!

Also see https://www.communityeconomies.org/news/movement-space-new-yorks-solidarity-economy.

The link to the webinar, courtesy of the Society of Woman Geographers, is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tw0sdbtHEFk&feature=youtu.be.