The Ethical Imperative of Possibilism in an Era of Despair

This is a pre-publication review essay of the forthcoming The Handbook of Diverse Economies.

Abstract

The Handbook of Diverse Economies displays the extraordinary creativity that infuses the diverse economies project. For us, the Handbook demonstrates forcefully that we discover in what we don’t know rather than what we do a deep reservoir of productive naivete and problem solving that might enable us to stumble toward a just, sustainable, and responsible economy, one experiment at a time. We find in diverse economies projects a parallel ethical stance grounded in the political choice to not know, and yet to try—a stance we find elaborated in the work of Albert O. Hirschman. Diverse economies practitioners presume, look for, and find ways to enact respectful, sustaining, non-exploitative human and human-non-human relationships. When a courageous appreciation of what we don’t and can’t know guides progressive politics, there are no limits to the initiatives awaiting enactment.