In August we meet again in the Swiss mountains to build a community and learn from each other. In this year's edition, we will discuss care-centered economies in a collaborative and inquisitive atmosphere. The focus lies on care as an organizing principle for an alternative economy and on how we might collectively empower ourselves.

In the mornings, there are different workshop formats and collaborative spaces enabling a participatory knowledge production. In the afternoon renowned researchers and experts are going to introduce us to different aspects and perspectives directly linked to this year's topic. We will start the week with an intro on Sunday, then follow up with specific inputs, and close the week with a wrap-up on Friday.

Schedule

Summary of our schedule for the week (scroll left / right). Check your email for the complete version with workshop details:

Speakers

Basics workshops

The Basics/CoLab (yellow slots in the schedule) equip participants with the tools and background knowledge on heterodox paradigms and pluralism within Economics. You will meet your Basics/CoLab group at the beginning of the week and stick with them until you do the check-out on the last day. This means that you will spend some time in this group and get to know the other participants, discuss the preparation material (that you will be reading in advance) and inputs with them, and hopefully even find some new friends.

In terms of content there are three tracks:

The Basics course Heterodox Paradigms is designed for people who want to gain a better understanding of the key paradigms of this Summer School - feminist economics, ecological economics, and marxist economics. The Basics Workshop builds on introductory materials published on exploring-economics.org. In the first part you will have time to study and discuss these texts with your peers and learn about the different assumptions on which the paradigms are based, their conceptualization of the economy, their preferred methods and many more aspects. In the second part, you will have time to reflect on power structures in economics and how the three paradigms conceptualize power. Possible questions might be: What tools does a specific heterodox paradigm (implicitly) offer to analyse power relations and economic hierarchies? What policies and changes do the paradigms propose to flatten economic hierarchies? The Basics Workshop invites you to discover the contents on exploring-economics.org, and offers an entry point to familiarize yourself with the three paradigms. It is conceptualized somewhat flexible and based on your and your group’s preferences we will spend more or less time on the different blocks.

In the Basics course Changing Academia and Economics we focus on the theoretical and practical foundations needed to change what frustrates you about academic disciplines, the way economics is taught, and your study programme specifically. We will explore, among other things, how paradigm shifts unfold, how academic disciplines can be understood through field and capital theory, what it means to view academia as a historically grown path-dependent institution, and what we can learn from past and present student movements. While we cannot offer ready-made solutions, we provide a space to learn from each other’s organizing experiences, as well as an overview of the different programmatic and strategic approaches that have emerged in response to the status quo in economics - ranging from opening up curricula to unorthodox and interdisciplinary perspectives, to pluralist economics, to building alternative heterodox institutions and transdisciplinary approaches. Ultimately, this course is about creating a space to imagine and articulate your own “dream” (economics) programme, and to learn about and critically reflect on the theories, approaches, and tools that can help you realize it in cooperation with other students.

The CoLab Articulating Systemic Alternatives & Strategies – Building Knowledge Infrastructures offers a space in which participants reflect and work in parallel across different tables. On the one hand, there is a table dedicated to critically engaging with and refining your own ideology, knowledge, and belief system - similar to last year’s Empowerment Workshop, which focused on articulating political strategies and systemic alternatives, and clarifying one’s role in driving systemic change as a researcher or activist. On the other hand, there are 4-6 project tables, each dedicated to a specific, predefined knowledge infrastructure that you will collaboratively develop over the course of the week. These may include building a Utopian Media Catalogue, creating a Critical Directory of Local Economists (resp. a tool to classify economists based on their publications), translating the Basics Workshop into accessible educational materials for activists and scholars, or drafting white lila papers that outline practical strategies - for example cooperative models in the care sector or alternative currency and support systems for cooperatives more broadly. Overall, the CoLab invites you into a space for sometimes challenging reflection, while offering a supportive group setting and the opportunity to step beyond this process to collaboratively build tools, concepts, and knowledge infrastructures that foster systemic change that carry on beyond the Summer School.

Participant workshops

On Tuesday and Thursday (orange slots in the schedule), participants are given the space to hold their own workshops or present academic and activist projects they are currently working on. Topics could look like: Social-ecological transformation in a specific sector, accounting for unpaid work in a statistics-based economy, a discussion on the specific challenges of implementing a degrowth economy in Switzerland, or different how-to-workshops (e.g., how to organize your own lecture series at uni, …).

Participants interested in holding a workshop are not expected to be a researcher or expert on the topic. (After all this format is aimed at breaking hierarchies in the academic knowledge production.) Instead, participants are expected to create a sound didactic concept: Preferably your workshop is designed as participative as possible and contains refreshing hands-on elements.

After we reviewed the applications, participants will receive more information as well as the opportunity to share their workshop ideas and concepts.

Workshops by participants can also have recommended readings. We will send the list of workshops and readings by email, be sure to check it ahead of time so you can prepare :)