The Informal Economy of Welfare

This project is concerned to document and evaluate the possibilities for welfare initiatives informed by an ethic of environmentally and socially sustainable welfare. Previously, scant attention has been paid to grass-roots initiatives deriving from forms of mutual aid and self-help - the informal economy of welfare - and their relationship to the formal provision of welfare through orthodox institutional means. As might be expected the field of social policy and practice is characterised by a neglect of these burgeoning initiatives, despite their apparent potential to galvanise and cohere marginalised communities.

The proposed research aims to:

Identify 'green' mutual aid and self-help schemes that have had a proven impact in overcoming poverty and inequality;
Identify the conditions that have facilitated the successful networking of excluded groups or communities via these schemes;
Analyse the possibilities for, and limitations to, the extension of such schemes.