THE LOCAL ECONOMY

 words.

collective economic history

highly globalised

localised economies

LOCAL (role play) You may add anything

Maria; I'm Italian and I do not know what local means in Italian it can mean a room

Joe; In English, it means a few things. If we say let's go down the local it always means the public house which is called the pub. If we say the locals it means the people who live around us and near to us. If we say for instance where is the Station we say it's local if it is near? So local also means near.

Maria; Oh thank you

Joe; But Maria have you heard of the local food economy?

Maria; No

Joe; Well it means people who buy locally to stop pollution and to keep money in the neighbourhood

Maria; How does it work

Joe; Well instead of giving your money to big multinational supermarkets you can buy from little shops or farmers markets,

Maria; What is a farmer's market

Joe; Well it is a farmer who simply sells his stuff in the market after growing it. All local.

Maria; Oh like zero kilometre markets Joe?

Joe; Not exactly but you are near enough but local food shops are not zero kilometre shops Maria but they do have lots of local food.

LOCAL ECONOMY 

Imagine a pub in a typical British town. People who live down the road refer to it as their “local”, and yet it is also a pub owned by a big corporate company that is headquartered abroad. 

Some of the confusion may be linked to the fact that when we look at our collective economic history there is a clear trend towards everything becoming less and less local. Five hundred years ago most of us would have spent almost all of our lives within a radius of a few miles, and almost everything we ate, everything we owned and everyone we met would have come from that same area. Now, we live in a highly globalised world. Think of the ingredients in your last meal, the stuff in your home or the people in your life - chances are many of them originated from different towns, regions and countries. You yourself have probably lived in - or have heritage from - multiple different places. 

The end result is that it’s far more common to hear politicians and newspapers talk about economics on an international scale (“international trade deals”, “the world economy”, “the global recession”), a national scale rather than a local one. 

But this may be changing. People seem to be becoming increasingly interested in moving away from a focus on globalisation and towards an emphasis on “localised” economies. “Buy local” campaigns, for example, encourage people to purchase stuff that was either made nearby or is sold by a business that only operates in that area. The reasoning is that buying local helps the environment (because transporting stuff from far away emits greenhouse gases), makes you and your neighbours better off (because the money stays in the area and is invested in nearby things that you’re all likely to use) or provides more jobs to locals (which some people think it’s important to prioritise). Imagine a big supermarket where all the profits are taken away from a local area.

There’s also a theory that if you as a citizen and taxpayer see the people and places you know personally benefiting from local government decisions, you’re more likely to feel democratically empowered and engaged in your local economy. That’s the same logic behind giving ownership of a local service or business to residents, in the form of something like a cooperative or community-owned bank. 

But not everyone is convinced of the virtues of localism. Some people think that giving jobs to local people is racist.

localism might raise prices. That would hit the poorest hardest but would it really and would the rise in price mean much

QUESTIONS

Is Localism about sustaining the earth?

If yes should we only shop local?

Do you think that we really need huge supermarkets?

Do you think that idea of eating local means that the starving may eat more?