Strategies Beyond Borders: Time Banks in Classroom Settings

• In Event: Education for Societal and Holistic Transformation: Alternatives for a Just Future

Abstract

This presentation discusses a radical pedagogy employed by the authors in two settings in higher education - an undergraduate classroom in the United States (Community, Love, and Justice) and a postgraduate classroom in India (Living Utopias). The activities were part of courses that offer solutions to mainstream dominant extractive ideologies. The assignments established a timebank for the classes so that learners experienced an alternative economics model and realized the potential as well as the limitations of this form of organizing. Timebanks are practices that center collectivity as the focal point of exchange. Everyone contributes and everyone receives. Time is the unit rather than money; however, the exchange can also involve resources, sharing, and/or knowledge. The potential is limitless and they are part of a global emergence of what is often called the solidarity economy. This is not a new form of organizing to meet need. It is however one that coloniality, individualism, and competition have attempted to marginalize to make communities dependent on capitalism.
We describe why a timebank assignment was included in our classrooms, the theoretical underpinnings of this activity and its practical impact. We also detail how we expanded this work as a cross-cultural and cross-border exchange through virtual engagement. And, finally, we reflect on what we as educators and practitioners set out to achieve with this exercise, how it served as inspiration and fuel for all involved in these troubled times and how the framework can easily be transferred to both community and classroom settings. We will also share other aspects of solidarity economies that have emerged globally at this time of intensifying crises. While sometimes called by other names, these organizational forms depend on communities looking within for the resources to thrive and survive.
We are in a very particular historical moment when the premises of social relations and societal arrangements are increasingly being interrogated as basic human needs are not being met and violence is globally ubiquitous. We need to build power and solidarity. Engaging in projects such as timebanks has the potential to allow people to realize that we can have shared goals, we can find simple and joyous ways to build communities and take care of ourselves, and that we have work we can do right now, toward that end, together.

Author

• Melanie E.L. Bush, Adelphi University