Classifying ‘CCs’: Community, Complementary and Local Currencies

Abstract

Since the emergence of “CCs” thirty years ago, attempts to build typologies and to name things properly have always been disappointing, as if the very object of the analysis escaped from any rigid classification. Even the terms “complementary currency”, “community currency” and many others are not considered similarly; as a result, there is no common typology shared by scholars, activists and observers, beyond a series of general considerations clearly distinguishing specific items between CC schemes. This paper presents a novel attempt to classify and categorise CCs in a way which looks to future developments, while capturing the diversity of historical origins. The ideal types of community, complementary and local currencies let the possibility of combinations able to analyze concrete forms of non-national and not-for-profit currencies. The teleological exclusion of sovereignty and, more important, profit motives must be emphasized. The present typology states that for-profit currencies are of another nature than CCs, and it draws up an ideal-type of CCs built around a democratic participation principle organized around non-profit organizations, grassroots organizations or informal groupings of persons.