This volume presents the results of the study undertaken by a collaborative international research network on alternative economic practices and their cultural foundations that investigated and met between 2011 and 2015. The annual meetings of the network took place in 2011–12 in Barcelona, at the Open University of Catalonia, and in 2013–15 in Paris, at the Collège d’études mondiales, Fondation Maison des sciences de l’homme.
The project was funded by the Collège d’études mondiales. The authors want to express their gratitude to Professor Michel Wieviorka, President of the Fondation Maison des sciences de l’homme, and to Dr Olivier Bouin, Director of the Collège d’études mondiales, for their intellectual encouragement and material support provided to the project over three years.
We also want to thank Mr Gilles Desfeux, of the Fondation Maison des sciences de l’homme, for his care in organizing our annual meetings in Paris, and Mr Jean Louis Cury, director of the Maison Suger, Fondation de la Maison des sciences de l’homme, for his hospitality in hosting our meetings in the historic venue of the Maison Suger.
The meetings in Barcelona in 2011–12 were organized by Ms. Noelia Diaz Lopez, from the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute of the Open University of Catalonia.
The coordination of the project was assured by Ms. Pauline Martinez, and by Ms. Reanna Martinez, at the Annenberg School of Communication, University of Southern California, Los Angeles. We thank them for their support.