Economies of Specificity
Description
Rosalind Marino:
"Contrast Starbucks ... to the local coffee shop that roasts their own beans which they source from a few family farms in Guatemala. The person working behind the counter matters quite a bit, not just for their skill as a barista, but as a source of community news and gossip. This coffee shop might work with a local bakery, or add a menu item named after one of their regular customers. While still tied into global networks of exchange, this is an economy of specificity. They are reliant on their particular relationships and exist only in their context.
But local coffee shops are a pattern, a global phenomenon. Collectively they have a greater market share than coffee chains, even though they are not organized under a single business. Their risks and rewards are distributed.
Economies of specificity make communities richer. Rather than extracting wealth for global corporations, the more local, “inefficient”, flows of exchange feed back into the mutual relationships that these economies require. They also make communities richer in the sense that they increase intangible values like quality and uniqueness while knitting the social relationships that are needed for sustainability."