'left behind' and Community Capitalism - Altering the Future 'from below'.

In our paper, we are interested in the intersection of what is framed as ‘community capitalism’ as suggested by van Dyk/Haubner (2021). In her approach, community capitalism assumes that with the emergence of new patterns of precariarization and informalization beyond waged labour, a new era of social reproduction appears ‘based on the interplay between a politics of post-waged work and a politics of community, involving activities outside the realms of market, state and family’. We consider this approach in relation to ‘left behind’ regions constantly facing the tensions between centre of attention for development i.e. for government strategies and activation, and equally faced with the neoliberal short-termism of these same promises and added material resources. Local communities navigate the tightrope between dependence on external resources, and at the same time, these communities use their own resources to make their everyday lives. Based on three empirical projects in the UK and Germany, we discuss how community projects and local activities on one hand contribute to the social reproduction of livelihoods, becoming an active part of the precarious post-wage regime (van Dyk 2022). At the same time, our findings show that in the everyday life on people living in said ‘left behind places’, community is defined and owned differently and beyond notions of workfare activation. What could ‘from below’ mean today, and specifically in left behind places, to alter 'left behind' places able to alter their situations - what are the mechanisms through which these places might be able to own their future and to transform their economies and communities ‘from below’ (Bareis et al 2018)?