Introduction: Rethinking Economy Through Reciprocity 💰🔄🌿

Economy isn’t just about money changing hands, it’s about relationships, obligations, and the flow of resources in ways that sustain communities and landscapes. The Pathmakers Framework offers a model for understanding relationships between people, land, and systems of exchange. It recognises Economic Reciprocity as a fundamental principle, one that has long existed in Indigenous economies and traditional trade systems. This concept challenges the modern economic model of extraction and accumulation, emphasising balance, responsibility, and mutual benefit.

Growing up in a family of German immigrants, I witnessed firsthand the values of hard work, thrift, and community. My ancestors were favoured by the government for their self-sufficiency and religious worldview, which kept them politically neutral. These qualities shaped their interactions with the land and their neighbours, prioritising relationships, practical help, and shared responsibilities. In many ways, it mirrored the reciprocal systems of the past, though the framework for understanding it was different. Read More…

Tags: economic reciprocity

Opening Reflection

At first, I couldn’t quite put my finger on what I was feeling. Watching that White House meeting, Trump, Vance, Zelenskyy, something had shifted, but it took a while to work out what it was. It wasn’t just shock or disgust. It was grief. The world I had grown up in, imperfect, complete with struggles, but with certain shared understandings, was gone. Not eroded bit by bit as it had been for years, but torn away in a moment. The assumptions about how friends and allies behave towards each other no longer held. And with that sense of profound and sudden change came vulnerability. Memories of childhood trauma returned, if this could happen to friends, then we may be in for some pretty poor treatment as well. Read More…

Tags: cultural heritage, environmental connection, economic reciprocity, community collaboration, grief, relational governance