Declarations of independents: on local knowledge and localist knowledge.

Declarations of independents: on local knowledge and localist knowledge. It is Sunday morning, a time when the deindustrialized city ofSchenectady, New York generally looks like a ghost town, but people arewalking up and down Jay Street, a downtown pedestrian mall withlocally-owned retail shops and restaurants that are open and busy. Atone end of the street is the farmers' market, which has just movedoutdoors for the 2009 summer season. At the other end of the street isProctor's, a nonprofit organization that inhabits a grand theaterthat dates back to the city's wealthier past as the home of GeneralElectric and Alco, two companies that gave Schenectady the nickname ofthe city "that lights and hauls the world." Proctor'shouses the farmer's market during the winter, but on this day it issponsoring a "Buy Local Bash," which includes about thirtytables that feature the wares of locally-owned, independent businesses,a credit union, a small bank, and some nonprofit organizations. Localmusicians play on the stage and feature a variety of genres, includingclassical guitar and rock. Joe Condon, a local radio host, holdsdrawings every hour, when the winner receives a free gift basket andother products from local businesses. At the same time, he remindspeople of the value of small businesses and the need to support them,especially during a severe recession. Many organizations helped sponsor the "Buy Local Bash,"including the Downtown Schenectady Improvement Corporation, but theprimary sponsor was Capital District Local First (CDLF), a businessassociation that promotes the message of shifting consumption towardlocally-owned, independent businesses as part of a broader transition tomore sustainable and fair regional economies. In turn, CDLF is one ofthe roughly one-hundred independent business associations that havesprung up across the United States since the 1990s in support oflocally-owned, independent businesses. It is affiliated with theBusiness Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE), a nationalorganization that supports the project of building "local livingeconomies," that is, economies based on locally-owned, independentbusinesses that include as part of their mission the goal of improvingenvironmental sustainability, economic fairness, and local quality oflife. BALLE integrates the diverse local networks by providing researchreports, an annual conference, monthly round-up teleconferences, advice,summaries of best practices, and peer-to-peer networking among thenational affiliate organizations. The "Buy Local Bash" is therefore part of a broaderreform movement oriented toward support of the locally-owned,independent business sector. In various articulations,localism--understood here as movements in favor of increased localownership, such as independent businesses, local farms, local media, andcommunity finance, but also in opposition to big-box retail developmentand other projects associated with sprawl and environmentaldegradation--has become increasingly prominent in the United States. Onebarometer of the growing public awareness was a March, 2007, Timemagazine cover, which read, "Forget Organic; Buy Local" (Cloud2007). A more quantitative measure was based on the 2008 holiday season,when more than seventy alternative newsweeklies launched a campaign toencourage readers to pledge to spend $100 of their holiday money atlocally-owned stores (Karpel 2008). A post-holiday survey indicated thatthe campaigns were actually having some effect: whereas the major chainstores had year-to-year sales declines of 7 to 24 percent, and retailsales overall were down by nearly 10 percent, independent stores haddeclines of only 5 percent (Mitchell 2009a). Furthermore, in citieswhere there was a "buy local" campaign, sales for independentretailers declined by only 3 percent, compared with 5.6% in citieswithout such campaigns (ibid.). The figures indicate that such grassroots mobilizations were havingsome effect on consumers. But they also raise a broader question of whysupport for local, independent business resonates with consumers at thisparticular historical moment. This essay will explore the meanings of"local" and "independent" in the context of localistmovements in the United States, then discuss the relations between localknowledge and social scientific research on localism. In the process,the essay will contribute to the work of anthropologists who have helpedto develop the "cultural turn" of social movement studies(Casas-Cortes et al. 2008, Holland et al. 2008, Kurzman 2008, Price etal. 2008) and a connection between social movement studies and scienceand technology studies (Hess 2007b). The research presented here isbased on public events and published statements, but it also draws onconsiderable background based on formal interviews and backgroundexperience working with CDLF (Hess 2009a). Local Meanings At the "Buy Local Bash," CDLF had a table with literaturedefending the idea that consumers should shift some of their spending tolocally-owned, independent businesses. A blue poster that gave tenreasons "to think local, buy local, and be local" wasavailable for sale, and a similar message appeared in theorganization's printed literature. The ten reasons were diverse.Some were strictly consumerist: local businesses provide "bettercustomer service" and "more choices." Others pointed moreto economic development considerations: small businesses create"new jobs" and "invest in the community." Otherreasons were less tangible and pointed to quality-of-life issues:locally-owned, independent businesses "are leaders in the communityand here to stay," and they are "an integral part of ourregion's distinctive character." Another reason claimed thatbuying locally was associated with "reduced environmentalimpact." Yet other reasons pointed to the "multipliereffect" of money that recirculates in the community (a topic to bediscussed in more detail below) and the research that indicates thatlocal businesses give more to local nonprofit organizations. Many of the reasons given in support of buying "localfirst"--that is, to shift some of a household's purchases tolocal and independent businesses, when it is possible and not extremelyinconvenient--are common to the literature that is shared among thehundreds of independent business associations and related organizationsacross the country. They point to a vision of local economies andcommunities that includes a role for consumer-based motivations but goesbeyond it. For example, one of the brochures has a discussion of the"price myth," the idea that prices are always lower in thechains. Various arguments are raised about the price myth that operatewithin the logic of consumer choice, such as the claim that the productsand services offered in the chains are often not of the same quality andthat prices are not always lower at chains. However, the arguments alsonote that the chains often get huge tax concessions from localgovernments, and they often pay lower wages. Again, the discussionembeds the logic of consumerism in a broader analysis of distributionalissues in the regional economy. Although there is a component ofsmall-business interest-group politics in localism, it is also a reformmovement because it is about how the structure of the regional economyfits into a vision of quality of life, including issues of economicdevelopment, environmental sustainability, the nonprofit sector, socialfairness, and a sense of community. In building a distinction between types of businesses,organizations such as CDLF are suggesting an analysis of the globaleconomy that is at odds with a neoliberal vision of globalized,corporate capitalism that produces a rising tide of wealth. The terms"local" and "independent" are often used together toindicate a category of business that is to be preferred to"nonlocal" or "global" businesses and those that are"publicly traded." The project of defining what constitutes a"locally-owned, independent" business is by no meansstraightforward. BALLE, perhaps wisely, leaves the politics ofdefinitions up to the local affiliate networks, and as a result itsaffiliate networks include chambers of commerce, at least one communitydevelopment organization, and even a statewide association for businesssocial responsibility. In contrast, another umbrella organization, theAmerican Independent Business Alliance (AMIBA), offers a set ofdemarcation principles that, in my experience, provides the point ofreference for membership criteria in many of the independent businessassociations. A locally-owned, independent business is defined asfollows: "private, employee, community, or cooperative ownership;owned in majority by area resident(s); full decision-making function forthe business lies with its owner(s); and no more than six outlets, basesof operation lie within a single state" (AMIBA 2009). The independent, locally-owned business is defined in opposition totwo other main categories of business. One is the publicly tradedcorporation: the stories of small business owners who lost control oftheir companies after going public (such as Ben and Jerry's, whicheventually was acquired by Unilever) are held up as a negative example.To a large degree, BALLE emerged out of the frustration with theappropriation of the business social and environmental responsibilitymovement by large corporations and with the experience of smallbusinesses that grew and sold out to large corporations (Mokhiber andWeissman 2005). The other "other" of the locally-owned,independent business is the franchise, even if the retail outlet islocally owned and the umbrella organization is privately held (such asDunkin Donuts), because such stores generally do not have fulldecision-making authority over the crucial issue of shifting theirpurchasing to other local businesses. Even when operating with such clear guidelines, I have found thatorganizations run into various definitional problems. For example, if abusiness becomes publicly traded, is it forced to leave the organizationbecause it is no longer "independent"? If the business is acredit union, should the limit on six branches be lifted? If so, why notlift the limit more generally, and allow some of the larger stores, suchas local grocery stores or restaurant chains, that are still locallyowned and independent? Another definitional problem is the issue ofgeographical scope. Should the scope of "local" be limited toone city in a metropolitan area or to just one county? Manyorganizations adopt this strategy. However, some organizations cover anentire state (usually a small one, such as Vermont) or a hugemetropolitan region, such as the greater Philadelphia or Boston area. Inthe case of CDLF and the Sustainable Business Network of Greater Boston,the regional organization has created more geographically localized"hubs" of small businesses, where much of the organizationalwork gets done. This discussion suggests that the idea of the "local" inthe context of the "buy local movement" is more than areference to a place-based identity. It is part of an antiglobalizationpolitics that is framed to appeal across the political spectrum. Peoplelocated on both the political left and right find common ground insupport for their local communities, and the politically divided petitebourgeoisie finds it easy to bridge other political differences underthe uniting frame of "buying locally." Thus, the"local" becomes a terrain where other kinds of politicaldifferences can be left at the door and new coalitions can be forged.The use of local identity as a basis for building coalitions is widelyrecognized, and it appears in other sorts of grassroots coalitions inthe United States, such as ones that have emerged between Westernranchers and environmentalists (Weber 2003). Although a powerful unifying mantle, the idea of "local"does not always smooth over the tension between the socially andenvironmentally oriented small businesses, which have a "livingeconomy" vision of localism, and the more mainstream, Main Streetsmall businesses, which are involved in the movement more as a businessstrategy and often with a strong anti-chainstore sentiment. Thus, therecan be a division between a form of localism that is closer to analternative industrial movement (such as pro-organic food, or pro-solarenergy) and a form of localism that is closer to an industrialopposition movement (such as anti-genetically modified food, oranti-nuclear energy). The antichain store sentiment is often expressedin a parallel movement linked by other umbrella organizations, such asSprawl Busters. Antichain Store Politics A month before the Buy Local Bash, on a rainy Wednesday night, theAmerican Legion hall in the historic village of Voorheesville was filledto capacity. People were spilling out the door, and there were noparking spots for blocks. The meeting of New Scotlanders for SoundEconomic Development (NS4SED) went on for two-and-a-half hours, as thetownspeople of New Scotland, which included the villagers ofVoorheesville, listened to a panel of local experts talk about thenegative impacts of a proposed big-box shopping mall. New Scotland is hard to characterize; it is a small town in upstateNew York, but it is also part of the expanding frontier ofsuburbanization in the New York State Capital District. Its populationincludes working-class and farming families who have lived there fordecades and even some people who can trace their ancestry to the Dutchcolonists. But the town also includes some suburban housing developmentsand middle-class professionals who like the quieter pace of thecommunity but work in nearby Capital District cities. The two groupshave come together over a concern with preserving the town's farms,green spaces, and small-town feeling. There is considerable interest inavoiding the fate of suburban sprawl that occurred with Bethlehem andGuilderland, two other neighboring towns that are a little closer toAlbany. Those towns heeded the call of retail developers only to findthat they were plagued by crime, traffic congestion, four-lane highways,and increased tax burdens. The issue of sprawl came to a head when New Scotland'splanning board entertained a proposal from developers to build a 750,000square-foot retail shopping center anchored by a big-box store. A groupof opponents emerged, and after being rebuffed by the planning board,they went on to gain 2,000 signatures in support of a moratorium on thebig-box decision. As they gathered signatures in this small town of3,500 households, they realized that public opinion was strongly opposedto the big-box proposal. At the meeting, some of the organizers of thepetition noted that, based on their door-to-door work gatheringsignatures and contacting almost all of the households in the town, theyfound that less than five percent of the town supported the big-boxproposal. However, the planning board did not respond to popularopinion, a decision that led to much speculation and some hard feelings.Because the planning board is selected in staggered terms that lastseven years, it is somewhat insulated from public opinion. As a result,in 2009 NS4SED took the next step of proposing Local Law I, a size caplaw that would also shift decisionmaking from the appointed planningboard to the elected town board, which is more directly accountable topublic opinion. A central point of reference in the controversy was the vision ofthe community that was articulated in a land use plan developed in 1994and that explicitly favored a "smaller, rural character type ofcommercial development" (Morrison 2009). Some NS4SED members alsofavored an alternative approach to retail development that includedsmart-growth principles such as "a village/hamlet-type of mainstreet with mixed uses" (NS4SED 2008). In the panel discussion inApril 2009, the leaders of NYSED also discussed the benefits to thecommunity of having a vibrant, locally-owned, independent businesscommunity as well as the value of a walkable, small-scale, new urbanistdesign that, in effect, would build on the pre-automobile scale ofneighborhood design in the village of Voorheesville. On this issue,there was a convergence of vision with CDLF, even though the two groupsapproached the topic from differing perspectives. Both groups shared amixture of concern with the negative effects of big-box development andsupport for the vision of communities that have vibrant, locally-owned,and independent businesses and farms as well as planning principlesoriented toward a more sustainable and fair regional economy. However,when I spoke to one of the leaders of NY4SED, she indicated that thesmall business community opposed the big-box plan but had not taken aleading role due to fear of losing customers. The NY4SED forum, like the "Buy Local Bash," marshaled abody of knowledge and arguments in support of an alternative pathway ineconomic development. For example, an attorney talked about the detailsof tax law, the former chair of the planning board talked about hisefforts dating back to the 1970s to establish a town master plan andexplained why they had opted to insulate the planning board fromimmediate political winds, and a planner gave a basic lecture on smartgrowth and new urbanist design. An architect showed the impact of thebig-box development on traffic patterns and roads, and he left the roomwith the breathtaking statistic that the main two-lane road of the townnot only would have one car per second on the road during rush hour butalso would have to become a four-lane highway due to state law. A doctorspoke from the floor about the likely rise of health-care burdens, fromasthma rates to traffic fatalities, due to the increased traffic.Statistically, they could also predict roughly the number of childrenwho would be run over by cars, a statement that brought a gasp from theroom. There was also a detailed presentation by a retail developmentspecialist, who explained why the low population density of the town andexistence of other big-box shopping centers in neighboring suburbs madeit likely that such a large-scale shopping center would become anotherbig-box ghost town after a few years. She added detailed statisticsabout the rise in crime rates that occurred in neighboring towns thathad gone the route of sprawl and big-box development. But perhaps mostdamning of all was the analysis of taxes, which showed that the likely$100 per household reduction in an average tax bill of $4500, which thedevelopers trumpeted, would easily be overwhelmed by increases intaxbills for police and highways, as had occurred in neighboring towns. In summary, a variety of different disciplinary and professionalknowledges--legal, planning, architectural, and retail economics--weredeployed in the presentations to show that the project would likely failfor the developer and community alike. The credibility of the expertswas enhanced by their status as town residents, and they were able toapply remote studies and statistics to concrete, powerpoint images ofthe implications of those statistics for the town. They could nameplaces and businesses that everyone in the community recognized. Theirexpert, professional knowledge therefore served as a form ofcounterexpertise (Woodhouse and Nieusma 2001) to the claims ofdevelopers that the retail shopping plaza would bring jobs and new taxrevenue to the town, but the counterexpertise was anchored in specificreferences to landmark buildings, roads, and other aspects of localknowledge that made them residents rather than outsiders. It is thisintersection of local knowledge and what I will call"localist" knowledge that I now turn to explore. Local Knowledge and Antiglobalization Politics In both the "Buy Local Bash" and NY4SED town forum, thediscourse of the "local" is not limited to emotional appealsto place-based identity and quality-of-life issues. Rather, considerablelevels of expert and professional knowledge are being marshaled. From anepistemic perspective, there is an interesting convergence of both localknowledge and expert knowledge. For example, I have heard businessowners in the Capital District trace, often to the month, a steepdecline in sales that corresponds with the opening of a big-box store inthe area. They can add a local professional knowledge based onstatistics such as monthly sales volume to the general perception, oftenstated by older residents, who remember a time when there was adifferent quality of life, in which store owners knew their products andtheir customers, and the downtowns of Albany, Schenectady, Troy, andother towns were full of shoppers who had decent incomes from their jobsin the now closed manufacturing plants. Although such local knowledge isoften not articulated into a full analysis of the impact ofglobalization and corporate consolidation on local economies, it can tapinto popular anger at the predatory relationship between largecorporations and communities, an anger that has only become magnifiedsince the advent of the 2007 financial crisis. Thus, the meaning of"local" is connected with a populist diagnosis of a decliningquality of life that is part of both occupational and life experiences. A central aspect of the convergence of local knowledge andprofessional knowledge is the sense of the loss of local sovereignty ofthe community with respect to the global economy. Anthropologists suchas Ferguson (2005) and Ong (2006) have identified the shifts in theterritorial sovereignty of small postcolonial states in the leastwealthy portions of Africa and Asia, where multinational corporationsand nongovernmental organizations have become de facto sovereigns. In asimilar way, the spaces of metropolitan areas in the US increasinglyhave come under the control of corporate enclaves, where space is oftendemarcated and sealed off from the public, or at least some types ofpublic activity, in the form of office parks, shopping malls, big-boxshopping districts, and gated communities. Among localist movement leaders who have become national figures,the connections between the sense of lost sovereignty and neoliberalglobalization are well articulated. I have reviewed some exampleselsewhere (Hess 2009a), and it will suffice here to give one example ina statement by Judy Wicks, the owner of the White Dog Cafe inPhiladelphia and cofounder of BALLE: In order to protect all that I care deeply about, I needed to step out of my own company, out of the White Dog Cafe, and start to work together with other businesses to build an alternative to corporate globalization.... Rather than a global economy controlled by large multinational corporations, our movement envisions a global economy with a decentralized network of local economies made up of what we call living enterprises: small, independent, locally-owned businesses of human scale. These living enterprises create community wealth and vitality while working in harmony with natural systems (2004: 5). Hammel, the other cofounder of BALLE, has similar concerns withcorporate-led globalization. As he commented, "The only thing youcan do to Wal-Mart is to do what they did with Standard Oil and take itapart. There is an inherent flaw in the way they operate" (Mokhiberand Weissman 2005). Or, as Stacy Mitchell, another localist leader andauthor of the Big-Box Swindle (2006a), commented with respect to thecorporate chains: They routinely sacrifice valuable community assets, such as a beautiful view or the quiet of a neighborhood, in pursuit of their own expansion and profitability. The executives in charge make decisions from afar; they do not have to live with the effects of their actions. If they inundate a neighborhood with traffic, or pave an open field, it is not their own property values or quality of life that matters (2006b). Localist leaders contrast the world of the locally-owned,independent business with that of the multinational, publicly tradedcorporation, but they also, as Wicks does explicitly in the passageabove, suggest a vision of an alternative global economy. Frequentlyaccused by critics on both the left and right as advocating middle-classenclavism---circling up the wagons into local economies that benefit theprivileged in wealthy countries-there is instead considerable interestin what I call "global localism," or a global economyconstituted along an economic model that might be compared with theexperiments of fair trade. For this reason, the "buy local"campaigns are often called "local first." A hierarchy ofpreferences is constituted, from buying local products fromlocally-owned businesses (such as local farm produce at farmers'markets and coops), to buying nonlocal products made by locally-ownedbusinesses elsewhere in the world and sold through locally-ownedbusinesses, to buying corporate products from locally-owned businesses,and finally to buying corporate products in the chains. Consumption isused as a tool, as a way of importing politics into the economy, albeitone that is tempered by the fact that many products are not available inthe local economy or even from the global local economy. There isconsiderable convergence with, and in my experience in New Yorkconsiderable interest in, selling fair trade products, but localism alsooffers a boundary on the cooptation that is emerging in fair trade,particularly its expansion through sales to corporate retailers (Moberg2008). Although the localist movement tends to have a middle-classaddress, it expands the horizon of the socially and environmentallyresponsible consumer from, for example, organic food to organic, localfood or organic, fair-trade food. In the process, a series of classcoalitions are formed: the middle-class shopper, often located in theliberal professions; the petite-bourgeois shopkeeper; and the smallmanufacturer or farmer. The coalitions give the movement ananticorporate but not anticapitalist politics akin to those of thepopulist and progressive movements of earlier periods (Johnston 2003).Localism is not a poor people's movement. Rather, it articulates amiddle-class radicalism in the global field of antiglobalizationmovements. Independents and Independence From this perspective, the word "independent" also has acomplex meaning in the context of localist politics. The technicalmeaning of the word is that the business is closely held and privatelyheld. The result is that small businesses owners retain control overtheir business; unlike small businesses supported by venture capital,they are not required to pursue a trajectory of rapid growth and profitmaximization that culminates in a liquidity event."Independent" means that a business owner can make decisionsin favor of support for local nonprofit organizations, living wages,better working conditions, and environmental sustainability. The idealbusiness is an anchor of the community; it may turn a profit, but likenonprofit organizations, the primary goal is to bring in enough revenueto meet expenses and achieve a wide variety of goals rather than tominimize costs and maximize revenues. The word "independent" has also come to be used alongside"local" in part because of the growth of "localwashing." Like green-washing, "local washing" is thecorporate appropriation of local. In some cases, it can be transparentand even funny, such as, "Shop at your local Big Box; we'reyou're neighbors." However, local washing has becomeincreasingly sophisticated. For example, Wal-Mart has tested a "buylocal" program of products made in Ohio and sold at a branch of thestore in that state (Sheeban 2007). Craft breweries that are owned by acorporate parent sometimes hide their affiliation, and in 2009 Starbuckstested new coffee shops that did not use the Starbucks brand name butinstead appeared to be locally-owned stores (Kesmodel 2007, Mitchell2009b). For these reasons, the term "local" is increasinglyused in a phrase with "independent" as "locally-owned andindependent." For example, the survey released by Stacy Mitchell(2009a) about the relative decline in sales used the term"independent retailers" rather than "localbusinesses." However, the term "independent" goes beyond this moretechnical, economic sense. Elsewhere, I have suggested that attention tothe role of charged cultural repertoires is one of the maincontributions that anthropologists have brought to the cultural turn ininterdisciplinary social movement studies (Hess 2007b). In this case,independent business associations often organize "IndependentsDay" celebrations about the same time as "IndependenceDay." Light-hearted puns such as "Austin Unchained" alsosuggest a revolutionary or rebellious politics, but the metaphors areoften a hook that leads to a sober economic analysis. For example,localist leader Stacy Mitchell issued a "Declaration ofIndependents" for her "Twenty-Sixth Annual E.F. SchumacherLecture." Invoking the Boston Tea Party, she noted that the shipswere owned by the East India Company, "a powerful transnationalcorporation that had recently suffered losses, in large part because thecolonists had boycotted its merchandise" (2006b). The BritishParliament's Tea Act, she continues, was passed to drive smallcompetitors out of business. As she explains: Our forefathers and -mothers understood that local self-reliance was essential to democracy and that concentrated economic power was as much a threat to their independence as the British crown, but sometime in the past two centuries we seem to have lost track of this vital truth. Today our communities are fast becoming colonies once again, subject to a new crop of powerful transnational corporations with names like Wal-Mart and Target, Home Depot and Barnes & Noble" (2006b). From this metaphor, she launches into a detailed account of theeffects of big-box stores on manufacturing in the United States, withexamples of firms that have been forced to relocate production abroaddue to pressure from their big-box retailers. In a similar way, David Korten, the chair of the board of YES!magazine and a board member of BALLE, ends his most recent book, Agendafor a New Economy, with a "global declaration of independence fromWall Street and its global counterparts" (2008:171). He develops asustained comparison between "the independence movement thatliberated thirteen colonies" and "the efforts of those seekingindependence from Wall Street" (174). He also develops atwelve-point plan for "liberating Main Street" from theclutches of Wall Street that includes substantial corporate reform. In short, the sometimes light-hearted puns and occasionallystretched historical comparisons involving independence and chainsconnect a serious political strategy of bipartisan, anticorporatepopulism to the revolutionary tradition in US politics. The metaphor of"independence" is by no means new in US social movements; onecan find similar uses of the Declaration of Independence in thewomen's suffrage movement of the nineteenth century. Furthermore,the metaphor also appears in mainstream political discourse, especiallywith respect to "energy independence," which has been aclarion call for US energy policy since the 1970s. Although directed atdependence on overseas oil, the flip side of "energyindependence" discourse is the need to produce energy domestically.The substitution of energy imports can be configured as a centralized,corporate-led endeavor (as in nuclear energy, renewable energycontrolled by utilities and generation companies, ethanol processing bylarge corporations, and even coal), but it can also be connected withlocalist movements via small-scale, grassroots forms of energyproduction. As in these other examples of the uses of"independence" in the political field, the rhetoric ofindependence positions the "buy local" movement as deeply"American" and consistent with mainstream political discourse.By wrapping localism not only in the US flag but also in therevolutionary flag, the rhetoric works to deflect a characterization ofthe movement as "unAmerican" and "foreign," asoccurred with traditional labor-oriented radicalism. The idea of "independence" also connects the "buylocal" movement to the "antichain store" movement. In theantichain store movement, the term "independence" is often notused explicitly, but there is a strong sense that communities havebecome prey to large corporations and development interests. Theopposition between the local community and a powerful, colonizing agentmaps onto histories of local resistance struggles, including theanticolonial tradition in the US. The two movements--a "buylocal" movement and an "antichain store"movement--converge, but the oppositional politics of the antichain storemovement are anchored more in the perceived threat to a town'squality of life and financial status, whereas the pro-alternativepolitics of the "buy local" movement operate more with avision of community amelioration. The two movements also converge on policy reforms. Here, themeaning of "local" and "independence" is translatedinto specific public policies that would help level the playing field infavor of locally-owned, independent businesses. One example ofconvergence is legislation in favor of size caps for commercial zoning,but there are various other efforts where a common ground has alsoemerged: legislation in support of a requirement for economic impactstudies for large retail stores, following the model of the InformedGrowth Act of Maine; formula business restrictions introduced via localzoning ordinances, as have been passed in numerous towns and counties;purchasing preferences for local and state governments for locally-ownedbusinesses, following laws introduced in Alaska, Montana, and otherstates; and a ban on tax abatements, or incentives, that one city in ametropolitan area offers to businesses if they relocate to the city, aswas passed in Arizona. Through political reforms, there is increasingawareness that the call for "local independence" is not simplya question of getting individuals to shift their consumer preferences;it also involves mobilizing constituents for political reform. To do so,the movements operate in the field of economic development politics,where social science research and theories of economic development areoften an important point of reference. From Antigloblazation Politics to Localist Knowledge Anthropologists frequently speak of "local knowledge,"but the term has often been left as an undefined rubric. EvenGeertz's (1985) book of that title has little discussion of theconcept per se. For ethnographic projects situated in remote settingswith radically different languages and practices from those of theethnographer, it may not be so necessary to problematize the concept. Byextension, even in a repatriated anthropology the concept of localknowledge may be intuitive: people know a great deal about the placeswhere they live; they often have particularly prized and valuableknowledge, such as where to find a competent, affordable, and reliableplumber. Local knowledge is also political and cultural; there is arepository of knowledge about local power structures, ethnic conflicts,and neighborhood relationships. There is also an historical localknowledge, in which older residents and longtime storeowners can talkabout how their region has changed over time. The localist movement may have some general theoreticalimplications because it puts into circulation different types ofknowledge about locations. Certainly, as indicated above, CapitalDistrict Local First and New Scotlanders for Sound Economic Developmentrely on local knowledge in order to articulate their vision and messageto potential members, consumers, and voters. However, as important aslocal knowledge is as a ground upon which a movement can be framed andresources mobilized, especially when the movement is based on aperceived place-based threat, knowledge that is powerful for one purposeis less appropriate for others. Local knowledge has a fragilecredibility when placed in the rational-critical environments ofpolitical deliberation and media contestation where experts are squaredoff against each other. It can be framed as anecdotal, nostalgic, andeven reactionary. More specifically, local knowledge that articulates a predatoryrelationship between corporate capital and community businesses tends tobe rejected by the academic knowledge of economics as a myopic view of abroader historical transition. From the perspective of mainstreameconomics, the economic dislocations that communities have experiencedin the wake of trade liberalization, deindustrialization, and theconsolidation of retail are part of a long-term transition that willultimately be beneficial. The new efficiencies of the liberalized globaleconomy, they argue, will bring lower prices to consumers, and theworkers in the less efficient firms that are forced to close willeventually find jobs in new industries with higher levels ofproductivity and consequently higher wages. What appears to be anegative historical change from the perspective of the local knowledgeof everyday experiences of local economies--stores that close down,neighborhoods that deteriorate, crime that increases, and friends wholose jobs--is reframed as a short-term dislocation in a long-termprocess that is eventually beneficial. The very "localness" oflocal knowledge is turned against it, because it can only manage toperceive short-term and localized dislocations instead of the potentialfor a beneficial long-term, globalized transition. To counter the knowledge of mainstream economics and itsjustifications of corporate-led globalization, movement organizationsneed another type of knowledge, one that can serve as a countervailingexpertise to the cosmopolitan science of mainstream economic arguments.However, when activists and advocates look for such knowledge, theyoften encounter the empty spaces of "undone science," ofstudies that were never done (Frickel et al. 2010, Hess 2007a). Wherethey do find research in support of their local knowledge, the researchtends to be positioned in subordinate networks in the scientific field,where the knowledge may have higher credibility than local knowledge butlower credibility, at least within the scientific field, than mainstreameconomic knowledge. Thus, there are some social scientists who workoutside the mainstream of economics, often in lower-status professionssuch as geography or sociology, who have documented some of the negativeeffects of chain stores on regional economies (e.g., Artz and Stone2006, Goetz and Swaminathan 2006, Goetz and Rapasingha 2006, Neumark etal. 2007, Stone 1995) and conversely the positive effects of localownership (e.g., Tolbert 2005, Tolbert et al. 2002). Arguably the oldestand foundational study in this field is the ethnography written byanthropologist Walter Goldschmidt (1978), who showed the positiveeffects of high levels of local ownership in a comparative study of twoCalifornia agricultural towns. The small body of what I will call"localist knowledge" suggests that industrial consolidationhas negative effects on employment levels, nonprofit sector activity,third spaces, health-care, and even voter turnout. Occasionally,localist advocates draw on such studies to bolster their case for apattern of economic development based on smaller, locally-ownedenterprises. As I have suggested above, both NY4SED and CDLF draw on variouslocalist studies to develop counterarguments to those offered by big-boxdevelopers about the benefits of "development" to localcommunities. For example, both groups cited an important body of studiesthat I call "local multiplier studies" (e.g., Civic Economics2002, 2004, 2007). When one looks a little at who funds the localmultiplier studies, it is interesting that most have been funded byindependent businesses, their associations, or sympathetic nonprofitorganizations, not government or industry. They are examples of what Ihave termed "civil society research," or research that isfunded by the civil society sector as a countervailing force to researchfunded by industry, the academy, or the government (Hess 2009b). Thus,whereas conventional multiplier studies examine the effect of a localmanufacturer on the regional economy as a whole, the local multiplierstudies examine the effects of substituting locally-owned, independentretail for chain stores. The central statistic of the local multiplier studies is a simplestatement such as the following: For every $100 at a locally-ownedbusiness, about $70 recirculates in the local economy when spent in alocally-owned, independent business, in contrast with only $40 thatrecirculates for money spent at a chain store. The actual figure variesby city and industry, but in many cases it is nearly a two-to-one ratio.The reasons for the effect include profit retention by local businessowners, higher donations by local businesses to the nonprofit sector,higher levels of purchasing by independents from other local businesses,and higher taxes paid by the independents to local governments.Likewise, whereas the construction of a new big-box store tends todecrease the number of retail jobs in a county, increased spending atlocally-owned, independent stores creates more jobs for the regionaleconomy. As I have learned in countless conversations with localbusiness leaders, the local multiplier studies are easy for localbusiness owners to grasp, and it both matches and sharpens their localknowledge. For example, they know that they are the ones often tapped todonate to the soccer team and girl scouts, and they often buy from otherlocal businesses. They see the multiplier effect every day in theirbusiness decisions. To summarize, I am suggesting a relationship among three types ofknowledge: local knowledge, mainstream economic knowledge, and localistknowledge, or knowledge that is critical of mainstream economicassumptions about the general benefits of trade liberalization and thecorporate take-over of the independent business sector. Local knowledgeabout the quality of life of a community, especially comparisons overtime and across communities in a region, becomes the basis for popularinterest in (and in some cases, economic funding of) localist knowledge,because Localist knowledge serves as counterexpertise for the mainstreameconomic knowledge that urban growth coalitions use to dismiss theepistemic claims of Localist organizations. Localist knowledge thereforelegitimates but also refines and refocuses what people already knowabout their communities; it reshapes local knowledge just as it isshaped by it. But Localist knowledge also reshapes local politics,because it is a resource in local political fields where the contours ofa regional economy are contested. The position of Localist knowledge inthe local political field in turn draws attention to the subordinatenetwork in the academic field, and it may result in changes in theattention that social scientists give to Localist research programs. Forexample, a student at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst wrotewhat is probably the first graduate thesis using the local multipliereffect, a study that methodologically improved on the local multiplierstudies and drew significantly on knowledge of BALLE, the Localistmovement, and the politics of economic development conflicts (Elvin2008). Conclusions In the book Local Democracy Under Siege, anthropologists DorothyHolland, Donald Nonini, and Catherine Lutz provide a detailed analysisof the transformations of local politics in North Carolina. They payparticular attention to the devolutionary politics of the neoliberalstate. Building on a previous study in which Guldbrandsen and Holland(2001) found that the initiatives of national governments can tiltgrassroots organizing away from activism toward private sectorparticipation, Holland and colleagues suggest that "outsourcedgovernment with its heavy reliance on public-private partnerships isfrighteningly devoid of guarantees that all segments of the public willbe served" (2007:234). Much as Ferguson (2005), Ong (2006), andother anthropologists have found in the less wealthy regions in theworld, Holland and colleagues concluded, "This neoliberal blueprintsets the stage for a select minority being players while the rest existoff (or exit from) the map of the new political landscape"(2007:236). Although their prognosis is generally not encouraging forresearchers and activists who are troubled by neoliberal globalization,Holland and colleagues do point to groups of local citizens who, in somecases, form nonprofit organizations that engage local governments vianew avenues of public participation. Such participation is restricted inmany ways, including legacies of class, race, and gender barriers, butthe anthropologists find in such grassroots organizations some potentialfor a new "more hands-on, participatory democracy" (2007:240).For the grassroots effort at invigorated democracy to be successful,Holland and colleagues suggest that "communities have to becomemore economically and environmentally sustainable" (241). For suchefforts, I would add, localist movements represent one avenue forbuilding communities that also break down the ties of dependence onlarge corporations that many cities have had to confront. Such movementswill take different forms across the world; for example, in Argentina asimilar antiglobalization economics has drawn on a tradition ofcooperatives and cooperation (Faulk 2008). As anthropologists think through the issue of grassrootsmobilizations that develop alternatives to corporate-led, neoliberalforms of globalization, we will need to consider the complex issues ofknowledge. The epistemic dimensions of social movements have receivedincreasing attention, although more in STS than in social movementstudies (see Hess et al. 2007 for a review). Within this journalCasas-Cortes and colleagues (2008) have developed the topic from acultural perspective in their discussion of the "knowledgepractices" of social movements, a term used to draw attention toboth scientific knowledge and the less formal and often place-basedtypes of knowledge such as "know-how." Fundamentally inagreement with their approach to knowledge in social movements, I haverelied here in part on an extended Bourdieusian concept of fields (1991,2001) to chart the homologous positioning of knowledges in thescientific field and in local political fields, and to explore thetraffic between the two fields in the form of relations between localand localist knowledge. In doing so, one can discern the potential ofsuch knowledges to be disruptive as well as marginalized, and tointeract dynamically in ways that go beyond the standardcharacterizations of lay and expert knowledge (e.g., Wynne 1996).Rather, as in the case of the businesspeople who formed Capital DistrictLocal First and the coalition of New Scotlanders for Sound EconomicDevelopment, one finds local residents with professional knowledge andcapacity to marshal social science expertise (even, in some cases, toproduce it) who can also mix their localist arguments with a profoundlocal knowledge of the community where they live. The capacity to bringboth types of knowledge together can be quite powerful, at least inlocal economic development controversies and (as Wal-Mart and Starbuckshave already recognized) in shaping consumer preferences. Elites that benefit from the current order of neoliberalglobalization have a well-oiled scientific machinery of economicresearch to support the defense of the current order. Social scientistswho challenge the machinery tend to be located outside the dominantnetworks of the social sciences, that is, away from both thehigher-status and better-paid social science professions, such aseconomics and management, and the higher-status departments within thosefields. It is easy for the dominant networks to ignore theirlower-status critics. But what is less easy to ignore is the existenceof local knowledge of the negative side effects of neoliberalism and thetransformation of local knowledge into localist movements that seek out,publicize, fund, and even produce localist knowledge. Where localistadvocates encounter undone science, they may support civil societyresearch, which takes place largely outside the academy but isoccasionally linked to the research programs of the nondominant networksof the social sciences. This research is continuous with peer-reviewedscience, although it is not always published in peer-reviewed venues.But through umbrella organizations such as BALLE localists also developand circulate a translocal craft knowledge of "what works" inlocalist organizing, something akin to the types of knowledge charted inthe work of Casas-Cortes and colleagues (2008). In the US context, one should not underestimate the importance ofthe emergence of businesses, activists, and advocates who eschew thebusiness plans of fast growth, venture capital, and liquidity events andinstead choose to be rooted in the slow-growth or even no-growth modelsof community businesses. But one should also recognize some of thelimitations and counter-currents. One might interpret the movements aspoliticizing consumption and bringing issues of citizenship into theconsumer role. New practices at the frontiers of citizenship andconsumption are being developed that could have profound politicalimplications. However, one might also argue that even the blending ofcitizenship and consumption tends to reduce politics to markets, a movethat is consistent with neoliberalism. Yet in response to that concern,one might note that the politicization of consumption is alsoaccompanied by a wide range of government-oriented action, includingmoblizations in support of size caps and zoning ordinances, that boththe anti-big-box and pro-local organizations support. Those policyreforms are more consistent with the regulatory activism associated withthe social liberal state. As I have argued elsewhere, ideological labelssuch as neoliberal and social liberal only go so far in interpretinglocalist politics (Hess 2009a). One of the unforeseen implications of the unraveling of the socialliberalism of the New Deal and Great Society is that the petitebourgeoisie may be drifting away from a half-century of alliance withconservative politics, states' rights rhetoric, and opposition tocentralized government represented by social liberalism. There isalready some evidence that public employee unions see their fate tied tothe success of the local business sector and that the entrepreneurs ofthe BALLE organizations are concerned with employee ownership, livingwages, and other traditional labor issues. The potential to connectsmall capital and labor, as well as the environmental and social justicemovements, provides some political opportunities for a new era ofprogressive politics. Theorists of neoliberalism would do well to payattention to possibilities for political reconfiguration that decades ofprivatization, deregulation, and devolution have engendered. 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