As an English major, I flunked a math placement test with flying colors and hid from all things quantitative. I don’t think my college self would be caught dead enjoying a book on economics. But Kate Raworth’s Donut Economics is a story. It runs backward through the ideas and images that shape present global realities, and forward to a vision of flourishing that is both safe and just. She’s an engaging writer, and I commend the book to you. In English major fashion, I’m going to be exploring some of her ideas here over the next few posts. 

We’ll start with a picture: not dazzling, but foundational. 

Raworth describes the Circular Flow diagram as “the first model of the macroeconomy that every economics student meets.” It depicts the movement of income as a closed system. (More complex versions include the “leaks” and “injections” of banks, governments, and trade, but the idea is the same.) 

Notice what’s not in the picture. While the diagram exists in a grey void, we live in earth’s biosphere—the lifegiving system that provides all materials and energy for economic activity, and which absorbs the wastes these processes generate. The diagram also excludes society, the networks and relationships that create trust, reciprocity, and the possibility of democratic engagement. Further, it simplifies the economy to the provisioning market and working/consuming households. 

But we wear more hats than that. 

The economy—“the realm in which people produce, distribute and consume products and services that meet their wants and needs”—is typically fourfold. 

First is the household. Mainstream economics relegates the household to the place where employees live and where goods are consumed. But feminist economists describe the household as “the core economy,” noting that “it comes first every day, sustaining the essentials of family and social life with the universal human resources of time, knowledge, skill, care, empathy, teaching and reciprocity.” It tends to be invisible when no one is paying for it, but how much of the market economy would function without this unpaid work of nurture?  When I tend my chickens or grow, cook and preserve food for myself and Becca, I’m participating in the household economy. 

Next up is the market, which coordinates the needs of billions of buyers and sellers worldwide but “only values what is priced and only delivers to those who can pay.” I show up here like Rosie the Riveter, bandana and respirator mask in place so I can install insulation for my neighbor. I also show up in a snappy beret to edit papers and write marketing copy for Troy Street. (It’s interesting how the full-body labor that warms a homeis valued at less than the mind-and-keyboard work of fine-turning dissertations.) 

Less familiar than household and market are the commons: “shareable resources of nature or society that people choose to use and govern through self-organizing, instead of relying on the state or market for doing so.” Writing, which is hard to monetize, usually ends up here—me with a sun hat and a rain coat to keep the mosquitos off, hanging with the chickens to create and share blogs like this one. The commons are routinely treated as tragic, but they can be both effective and creative. Think of Wikipedia. 

Last is the state, whose effectiveness is downplayed in neoliberal economics but who brims with potential to become Best Supporting Actor. When it provides public goods like education and healthcare to everyone, regardless of their ability to pay, the state enables society to flourish. When it supports the core caring role of the household, it strengthens families and eases the lopsided burden of unpaid work usually shouldered by women. When it protects the commons from encroachment, it releases their creativity. And when it harnesses the market’s power to institutions and regulations that promote the common good, we see workers’ rights protected and toxic pollution banned. I put my beret back on when I engage here, urging my senators to support regenerative agriculture or inviting my mayor to an art show that depicts the beauty I want to protect in Indiana. 

This is where the fourfold economy shows up in Raworth’s 21^st century diagram: 

It’s embedded in the relationships of society and in the earth that sustains all of us. No amount of money makes my front yard yield tomatoes and eggplants. Cash doesn’t compel my chickens to lay eggs. And if I had to pay my neighbors to be civil, I’d be dead broke in hurry. All this to say: the economy is powerful and important, but it’s also dependent. The living world will always be its foundation, and our human relationships will always be its context. We damage and neglect these at our peril. Also, the economic story is more complicated than we’ve been led to believe. How many hats do you wear as you go through the day?