Nouvelles formes de sociabilités ou les limites d’une utopie politique

Abstract

France has one of the highest number of functioning LETS of all advanced economies. Based on a recent survey of LETS in France, the aim of this paper is to both provide an overview of the structure and nature of LETS in this country and to investigate whether these experiments are new ways of constructing sociability and/or whether they are more intended as political utopias. The finding is that LETS are vehicles that enable transfers to take place in social spaces which have the power to negate the official monetary economy by transforming exchange in symbolic social and political ways.