Annotating Alternative Currency in The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Much of The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer is about imagining generosity-based economic systems that are better suited than “cutthroat capitalism” for sustained life on earth. One point that Kimmerer returns to in her arguments is this idea that alternative currencies already exist. Throughout the book, she deftly points out what else besides money has value and can be recognized during an exchange of goods and services between people.

DIRECTIONS: HIGHLIGHT AND/OR UNDERLINE THE WORD “CURRENCY” IN THE QUOTES LISTED BELOW. THEN DRAW A SMALL $ IN THE OUTER MARGIN NEXT TO THE LINES WITH “CURRENCY” SO YOU CAN FIND THESE MOMENTS IN THE TEXT LATER. You’ll be making 17 margin notes!

NOTE: $ p 14

“Gratitude and reciprocity are the currency of a gift economy, and they have the remarkable property of multiplying with every exchange, their energy concentrating as they pass from hand to hand, a truly renewable resource. Can we imagine a human economy with a currency which emulates the flow from Mother Earth? A currency of gifts?”

NOTE: $ p 15

“We ecologists think about the currency of ecosystems in terms of biogeochemistry—the cycling of life’s materials, between the living and the not.”

NOTE: $ p 19

“The currency of this economy is the flow of gratitude, the flow of love, literally in support of life.”

NOTE: $ p 33

“The currency in a gift economy is relationship, which is expressed as gratitude, as interdependence and the ongoing cycles of reciprocity.”

NOTE: $ p 34

“In a gift economy, the currency in circulation is gratitude and connection rather than goods or money.

NOTE: $ p 36

“Making good relationships with the human and more-than-human world is the primary currency of well-being.”

NOTE: $ p 37

“The economic contest between colonial and Indigenous currencies did not end with the Buffalo.”

NOTE: $ p 42

“The currency of exchange is the secret smiles on both faces.”

NOTE: $ p 47

“I learn about mutual-aid societies, local gift economies, alternative local currencies, money-free work exchanges, cooperative farms, peer-to-peer lending, and more.”

NOTE: $ p 49

“In a market economy, the meat must be private property, accumulated for the well-being of the hunter or exchanged for currency.”

NOTE: $ p 69

“The currency of this economic system is energy, which flows through it, and materials, which cycle among the producers and the consumers.”

NOTE: $ p 72

“I lament my own immersion in an economy that grinds what is beautiful and unique into dollars, converts gifts to commodities in a currency that enables us to purchase things we don’t really need while destroying what we do.”

NOTE: $ p 89

“The currency of relationship can manifest itself as money down the road, because Paulie and Ed do have to pay the bills.”

NOTE: $ p 91

“I want to live in a society where the currency of exchange is gratitude and the infinitely renewable resource of kindness, which multiplies every time it is shared ratherthan depreciating with use.”

“Intentional communities of mutual self-reliance and reciprocity are the wave of the future, and their currency is sharing.”

NOTE: $ p 94

“I’ve been learning more about ecological economics, valuing of ecosystem services, biomimicry, proposals for climate justice, for climate finance, for the Green New Deal, for energy currencies and B Corps—not that I want to.”

NOTE: $ p 105

“The currency of this gift economy is relationship and a neighborhood where people know each other’s names, even the curmudgeons.”

NOTE: $ p 109

“Whatever your currency of reciprocity—be it money, time, energy, political action, art, science, education, planting, community action, restoration, acts of care, large and small—all are needed in these urgent times.”