Radical Reciprocity

For the past 10 years, I have cultivated a community that supports my most essential human needs with limited exchange of money. Sometimes called the barter and gift economy, sometimes called family, I call it “radical reciprocity.”

I came to this lifestyle not long after college, when I moved back to my hometown of Petaluma, California to take up a residential farm internship. In exchange for agricultural training, I laboured. The trade felt equitable and mutualistic and I became hooked on bartering for the basics. I saw viscerally how, when practiced with care and consideration, non-monetary exchange could yield more than the sum of its parts.

These days, I rarely go to the grocery store. Instead I meet my caloric needs in other ways, including work-trade at the place that I