This dissertation examines the work of alternative economies activists who have spent the last 18 years constructing barter systems and local currencies in Medellín, Colombia. Through barter, these activists hope to spark an ethical re-evaluation of production, exchange, and consumption, and to create an economy that serves Medellín's middle-class professionals, rural peasants, urban workers, students and the chronically under-employed. They also see barter as an important social and political project to repair a social fabric torn by decades of violence and economic exploitation. For these activists barter is a counter to capitalism, violence, and social fragmentation; it is a new proposal rooted in cooperation, collective well-being, and the development of local capacities. Previous researchers have thoroughly examined the emergence, organization, and impacts of these types of alternative economies, but they have neglected what many activists consider to be the greatest challenge: to cultivate the new social relations and subjectivities necessary to enact and maintain those models. In the words of Colombia's barter organizers, the goal is to "change the chip" and "clean out the cucarachas" of our capitalist mindsets in order to "create a new culture of solidarity." This research is located at precisely that sticking point. Drawing on 12 months of ethnographic research, I examine the nature and impacts of barter and the challenges that barter activists face as they try to recreate economies, social relations, and subjectivities. Medellín's barter projects, I conclude, offer extremely important opportunities for cross-class and cross-generational interaction in a city that is violently divided. They also provide material and social supports for traders who are seeking to develop alternative subjectivities, and they help active traders gain control over the means of production and the conditions of their work. However, their counter-hegemonic potential is significantly limited by three tensions within organizers' strategies: a tendency to prioritize socio-cultural forms of activism at the expense of economic ones, a focus on conscious and moral aspects of subjectivity rather than material and embodied aspects, and a stridently anti-capitalist stance that discourages economic articulations and thereby reinforces the material and socio-cultural power of capitalism.

Digital currencies represent complementary alternatives to fiat money in the conventional mental models of exchange. Blockchain, as the underlying technology of Bitcoin, holds a potential to influence a peer-to-peer exchange in the perspective of trust and ownership. The underlying technologies of digital currencies may be part of concepts, where designers have a possibility to define their own exchange articles for specific needs of the exchange. The ambition of this report is to illustrate the possibilities for the initiation of a peer-to-peer exchange with use of the underlying technologies beyond Bitcoin. The explorative approach provided me material for the retrospective reflection to achieve this ambition. The thesis project consisted three iterations, one experiment, and a literature overview. The main conceptual work illustrates the result of explorative research, where blockchain ensures trust between participating parties. This ecosystem uses the principles of sharing economy for initialisation of exchange within the community. This concept demonstrates potential opportunities for future transactions, in which the exchange article replaces fiat money.

Из-за сформировавшихся внешне и внутренне политических условий, снижение зависимости экономики РФ от внешних факторов становится все более приоритетным направлением развития. Более того, имеется ряд проблем, связанных с недостаточно эффективным развитием нецентральных районов. В их числе проблемы миграции, низкого уровня рождаемости и другие. Более того, изменяется роль институтов государства и местного самоуправления по отношению к гражданскому обществу. Тем самым возникает потребность в разработке и внедрении современных механизмов функционирования местных сообществ для достижения долгосрочных целей социально-экономического развития муниципальных образований. Указанные обстоятельства актуализируют изучение цифровой финансовой экосистемы местных сообществ. Учитывая вышесказанное, целью работы является разработка методики идентификации отдельного экономического агента на предмет его потенциальной принадлежности к локальному экономическому сообществу. Для этого были проанализированы данные о банковских транзакциях. Замкнутые цепи обмена были найдены. Также были рассчитаны 4 типа коэффициентов для определения полезности потенциального включения в сеть экономического агента. И были рассмотрены 4 возможных стратегии развития местного сообщества. Рассчитан экономический эффект. / Due to the formed external and internal political conditions, reducing the dependence of the Russian economy on external factors is becoming an increasingly priority area of development. Moreover, there are a number of problems associated with the insufficiently effective development of non-central regions. Among them are the problems of migration, low birth rate and others. Moreover, the role of state and local government institutions in relation to civil society is changing. Thus, there is a need for the development and implementation of modern mechanisms for the functioning of local communities to achieve long-term goals of socio-economic development of municipalities. These circumstances actualize the study of the digital financial ecosystem of local communities. Considering the above, the aim of the work is to develop a methodology for identifying an individual economic agent for its potential belonging to the local economic community. For this, data on banking transactions were analyzed. Closed circuits of exchange have been found. Also, 4 types of coefficients were calculated to determine the usefulness of a potential inclusion in the network of an economic agent. And 4 possible strategies for the development of the local community were considered. The economic effect is calculated.