More-than-capitalist economies: Insights from community supported agriculture, tiny houses and hitchhiking in Denmark

The accelerating planetary crises call for rapid reductions in carbon emissions, unlikely to be achieved alone through increasing renewable energy and more efficient production. A wide-ranging transformation of affluent lifestyles and current consumption-production relationships is needed as well. This brings existing economic models into question, as profit often stands in the way of necessary reductions. Thus, a growing field of research points to the need of rethinking the economic system, and frameworks of degrowth and sufficiency are receiving more attention. In the context of Denmark, this paper maps the landscape of both mainstream and alternative consumption-production relationships across three high-emission domains: food, housing and mobility. Based on focus groups with 52 professional stakeholders, I identify a correlation between economic activities and sustainability approaches, with efficiency-oriented models being tied to profit-driven economies and sufficiency-oriented models aligned with alternative, collective economic practices. This finding shows how economic systems shape the strategies organizations employ in addressing environmental challenges. Furthermore, more-than-capitalist economic activities in this landscape are explored. By zooming in on three cases, community supported agriculture, tiny houses and hitchhiking, I draw attention to diverse economies as a lens to reframe consumption-production relationships in a sufficiency-oriented direction. I contribute to this field by proposing three key dimensions in which more-than-capitalist actors share characteristics across food, housing and mobility: 1) spatial; 2) temporal; and 3) relational. Highlighting these, the paper calls for further research and attention to spatial proximity, long-term engagement and community-building in developing consumption-production relationships for a sustainable future. • Diverse economies can guide sustainable consumption and production. • Correlations between economic activities and sustainability approaches are found. • More-than-capitalist economic practices relate to a sufficiency-oriented transition. • Spatial, temporal and relational dimensions are proposed to guide this transition.