Crisis-prone economic development, which we can understand with Mandel (1980) as following long waves of alternating periods of high and low growth, seems to correlate with a similar cycle of declining and growing interest in alternative economics. As reflected by a growing number of publications (Singer 2002; Wallerstein 2002; Albert 2003; Altvater/Sekler 2006; Gibson-Graham 2006; Santos 2006; Vilmar 2008) and activist conferences (Eid 2003; Embshoff/Giegold 2008), we can observe that economic crises encourage debates about alternative forms of organizing economies and societies. read more »