Title : A community's resilience to the covid-19 crisis. The Florain monetary community
Author(s) : Raphaël DIDIER
Abstract : In this paper, we study the resilience of the community of individual users of a French local currency in the face of an abrupt halt in exchanges during the first containment related to the covid-19 pandemic (March 17, 2020 to May 11, 2020). Our study is based on the local currency of the Nancy Basin, the Florain, for which we have a field survey conducted before the pandemic, three interviews conducted between the first and second containment in France (May 12 and October 30, 2020), observations and figures obtained during participation in the association's general assembly and publications found on the structure's blog. This allowed us to highlight sociological factors (feeling of being a consum’actor, social representations of members and existence of an identity niche among active volunteers) and organizational factors (ethos of active volunteers, sociocratic mode of governance of the association and inscription of the Florain community in a life basin) that contribute to community resilience. However, in the particular case of a local currency, we show that there is also a predominant institutional dimension, linked to its social and political nature, which makes the community of individual users a local monetary community.
Key-words : local currency, crisis, resilience, covid-19, SSE, governance, sociocracy, territory, values, monetary community.
JEL Classification : A14, E42, R11
