I Buoni di Riace: a complementary currency as a strategic tool to resist the mafia and transform the migration crisis into an opportunity
Barbara Priolo*
* Università per Stranieri Dante Alighieri di Reggio Calabria, Italy; California College of the Arts, San Francisco, California, USA. Email: b.priolo@unidarc.it
Abstract
I Buoni di Riace (Riace Vouchers) was a community currency, a series of thirty-six colorful paper banknotes that circulated between 2011 and 2018 within the city of Riace in the south of Italy. In this paper, I consider the visual strategy Domenico Lucano employed, as mayor of Riace, with I Buoni di Riace, an initiative developed in response to two significant social issues in the city: depopulation due to mafia activity and massive increases in migratory fluxes. Lucano’s tactic was to manipulate money to make it an instrument of social cohesion and inclusiveness within the small Calabrian city of Riace.
Keywords
Resistance, Community Currencies, depopulation, mafia crime, migration, Riace, Italy
To cite this article: Priolo, B (2021) ‘I Buoni di Riace: A complementary currency as a strategic tool to resist the mafia and transform the migration crisis into an opportunity’, International Journal of Community Currency Research Volume 25 (Issue 2) 15-27; http://www.ijccr.net; ISSN 1325-9547; DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.15133/j.ijccr.2021.0012
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