The idea of community currencies is borne out of a desire to provide communities with a means of supporting themselves, limiting their reliance on the larger market economy and on forces they cannot see or know.  These market mechanisms exert a phenomenal amount of control over local economies with strings being pulled in corporate boardrooms and political arenas.  These controls also allow for mega-decisions to have direct impacts on quality of life at the local level.  Community currencies are, in some ways, about returning some of that control to the locality, empowering local residents to support themselves and each other through self-reliance.  However, community currencies are not necessarily intended to act as a wholesale replacement for external linkages with larger market systems.  They are more focused on increasing local capacities to determine the course of economic and social development.  

     Greco  provides us with an historical perspective, explaining that as our society moved toward industrialization, citizens were separated from the land and from the relationships that once enabled them to rely on their neighbors for essential goods and services.  As the control of capital was centralized, people were limited in their ability to avoid the money market.  In addition, our local markets have become more and more specialized over time.  A locality may realize it has a comparative advantage in the production of a specific good and concentrate their capital resources in that direction.  Specialization of function can certainly be beneficial, to a point, but this specialization dictates reliance on larger, global markets to provide residents with all of their remaining needs.  

     In establishing healthy, versatile, and sustainable local economies we should find a balance between our functioning in the global marketplace and our ability to provide mutual support through a diversity of local skills and resources; a balance between specialization and differentiation.  Greco suggests that this requires the “implementation of exchange media which are locally and democratically controlled”.   Community currencies provide a means of accomplishing this goal. 
  
     With some forms of community currency, the focus is targeted more directly on the concept of strengthening local economies by developing and supporting local resources.  Local businesses are more likely to spend their money locally, as well.  While larger corporations might be able to offer lower prices for their goods and services, their revenues are more often channeled out of the community.  This money, then, is no longer available for the creation of further transactions.  The community must respond by attracting money from the outside.  Greco points out that this takes place either by exporting products, receiving government funds, or attracting tourists to spend dollars and then leave.  

     In other forms, though, the focus more directly highlights the connection between our dependence on remote markets and the disintegration of traditional family and neighborhood-based social ties.  It was through these ties that many of our basic needs were satisfied, and it is with the lack of these ties that we are now forced to pay for many services we formerly obtained through our familial and neighborhood networks.  Both approaches seek sustainable solutions through reliance on our neighbors, increased control over exchange systems, and development of the local resource base.  

     Shuman  addresses the need for local self-reliance through a variety of approaches, one of which is the creation of local currency systems.  This is based on his assertion that communities must “stop trying to expand economic activity through exports, and instead strive to eliminate dangerous dependencies by creating new import-replacing businesses that meet people’s basic needs”.   His foundational belief is that the economic base must first be strong enough to allow for strengthening of social circumstances.  We need a strong tax base to pay for decent teachers, social workers and police.  He therefore acknowledges that the economic and the social realms are intimately related, but sees the inroad to changing these circumstances as a thriving local economy.  Shuman goes further in his assertion that, once a community currency program is in place, transactions made outside this system, using national currency, are considered to be “anti-community behavior”.  This is a rather strong statement, and one that does not seem to consider that some balance between self-reliance and activity within larger markets may actually be a healthy medium.  

     Putnam  approaches the issue from a slightly different perspective, noting the importance of an active civic life as a necessary feature of a healthy local economy.  In studying twenty regional governments in Italy, Putnam concluded that those with the most active civic life also had the most successes with economic development.  Strong social networks and active participation provided a foundation upon which the local economy could be strengthened.  He noted: These communities did not become civic simply because they were rich.  The historical record strongly suggests just the opposite: They have become rich because they were civic.  The social capital embodied in norms and networks of civic engagement seems to be a precondition for economic development, as well as for effective government.  Development economists take not: Civics matter.   

     This theory base is found once again in the work of Edgar Cahn and Jonathan Rowe .  In their book, Time Dollars, they address the social capital benefits inherent in community currency efforts.  Where the Time Dollar concept is concerned, all work is validated and of equal value since that value is measured in increments of time.  What takes and hour to do is worth an hour in exchange.  So whether you can help someone with their taxes or clean their house, your work is given an equal exchange value.  This can be very empowering for people who are outside of the mainstream workforce and have never had their skills validated.  Time Dollars also put us in contact with our neighbors, expanding our social networks and strengthening community ties.  

     It seems that these theory bases highlight different aspects of a common goal: to strengthen local economies and community ties by increasing self-reliance and decreasing dependence on national or global market systems.  It is exciting to be able to approach this area of study from both economic and social frameworks, supporting the idea that somewhere in the middle exists the filed of community economic development.