Nakshi Shah, Vidhi Shah, Youngjun Shin and Maryam Ashraf

Our thesis project draws parallels between building a thriving economy and baking a loaf of sourdough bread. Using flour and water as metaphors for labor and capital, our research explores the ways these foundational elements combine to form what we call the economy. The metaphor allows us to examine the way economic systems, like sourdough, are living and evolving structures that respond to time, care, and context.

By engaging with the 18th-century economist Adam Smith’s concept of the free market and contrasting it with the theories of diverse alternative economies proposed by the feminist economic geographers J.K. Gibson-Graham (Julie Graham and Katherine Gibson), our project reimagines the way economies can be sustained through not only competition and growth but also mutual care, resilience, and continual intervention. Just as a sourdough starter must be nurtured with regular feeding, a balanced economy requires ongoing support, collaboration, and a reconsideration of value.

Our project invites a shift from rigid and extractive models to more adaptive and regenerative ways of organizing labor, enterprise, and exchange. It offers a playful yet critical means of reconsidering the ingredients needed to make an economy flourish and imagining what could happen if we began to bake something new.

See this project on YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=idEMXnW2JgA.