Understanding subsistence marketplaces: Toward sustainable consumption and commerce for a better world

This article provides the background and the events leading up to this special issue, and the composition of articles that follow. This special issue includes articles that take a bottom-up approach in understanding and explaining subsistence marketplaces, focusing on individual, communal, and cultural factors that influence consumers and entrepreneurs who live at or near subsistence, and who comprise a majority of the world's population. This bottom-up focus is distinct and complementary to the macro-level economic development and mid-level business strategy (e.g., base of the pyramid) approaches to the role of business in poverty alleviation. This special issue consists largely of papers based on presentations at the second subsistence marketplace conference held in Chicago in 2008, with articles and essays reflecting a healthy commingling of disciplinary perspectives that cuts across social and commercial enterprises.