International Social Economy Organizations

Bretos, Ignacio; Errasti, Anjel; Soetens, Aurélie

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-68295-8_12

Cited by 2 publications

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“…Three major scaling strategies could be identified: control-based, altruistic and hybrid. These strategies can be placed along a continuum in terms of increasing the degree of central control and resource requirements (Bretos et al 2021).…”

Section: Global Scaling Of Sseoesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Encyclopedia of the Social and Solidarity Economy

2023

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Over several decades, neoliberalism has shaped economic activities and relations in much of the world. Although there are many variants of neoliberalism, they all share in common two fundamental assumptions: that we human beings can maximize self-interest based on an economic calculation of costs and benefits; and that the market is inherently efficient and self-regulated. The policy conclusion drawn from these assumptions is that a stronger free market enhances human wellbeing.These assumptions, and the policy conclusion, are patently false. Calculated self-interest may be one element that determines our behaviour, but so too are non-economic interests and values associated with social norms, rights, obligations, reciprocity and morals. An inherently efficient and self-regulating market is just a utopian idea whose original imposition and catastrophic collapse was the subject of Karl Polanyi's (1944) The Great Transformation.The social and solidarity economy (SSE), which has gained currency across the world over the past two decades, provides an alternative approach to promoting human wellbeing, social justice and economic and sustainable development. Although the meaning of the SSE and its key features are contested, its constituent organizations such as cooperatives, associations, mutuals, women's self-help groups and social enterprises play a significant role in creating and protecting economic activities and social relations from commercialization and bureaucratization, and transforming them into participatory and democratic ones. In a nutshell, the SSE is all about social control and democratization of the economy understood as a vast set of social relations.Despite the growing recognition of the transformative potential of the SSE and the amount of academic and policy-oriented research related to the SSE, it remains a relatively new concept to many. There is therefore a need for high-quality knowledge on this topic, and information to guide policymakers, practitioners and researchers. Yet, there are very few sources that comprehensively examine the attributes, dynamics, opportunities and challenges associated with the SSE in various contexts. This is what has motivated the United Nations Inter-Agency Task Force on Social Solidarity Economy (UNTFSSE) to convene leading experts to produce the Encyclopedia of the Social and Solidarity Economy (the SSE Encyclopedia), which is intended as an essential tool for raising awareness of SSE and promoting SSE organizations and enterprises at local, national and international levels.The SSE Encyclopedia is divided into four parts. Part I, 'Histories, Concepts and Theories', includes entry 10, 'Origins and Histories', which reveals the collective amnesia about the origins of social and economic organizations based on democratic solidarity initiated by various groups (indigenous self-organization in South America, women and African Americans in North America, and pioneering workers in Europe). It also includes entries dealing with the contested contemporary meanings of t...

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Section: Global Scaling Of Sseoesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Encyclopedia of the Social and Solidarity Economy

2023

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Section: Global Scaling Of Sseoesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Globalization and alter-globalization

Servós¹,

Errasti²,

Bretos³

2023

Encyclopedia of the Social and Solidarity Economy

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Globalization is an extremely complex phenomenon, from both a theoretical-conceptual and a practical point of view, and has received the attention of a multitude of research from various disciplines (sociology, political science, anthropology, geography, economics, and so on) due to its multidimensional nature. Moreover, the development of globalization is associated with serious negative and positive consequences. The alter-globalization movements emerged strongly to counteract these negative effects and to propose other ways of understanding the relationships between the global economy, environment and people. Among them, the social and solidarity economy (SSE) is one of the most comprehensive proposals which address the problems caused by globalization. The SSE confronts future challenges by prioritizing social and environmental needs in economic decisions.Globalization can be understood as a dynamic process of capitalism that has structured the different forms of capital accumulation throughout history: from the 15th century with the logic of the accumulation of mercantile capital, which allowed the dominance of the Atlantic centres over the peripheries of the Americas and other continents, to the current paradigm of technology as the basis for capital accumulation. Although the term 'globalization' began to be used in the late 1960s and early 1970s, it became popular from the 1980s onwards with Levitt's (1983) famous work, 'The Globalization of Markets'. It is no coincidence that this fact occurs at this particular historical moment: since the late 1970s and early 1980s, capitalist globalization experienced an unprecedented dynamism in our time, driven by neoliberalism, which encompasses political, geographical, cultural, social and economic spheres (Harvey 2005).Since then, this phenomenon has attracted considerable attention. The lack of consensus across academic spheres suggests that there remains great complexity in the analysis of globalization, and demonstrates why it is still the focus of a multitude of debates from different disciplines. In this sense, there is a strong controversy due to the wide diversity of approaches to different aspects of globalization, such as its definition and meaning, its historical origin, its dimensions, its ideological bases or its implications.We can understand globalization as an ongoing process of intensifying cross-border social and economic interactions which is enabled by the decreasing costs of connecting distant places through communication. The process of globalization facilitates the transfer of capital, goods and people across space, and leads to an increasing transnational interdependence of economic and social actors, an increase in both opportunities and risks, and an intensification of competition. Globalization is accelerated by factors such as political decisions (reduction of barriers to trade, foreign direct investment, capital and services, privatization and deregulation policies), technological developments (communication, media, transport) and soci...

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International Social Economy Organizations

Cited by 2 publications

References 65 publications

Encyclopedia of the Social and Solidarity Economy

Encyclopedia of the Social and Solidarity Economy

Globalization and alter-globalization

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