The social and solidarity economy as a way to "buen vivir"

Abstract

The Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE) encompasses a wide range of economic endeavors and logics with the potential to deploy alternative «economies» —in varying degrees— to the capitalist system. The ESS is an indispensable reference to move from conventional development models to the paradigm of buen vivir. In this article, it is showed which are the principles of the SSE and to what extent they converge with the dimensions and Good Living Objectives and with the strategies to achieve it. We emphasize the need to implement strategies oriented to the regulation, redistribution, resizing and decommodification of the economic sphere. These four orientations should be driven by public policies, but, at the same time, the SSE organizations themselves are already implementing them from practice thanks to their principles and values. We propose ways of promoting SSE such as responsible public procurement, social markets and local economic circuits, recovery of sovereignty (food, energy, ethical finance and social currencies), reconceptualization of work and well-being for the sustainability of life.

Social and Solidarity Economy in Ecuador: Fostering an Alternative Development Model?

“…It has been argued elsewhere that under certain premises, the SSE could foster a BV paradigm that is an alternative to capitalist development [64], but we find here that the current Ecuadorian government's policies do not foster that kind of SSE initiative. Therefore, we can conclude that there is no development model transition underway in Ecuador, and nor are the official PSE policies fostering the SSE radical values that could be useful for transforming the economic system overall.…”

“…For a broader transformative scope, it is argued that many SSE experiences (both rural and urban) already follow a series of principles and organizational practices that help transforming the economic system through demarketization, dematerialization, decentralization and economic regulation strategies in line with BV principles [64]. These practices need to be backed by public policies oriented towards "participatory governance" and "democratic management", "resizing and re-localization" of economic circuits, "wealth and income redistribution", "inter-cooperation, reciprocity and solidarity"-all of which are common topics to both BV and the SSE (idem).…”

Economía Social y Economía Solidaria: un análisis bibliométrico y revisión de literatura

“…Pérez y Etxezarreta (2015) plantean que el concepto de economía social, contempla un consenso de principios e institucionalidad aceptado por la comunidad científica y por el marco legal en diferentes países (Bouchard, 2009;Fajardo, 2012;Monzón, 2013), pero que en contraste el concepto de economía solidaria presenta criterios en construcción y debate (Coraggio, 2013). Complementan este campo de estudio, nuevas publicaciones que proyectan la economía social como una iniciativa que gestiona armónicamente los recursos naturales, el bienestar comunitario y la calidad de vida, con el objetivo de impactar en la transformación del modelo de desarrollo económico convencional a partir del impacto positivo en la dimensión social (Abad, 2019;Fernández et al, 2020;Villalba y Pérez, 2019).…”

Indigenous Peoples, Exclusion and Precarious Work: Design of Strategies to Address Poverty in Indigenous and Peasant Populations in Ecuador through the SWOT-AHP Methodology

“…Social economy and solidarity are able to distribute more fairly by considering the pre-eminence of work on people’s financial capacity, seeking the provision of goods and services necessary for society based on self-organized work and environmental sustainability, acting at local and comparatively small level in proximity to economic circuits [ 34 ]. It seeks to produce and distribute sufficient material wealth so that it can generate sustainable conditions of self-managed development for each individual, societies and the planet itself [ 35 ].…”