We argue that closer attention to how solidarity is understood and expressed in different European contexts may shed additional light on the conditions for establishing a solidarity economy. Drawing on empirical data collected within the H2020 SOLIDUS project, which explores current and future expressions of European solidarity, comparative analysis focuses on the influence of customers on the development of the solidarity economy, the significance of solidarity principles for suppliers and producers of services and goods, and indications of changing institutional discourse.
While a lot of research on social enterprises focuses on the question of overcoming social, economic or spatial inequalities (Hulgård & Andersen, 2015; Defourny & Nyssens 2016), the handling of the financial and economic crises at European level over the past years have brought to the fore different perspectives of what Europe is and should be between different regions of Europe, demonstrating different priorities and conceptions who and what notions of the ‘common good’ should include.
While policymakers across Europe have in general been positive to the notion that social enterprises have an important and positive role to play, previous research and reports show that regulatory environments differ significantly (i.e. Mair, 2010). Social economic initiatives are deemed as means to enhance economic and social development at local and community level (i.e. Connelly et al., 2011), casting doubt on their potential to exert a significant social impact at a higher scale (Moulaert & Ailenei, 2005).
At the same time, theoretical work has moved on to agency perspectives like institutional entrepreneurship (i.e. Battilana et al., 2009) that focus on how cultural embeddedness in different institutional logics is related to everyday entrepreneurial actions, rather than on how organisations are influenced by their environments (Greenman, 2013), allowing to analyse public policies as the result from interactions between public policy makers and social enterprise advocates.
SE identifies scope for social and democratic reciprocity due to its civil society base and focus on collective governance and self-organised production that turns vulnerable people and groups into co-producers and co-owners (Laville & Salmon, 2015), coupling actions for the common good with economic understandings of citizen initiatives and third sector, converting the social dimension into economic leverage or specific productive strength (Fraser 2013). Solidarity in these ventures is evident in their members’ involvement in day-to-day management and the adoption of equality principles, by placing new actors into work, recognition struggles or discourse of a meaningful life (Gaiger et al., 2015).
The data consists of quantitative analysis and qualitative case studies on the relation between the social economy and solidarity in a number of initiatives operating in separate fields countries that represent three different welfare regimes. They highlight how the notion of SE is not only an expression of support for those involved in alternative forms of production, it is an argument for a different relationship between producers, sellers and buyers of goods and services, embedded in institutional notions and discourses of solidarity, which shape citizen action, but can also be altered by introducing a new way of thinking of solidarity.
References
Battilana, J., Leca, B. & Boxenbaum, E. (2009). How Actors Change Institutions: Towards a Theory of Institutional Entrepreneurship, The Academy of Management Annals, 3:1, 65-107.
Connelly, S., Markey, S., & Roseland, M. (2011). Bridging sustainability and the social economy: Achieving community transformation through local food initiatives. Critical Social Policy, 31(2), 308-324.
Defourny, J. & Nyssens, M. (2016). How to bring the Centres of Gravity of the Non-Profit Sector and the Social Economy Closer to each other? In Voluntas 27: 1546-1561.
Fraser, N. (2013): “A Triple movement? Parsing the Politics of Crisis after Polanyi”. New Left Review, No. 81, May-June.
Gaiger, L.I. (2015) Social Enterprise in Brazil: An Overview of Solidarity Economy Enterprises. ICSEM Working Paper Series No.10.
Greenman, A. (2013). Everyday entrepreneurial action and cultural embeddedness: an institutional logics perspective, in: Entrepreneurship & Regional Development: An International Journal, Volume 25, Special Issue 7-8, pp. 631-653.
Hulgård, L. & Andersen, L. L. (2015). Social Entrepreneurship and Social Innovation, Nordic Council of Ministers: Social entrepreneurship and social innovation. Initiatives to promote social entrepreneurship and social innovation in the Nordic countries, Denmark.
Laville, J.-L. & Salmon, A. (2015). Rethinking the relationship between governance and democracy: the theoretical framework of the solidarity economy, in Laville, J.-L., Young, D.R. & Eynaud, P. (eds.) Civil Society, the Third Sector and Social Enterprise, Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 145-177.
Mair, J. (2010) “Social entrepreneurship: taking stock and looking ahead”, in A. Fayolle and H. Matlay (eds.) Handbook of Reasearch on Social Entrepreneurship. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Moulaert, F., & Ailenei, O. (2005). Social economy, third sector and solidarity relations: A conceptual synthesis from history to present. Urban studies, 42(11), 2037-2053.
9. Social and solidarity economy, civil society and social movements
