The Social and Solidarity Economy: Roots and Horizons

In this chapter, we unfold the roots and developments of a Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE) movement in different national and continental contexts, pointing the diversity of practices within civil society in local and national settings. Emerging in the last decades, these initiatives, transcend the habitual distinction between political, economic and cultural spheres. Thus, solidarity economy is simultaneously a field of practice and an extension and renewal of the social economy, thereby offering a concrete sustainable alternative at a time of capitalist crisis. The social and solidarity economy often manifests itself in the shape of social enterprises and new types of cooperative experiments and we sketch out the emergence and institutionalization of these. The Social and Solidarity movement further emerge from a number of inspirational phenomena like self-management and alternativism, popular and plural economy and social movements. Rounding up, we offer some implications for epistemology and methodology pointing to how the notions of a holistic approach and economy as a whole, the sociology of emergence from the epistemology of the South, gender issues and temporality represent constitutional dimensions of significance.