What is Social Economy (SE)

Summary

Social economy is a broad field that resonates with alternative approaches to the economy, to the organization of society and to development. Critiques on the dominant conceptions of the human being, nature, and the economy have underlined the need for alternatives. They have also laid the foundations for recognizing economic diversity in everyday life. Furthermore, through critiques on the dominant development paradigm, alternative approaches to development have arisen that can promote the flourishing of social economy and of the commons. Apart from the theoretical contexts that can assist us in understanding the need for alternatives and how to recognize and classify them, looking into transition processes and strategies is also crucial for passaging from the current economy to a social economy democratically organized.

Editorial

Social economy refers to a variety of different forms of socioeconomic organization that are usually neglected by the dominant conceptualization of economy. Understanding what social economy is, as well as establishing and promoting social economy organizations, presupposes answering to the following questions: i) Why do we need socioeconomic alternatives?, ii) How can we begin to think about these alternatives, i.e. recognize them, classify them and reflect on their interconnections and their impact on our well-being?, and iii) How can we begin to pursue such alternatives?.

First, establishing the need for socioeconomic alternatives requires looking into critical views of dominant conceptions of the human being, nature, and the economy. On the one hand, the criticisms focus on the foundations of the dominant portrayal of humans as homo economicus, based on which agents act in accordance with the scheme of individualistic rational optimization. According to this portrayal, nature is represented as an object of exploitation to satisfy human needs and desires. On the other hand, the criticisms highlight the social and environmental problems caused by the capitalist economy and perpetual economic growth (e.g. income inequalities, poverty, overconsumption, land grabbing, deforestation, biodiversity loss, climate change). These processes and outcomes negatively affect individual and social well-being and threaten the environment.

Based on the above criticisms, alternative theoretical approaches have been developed around social economy, community economies, the commons, and development. More specifically, the debate on alternative ways of understanding and theorizing the economy arose during the 19th century and is still going on. These alternative ways highlight the idea that each of us is an economic subject who is able to challenge what is taken for granted in the mainstream economy, based on motivations for economic action that go beyond a narrow cost benefit conception. They also advocate the position that economy is not a separate/autonomous sphere but is embedded in social relations, as well as the idea that economies are diverse and concern all human activities that contribute to well-being.

Related to the above is the debate on alternative approaches to development that arose less than 40 years ago.  Degrowth and post-development are two prominent discourses in this debate. Beginning by criticizing perpetual economic growth in the first case and the whole development discourse in the second case, they both promote an ontological, epistemological, cultural and institutional restructuring of economy and society. One which is based on social justice, ecology, democracy and well-being. Similar to these, the alternatives to development coming from the Global South or the Majority World, focus on the relationship between the development paradigm and the civilizational model and traditions. Such examples are Buen Vivir (Sumak Kawsay), formulated in Ecuador and Bolivia, Ubuntu, an African concept of well-being and development, and Swaraj, an Indian concept of self-governance, which constitutes the base for Eco-Swaraj, a political project of radical ecological democracy.

Continuing with the subject of socioeconomic alternatives, the discussion around the commons broadens and complements the view on social economy. Commons constitute an economic, social and political system. At the same time, the commons refer to resources that communities manage according to self-defined rules and standards. Thus, it can be said that commons consist of three interrelated elements:  resources, community, and a regulatory framework.

The above mentioned theoretical approaches are followed by less abstract conceptualizations of the social economy. To understand what social economy is, we have to focus on its principles, values, and processes as well as on its practical dimensions. Particular emphasis should be given to SEs’ social dimension and its central principles, which include democratic organization and distribution of surplus for the benefit of the workers, the society, and the environment. Nevertheless, we should mention that SE is not an homogeneous field, as we encounter a variety of approaches, policies and expectations around SE created by different subjects, such as the views of international organizations (ΕU, UN, ILO) or international networks of SE (RIPESS, ICA). Looking into the history of SE, its theoretical frameworks, and its conception as a social movement that can transform work and change the direction of economic development, can help us clarify the notion of SE.

Keeping in mind the problems and the challenges of today’s mainstream economy that justify why we need alternatives, as well as the theories and perspectives that assist us in thinking about alternatives, brings us to the question of the transition processes and strategies. This in turn, implies the following questions:  First of all, is such a transition possible? What should be the individual and collective action in this direction? What could be the role of politics and the state? And finally, how will we secure the needed resources in this direction?

Understanding what social economy is, what it can offer to contemporary issues ans dilemmas and how it can flourish is a complex matter that draws from different, though interconnected, theoretical perspectives as well as multi- and inter-disciplinary approaches, as manifested above. The sources in the following table aim to assist us in this process.

Index of Resources NEW

Title of resource (clickable)	Type	Description	Language
Atzeni, M. (Ed.) (2012) Alternative Work Organization. Houndmills; Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.	Book	Current and historical examples in the labour movement worldwide have helped to debunk the myth that workers cannot run production. This volume uses geographically and historically diverse examples to analyse the challenges and questions that alternative forms of work present to those involved.	ENG
Cheney, G., Santa Cruz, I., Peredo, A. M., & Nazareno, E. (2014). Worker cooperatives as an organizational alternative: Challenges, achievements and promise in business governance and ownership. Organization, 21(5), 591-603.	Paper	This paper treats five main challenges that workers’ cooperatives face: (1) the organizational resources, structures, and dynamics allowing for social as well as economic resilience for worker cooperatives; (2) the complex types and roles of leadership in worker cooperatives and related organizational forms; (3) the capacity of and obstacles to the reinvention of democracy within cooperatives; (4) the relationships between cooperatives and organized labor, the state, the community, and the larger financial system; and (5) the pursuit of cooperative values and policies within international market and environmental contexts.	ENG
Phillips, M., & Jeanes, E. (2018). What are the alternatives? Organising for a socially and ecologically sustainable world. Ephemera, 18(4), 695-708.	Paper	Introduction to a special issue in Ephemera, that brings together articles and notes seeking to explore alternative ways of organising that strive to address the social and environmental challenges we currently face.	ENG
Fournier, V. (2008). Escaping from the economy: the politics of degrowth. International journal of sociology and social policy, 28(11/12), 528-545.	Paper	Whilst there is a growing recognition of environmental degradation, the policies of sustainable development or ecological modernisation offered by national governments and international institutions seem to do little more than ‘‘sustain the unsustainable’’. By promising to reconcile growth with the environment, they fail to question the economic principle of endless growth that has caused environmental destruction in the first place. In this context, alternatives based on critiques of growth may offer more promising grounds. The aim of this paper is to explore how the degrowth movement that emerged in France over the last decade resonates with, and can contribute to, green politics.	ENG
Gibson-Graham, J. K. (2008). Diverse economies: performative practices forother worlds'. Progress in human geography, 32(5), 613-632.	Paper	In this paper Gibson-Graham describes the work of a nascent research community of economic geographers and other scholars who are making the choice to bring marginalized, hidden and alternative economic activities to light in order to make them more real and more credible as objects of policy and activism.	ENG
Gibson-Graham, J. K., & Dombroski, K. (Eds.). (2020). The handbook of diverse economies. Edward Elgar Publishing.	Book	Organized into thematic sections, this handbook moves from looking at diverse forms of enterprise, to labour, transactions, property, and finance as well as decentred subjectivity and diverse economies methodology.	ENG
Gibson-Graham, J. K., Cameron, J., & Healy, S. (2013). Take back the economy: An ethical guide for transforming our communities. University of Minnesota Press.	Book	Take Back the Economy dismantles the idea that the economy is separate from us and best comprehended by experts, demonstrating that the economy is the outcome of the decisions and efforts we make every day. Full of exercises and inspiring examples from around the world, it shows how people can implement small-scale changes in their own lives to create ethical economies.	ENG
Parker, M., Cheney, G., Fournier, V., & Land, C. (Eds.). (2014). The Routledge companion to alternative organization. Routledge.	Book	This book focuses on forms of organizing which remain unrepresented or marginalized in organizational studies and conventional politics, yet which offer more promising grounds for social and environmental justice.	ENG
Vieta, M. (2020) Workers’ self-management in Argentina: Contesting Neo-Liberalism by occupying companies, creating cooperatives, and recuperating autogestion. Chicago: Haymarket Books.	Book	In Workers ' Self-Management in Argentina, Marcelo Vieta homes in on the emergence and consolidation of Argentina 's empresas recuperadas por sus trabajadores (ERTs, worker-recuperated enterprises), a workers ' occupy movement that surged at the turn-of-the-millennium in the thick of the country 's neo-liberal crisis.	ENG
Block, F., & Somers, M. R. (2014). The power of market fundamentalism: Karl Polanyi's critique. Harvard University Press.	Book	What is it about free-market ideas that give them tenacious staying power in the face of such manifest failures as persistent unemployment, widening inequality, and the severe financial crises that have stressed Western economies over the past forty years? Fred Block and Margaret Somers extend the work of the great political economist Karl Polanyi to explain why these ideas have revived from disrepute in the wake of the Great Depression and World War II, to become the dominant economic ideology of our time.	ENG
Polanyi, K. (2001). The great transformation: The political and economic origins of our time. Beacon press.	Book	In this classic work of economic history and social theory, Karl Polanyi analyzes the economic and social changes brought about by the "great transformation" of the Industrial Revolution. His analysis explains not only the deficiencies of the self-regulating market, but the potentially dire social consequences of untempered market capitalism.	ENG
Polanyi, K. (2018). The economy as instituted process. In Granovetter, M. (ed.), The sociology of economic life, 3-21). Routledge.	Book Chapter	The economy embodied in institutions that cause individual choices to give rise to interdependent movements that constitute the economic process. Assuming that the choice is induced by an insufficiency of the means, the logic of rational action turns into that variant of the theory of choice called formal economics. Reciprocity, then, assumes for a background symmetrically arranged groupings; redistribution is dependent upon the presence of some measure of centricity in the group; exchange in order to produce integration requires a system of price-making markets. The market is the generating institution of which trade and money are the functions. From the substantive point of view, trade is a relatively peaceful method of acquiring goods which are not available on the spot. The best way of approaching the world of market institutions appears to be in terms of "market elements.".	ENG
Wilk, R. R., & Cliggett, L. C. (2007). , Economies and Cultures, Westview Press, Cambridge.	Book	This synthesis of modern economic anthropology goes to the heart of a thriving subdiscipline and identifies the fundamental practical and theoretical problems that give economic anthropology its unique strengths and vision.	ENG
Gibson-Graham, J.K. (2006). The End Of Capitalism (As We Knew It). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.	Book	A classic text on representations of capitalism and their political effects.	ENG
Gibson-Graham, J. K. (2006). A postcapitalist politics. University of Minnesota Press.	Book	In this creatively argued follow-up to their book The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It), J. K. Gibson-Graham offer already existing alternatives to a global capitalist order and outline strategies for building alternative economies. A Postcapitalist Politics reveals a prolific landscape of economic diversity—one that is not exclusively or predominantly capitalist—and examines the challenges and successes of alternative economic interventions.	ENG
D'Alisa, G., Demaria, F., & Kallis, G. (Eds.). (2014). Degrowth: a vocabulary for a new era. Routledge.	Book	This overview of degrowth offers a comprehensive coverage of the main topics and major challenges of degrowth in a succinct, simple and accessible manner. In addition, it offers a set of keywords useful for intervening in current political debates and for bringing about concrete degrowth-inspired proposals at different levels, i.e. local, national and global.	ENG
Demaria, F., Schneider, F., Sekulova, F., & Martinez-Alier, J. (2013). What is degrowth? From an activist slogan to a social movement. Environmental values, 22(2), 191-215.	Paper	This article discusses the definition, origins, evolution, practices and construction of degrowth. The main objective is to explain degrowth’s multiple sources and strategies in order to improve its basic definition and avoid reductionist criticisms and misconceptions. To this end, the article presents degrowth’s main intellectual sources as well as its diverse strategies (oppositional activism, building of alternatives and political proposals) and actors (practitioners, activists and scientists).	ENG
Fletcher, R., Mas, I. M., Romero, A. B., & Blázquez-Salom, M. (Eds.). (2020). Tourism and degrowth: Towards a truly sustainable tourism. Routledge.	Book	Tourism and Degrowth develops a conceptual framework and research agenda for exploring the relationship between tourism and degrowth.	ENG
Jackson, T. (2009). Prosperity without growth: Economics for a finite planet. Routledge.	Book	Prosperity without Growth challenges the embedded, unquestioned assumptions of the global policy of growth and shows that it is necessary—and possible—to have increased and widespread prosperity without economic growth.	ENG
Kallis, G. (2018). Degrowth (The Economy: Key Ideas) (1st ed.). Agenda Publishing.	Book	Kallis provides in this book a clear and succinct guide to the central ideas of degrowth theory and explores what it would take for an economy to transition to a position that enables it to prosper without growth. The book examines how mainstream conceptualizations of the economy are challenged by degrowth theory and how degrowth draws on a multifaceted network of ideas across disciplines to shed new light on the economic process. The central claims of the degrowth literature are discussed alongside some key criticisms of them.	ENG
Kallis, G., Paulson, S., D'Alisa, G., & Demaria, F. (2021). The case for degrowth. Polity Press.	Book	In this compelling book, leading experts Giorgos Kallis, Susan Paulson, Giacomo D’Alisa and Federico Demaria make the case for degrowth - living well with less, by living differently, prioritizing wellbeing, equity and sustainability.  Drawing on emerging initiatives and enduring traditions around the world, they advance a radical degrowth vision and outline policies to shape work and care, income and investment that avoid exploitative and unsustainable practices. Degrowth, they argue, can be achieved through transformative strategies that allow societies to slow down by design, not disaster.	ENG
Nelson, A., & Schneider, F. (Eds.). (2018). Housing for degrowth: Principles, models, challenges and opportunities. Routledge.	Book	This groundbreaking collection on housing for degrowth addresses key challenges of unaffordable, unsustainable and anti-social housing today, including going beyond struggles for a 'right to the city' to a 'right to metabolism', advocating refurbishment versus demolition, and revealing controversies within the degrowth movement on urbanisation, decentralisation and open localism. International case studies show how housing for degrowth is based on sufficiency and conviviality, living a ‘one planet lifestyle’ with a common ecological footprint.	ENG
Degrowth, explained	Video	Short video explaining critiques to growth, consumerism and mainstream economy as well as degrowth, its basic focus and process while also offering examples of degrowth initiatives and policies.	ENG
Demystifying Degrowth	Video	Short video presenting what is degrowth, as a new vocabulary and movement.	ENG
Yes To Limits To Growth!	Video	Environmentalists perceive the planet as limited the moment we are shooting out of its limits. We think of Earth as bounded - an ungenerous mother that limits growth and our desires. Giorgos Kallis, one of the principal advocates of degrowth, argues that natural limits and limitless growth are two sides of the same coin. The spectre of limits drives the pursuit of growth. And the pursuit of growth without limits is actually leading to planetary breakdown.	ENG
The Ecopolitics Podcast: Episode 2.11: Growth, degrowth, a-growth	Podcast	What is the relationship between economic growth and the environment? What is 'green growth' and why does the degrowth movement oppose it? And what does it mean to be agnostic about growth in the context of sustainability? In this podcast two scholars approach these questions from a degrowth perspective - Dr. Susan Paulson from the University of Florida, and Dr. Bengi Akbulut, from Concordia University in Canada. The podcast also delves into Global South perspecitves on the growth-environment debate.	ENG
Degrowth, nowtopias and the pluriverse	Podcast	This podcast refers to the possible strategic development of the degrowth movement, nowtopias and the concept of the pluriverse. The guests are Matthias Schmelzer, Nina Treu and Tonny Nowshin. They are the authors of a chapter examining what degrowth can learn from other progressive movements for a new book entitled, "Degrowth and strategy: How to bring about social–ecological transformation."	ENG
Capitalism, COVID-19 and degrowth economics	Podcast	This podcast discusses degrowth economics, an approach that challenges us to live in much more collaborative and meaningful ways. In doing so, we can take care of our needs, take care of each other, and take care of the planet. The guest is Anitra Nelson, an activist and scholar affiliated with the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute (MSSI) at the University of Melbourne, in Australia.	ENG
Escobar, A. (1992). Imagining a post-development era? Critical thought, development and social movements. Social text, (31/32), 20-56.	Paper	The argument of this fundamental paper on post-development can be summarized in three propositions: 1. Most critiques of development, articulated within the epistemological and cultural space it defines, have reached an impasse. Thus, the present crisis does not call for a "better" way of doing development, not even for "another development." A critique of the discourse and practice of development, however, can help clear the ground for a more radical collective imagining of alternative futures. 2. Development, according to this critique, has to be seen as an invention and strategy produced by the "First World" about the "underdevelopment" of the "Third World," and not only as an instrument of economic control over the physical and social reality of much of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Development has been the primary mechanism through which these parts of the world have been produced and have produced themselves, thus marginalizing or precluding other ways of seeing and doing. The problem is complicated by the fact that the post-World War II discourse of development is firmly entrenched in Western modernity and economy. 3. To think about "alternatives to development" thus requires a theoretico-practical transformation of the notions of development, modernity and the economy. This transformation can be best achieved by building upon the practices of social movements, especially those in the Third World that have emerged in response to post-World War II hegemonic social orders. These movements are essential for the creation of alternative visions of democracy, economy and society.	ENG
Escobar, A. (1995). Encountering Development. The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton: Princeton University Press.	Book	How did the industrialized nations of North America and Europe come to be seen as the appropriate models for post-World War II societies in Asia, Africa, and Latin America? How did the postwar discourse on development actually create the so-called Third World? And what will happen when development ideology collapses? To answer these questions, Arturo Escobar shows how development policies became mechanisms of control that were just as pervasive and effective as their colonial counterparts.	ENG
Escobar, A. (2010). Latin America at a crossroads: Alternative modernizations, post-liberalism, or post-development?. Cultural studies, 24(1), 1-65.	Paper	This paper examines the socio-economic, political, and cultural transformations that have been taking place in South America during the past ten years, particularly in Ecuador, Venezuela, and Bolivia.	ENG
Escobar, A. (2015). Degrowth, postdevelopment, and transitions: a preliminary conversation. Sustainability science, 10, 451-462.	Paper	This paper seeks to initiate a conversation between degrowth (DG) and postdevelopment (PD) frameworks by placing them within the larger field of discourses for ecological and civilizational transitions and by bridging proposals emerging from the North with those from the Global South. Not only can this dialogue, it is argued, be mutually enriching for both movements but perhaps essential for an effective politics of transformation.	ENG
Kothari, A., Salleh, A., Escobar, A., Demaria, F., & Acosta, A. (2019). Pluriverse. A Post-Development Dictionary. Tulika Books.	Book	This book is a stimulating collection of over 100 essays on transformative alternatives to the currently dominant processes of globalized development, including its structural roots in modernity, capitalism, state domination, and masculinist values. In the post-development imagination, 'development' would no longer be the organizing principle of social life. The book presents worldviews and practices from around the world in a collective search for an ecologically wise and socially just world. It also offers critical essays on a number of false solutions that those in power are proposing in an attempt to 'greenwash' development.	ENG
Latouche, S. (2009). Farewell to Growth. Cambridge (UK): Polity.	Book	In this book Serge Latouche argues that we need to rethink from the very foundations the idea that our societies should be based on growth. He offers a radical alternative - a society of 'de-growth'. Latouche advances a coherent set of proposals for reversing the treadmill of an ever-more insistent growth dynamic in favour of a more serene existence based on quality of life, solidarity, and respect for the environment.	ENG
Sachs, W.  (ed.) (1992). The Development dictionary. A guide to knowledge as power. 1st edition. London, New York: Zed Books.	Book	In this classic collection, some of the world's most eminent critics of development review the key concepts of the development discourse. Each essay examines one concept from a historical and anthropological point of view and highlights its particular bias. Exposing their historical obsolescence and intellectual sterility, the authors call for a bidding farewell to the whole Eurocentric development idea. This is urgently needed, they argue, in order to liberate people's minds -- in both North and South -- for bold responses to the environmental and ethical challenges now confronting humanity.	ENG
Santos, B. de. (2004). The World Social Forum: Toward a Counter-hegemonic Globalisation (Part I). In J. Sen, A. Anand, A. Escobar, and P. Waterman, eds., The World Social Forum: Challenging Empires, New Delhi: Viveka Foundation, 235–245.	Book Chapter	In this chapter, Santos deals with the World Social Forum as critical utopia, epistemology of the South and cosmopolitan politics.	ENG
Ziai, A. (ed.) (2007). Exploring post-development: theory and practice, problems and perspectives. 1st ed. London, New York: Routledge.	Book	This book is tackling issues surrounding post-development which is arguably one of the most significant debates in the field of north-south relations at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Contributors explore the possibilities and limitations of post-development theory and practice drawing on empirical studies of movements and communities in several continents.	ENG
Ziai, A. (2017). Post-development 25 years after The Development Dictionary. Third World Quarterly, 38(12), 2547-2558.	Paper	Few books in the history of development studies have had an impact like The Development Dictionary–A Guide to Knowledge as Power, which was edited by Wolfgang Sachs and published by Zed Books in 1992, and which was crucial in establishing what has become known as the Post-Development (PD) school. This special issue is devoted to the legacy of this book and thus to discussing PD.	ENG
Bollier, D. (2014). The commons as a template for transformation. Great Transition Initiative.	Online Article	This essay argues that, in the face of the deep pathologies of neoliberal capitalism, the commons paradigm can help us imagine and implement a transition to new decentralized systems of provisioning and democratic governance.	ENG
Dietz, T., Ostrom, E., & Stern, P. C. (2003). The struggle to govern the commons. Science, 302(5652), 1907-1912.	Article	Human institutions—ways of organizing activities—affect the resilience of the environment. Locally evolved institutional arrangements governed by stable communities and buffered from outside forces have sustained resources successfully for centuries, although they often fail when rapid change occurs. Ideal conditions for governance are increasingly rare. Critical problems, such as transboundary pollution, tropical deforestation, and climate change, are at larger scales and involve nonlocal influences. Promising strategies for addressing these problems include dialogue among interested parties, officials, and scientists; complex, redundant, and layered institutions; a mix of institutional types; and designs that facilitate experimentation, learning, and change.	ENG
De Angelis, M., & Harvie, D. (2014). The commons. In M. Parker, G. Cheney, V. Fournier and C. Land (eds), The Routledge Companion to Alternative Organizations, Abington: Routledge, 280-294.	Book Chapter	This chapter discusses the gift, one of the most romanticized and misunderstood economic phenomena in history, and the alternative forms of organization it can create. It will also address the manner in which this can be understood as a challenge to simplified notions about capitalism and the market economy, but rather than arguing for gift economies as a simple substitute for market economies, it discusses the fact that the gift can be understood as being a permanent question to the notion of a triumphant market economy.	ENG
Kostakis, V. (2018). In defense of digital commoning. Organization, 25(6), 812-818.	Paper	This article is a reply to ‘The illusion of the digital commons’, an idea introduced by Ossewaarde and Reijers. Their criticism challenges those of us arguing that digital commons are emancipatory, exhibiting post-capitalist dynamics. From the perspective of the digital commoner as well as that of the scholar who studies commoning practices, the thesis here is that digital commoning is not grounded in a-political principles as the authors claim. But rather it introduces a political platform upon which various progressive movements are converging.	ENG
Pazaitis, A., & Kostakis, V. (2022). Are the most influential websites peer-produced or price-incentivized? Organizing value in the digital economy. Organization, 29(4), 757-769.	Paper	In 2006, Harvard Law School Professor Yochai Benkler proposed a wager to technology and society author Nicholas Carr. Benkler argued that by 2011 the most influential websites would be based on content produced by people engaged in peer production. Carr maintained that the lure of money and the corporate hierarchies will be more effective. So, after 14 years, who has really won the bet? Are the most influential websites peer-produced or price-incentivized? To address these questions, this paper discusses what peer production is in relation to priceincentivized production.	ENG
Demsetz, H. (2013). Toward a theory of property rights. In Modern Understandings of Liberty and Property, Routledge,125-137. .	Paper	This paper seeks to fashion some of the elements of an economic theory of property rights.	ENG
Hardin, G. (1968). The Tragedy of the Commons. Science, 162(3859): 1243–1248	Paper	In this well-known paper Hardin discusses problems that cannot be solved by technical means, as distinct from those with solutions that require "a change only in the techniques of the natural sciences,demanding little or nothing in the way of change in human values or ideas of morality".	ENG
Ostrom, E. (1990). Governing the commons: The evolution of institutions for collective action. Cambridge university press.	Book	After critiquing the foundations of policy analysis as applied to natural resources, Elinor Ostrom provides a unique body of empirical data to explore conditions under which common pool resource problems have been satisfactorily or unsatisfactorily solved.	ENG
Foster, S.R. and Iaione, C. (2019) Ostrom in the city:  Design principles and practices for the urban commons.  In:  Hudson B, Rosenbloom J, Cole D (eds), Handbook of the Study of the Commons. 235-255, Routledge, Abigdon.	Book Chapter	If cities are the places where most of the world’s population will be living in the next century, as is predicted, it is not surprising that they have become sites of contestation over use and access to urban land, open space, infrastructure, and culture. The question posed by Saskia Sassen in a recent essay—Who Owns the City?—is arguably at the root of these contestations and of social movements that resist the enclosure of cities by economic elites (Sassen 2015). One answer to the question of who owns the city is that we all do. This chapter argues that the city is a common good or a “commons”—a shared resource that belongs to all of its inhabitants, and to the public more generally.	ENG
Lekakis, S. (2020). Cultural Heritage in the Realm of the Commons: Reading a Letter from the Future. In Lekakis, S. (ed.) Cultural Heritage in the Realm of the Commons: Conversations on the Case of Greece, 1–14, London: Ubiquity Press.	Book Chapter	This chapter attempts to provide an initial sketch of the emerging field of heritage commons, based on empirical work carried out by the author in Greece.	ENG
Hardt, M., & Negri, A. (2011). Commonwealth. Harvard University Press.	Book	Drawing on scenarios from around the globe and elucidating the themes that unite them, Hardt and Negri focus on the logic of institutions and the models of governance adequate to our understanding of a global commonwealth. They argue for the idea of the “common” to replace the opposition of private and public and the politics predicated on that opposition. Ultimately, they articulate the theoretical bases for what they call “governing the revolution.”	ENG
Five Technological Revolutions in Three Minutes	Book	What can we learn from the history of technological revolutions? Why is there so much populism now? Why do we experience major financial bubbles? And how to move towards a green global golden age of the information revolution? Carlota Perez, one of the world’s foremost experts on the impact of technical change on the economy, discusses these questions in the first episode of TheOtherSchool series. Carlota Perez is a Professor at TalTech, Estonia, and an Honorary Professor at University College London, UK.	ENG
Fairphone research trip: Visiting tin, tantalum and tungsten mines	Video	In the middle of July 2014, Fairphone team members went on a research trip to visit tin, tantalum, and tungsten mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda. Besides experiencing the mines firsthand, their goal was to get a more thorough understanding of the route a mineral takes from mine to component and to explore our next steps in adding value throughout the mineral supply chain. To do so, they needed to meet the stakeholders involved and grasp the challenges they are facing. Their visit also provided an opportunity to record what they saw and offer more insight into the mining methods and processes.	ENG
The new open-source economics	Video	In this TEDTalk Yochai Benkler explains how collaborative projects like Wikipedia and Linux represent the next stage of human organization.	ENG
Allard, J., Davidson, C., & Matthaei, J. (Eds.). (2008). Solidarity economy: building alternatives for people and planet. Lulu. com.	Book	The emergence of the global grassroots economic structural reform movement known as the Solidarity Economy. This book contains the core papers, discussion and debates on the topic at the U.S. Social Forum of 10,000 people in Atlanta in the summer of 2007.	ENG
Bergeron, S., Healy, S., Millstone, C., Fonteneau, B., Gómez, G., Mendell, M. & Bateman, M. (2015). Social and solidarity economy: Beyond the fringe. Bloomsbury Publishing.	Book	As economic crises, growing inequality and climate change prompt a global debate on the meaning and trajectory of development, increasing attention is focusing on 'social and solidarity economy' as a distinctive approach to sustainable and rights-based development. While we are beginning to understand what social and solidarity economy is, what it promises and how it differs from 'business as usual', we know far less about whether it can really move beyond its fringe status in many countries and regions. Under what conditions can social and solidarity economy scale up and scale out - that is, expand in terms of the growth of social and solidarity economy organizations and enterprises, or spread horizontally within given territories? Bringing together leading researchers, blending theoretical and empirical analysis, and drawing on experiences and case studies from multiple countries and regions, this volume addresses these questions. In so doing, it aims to inform a broad constituency of development actors, including scholars, practitioners, activists and policy makers.	ENG
Borzaga, C., Salvatori, G., & Bodini, R. (2019). Social and solidarity economy and the future of work. Journal of Entrepreneurship and innovation in emerging economies, 5(1), 37-57.	Paper	The article reviews the main theoretical arguments and empirical evidence on the features and role of SSE organisations, paying particular attention to their implications for the creation and preservation of decent work.	ENG
Dacheux, E., & Goujon, D. (2011). The solidarity economy: An alternative development strategy?. International Social Science Journal, 62(203-204), 205-215.	Paper	This article takes the form of three complementary sections. The first describes the international reality of the solidarity economy. The second moves into theory and attempts to rise above the disciplinary frameworks that separate the economic and the political in order to suggest a new definition of the economy which grasps the specificity of the solidarity economy. The third, pragmatic, section suggests approaches to the creation of an alternative vision of sustainable development for both North and South.	ENG
Dinerstein, A. C. (2012). Interstitial revolution: On the explosive fusion of negativity and hope. Capital & Class, 36(3), 521-540.	Paper	This article offers a comprehensive review of John Holloway’s Crack Capitalism by situating it within the wider body of his work spanning the last two decades. The article reflects on the significance of Holloway’s argument that revolution must be conceived as an interstitial process, suggesting that this latest volume offers both a more grounded analysis of capitalism and an exploration of the poetry of ‘cracks’ that rupture the capitalist ‘synthesis’.	ENG
Cameron, J. (2022). Post-Capitalism Now: A Community Economies Approach. In S. Alexander, S. Chandra-Shekeran & B. Gleeson (eds), Post-Capitalist Futures: Paradigms, Politics, and Prospects, 41-52), Singapore: Springer Singapore.	Book Chapter	Using examples from various urban contexts, this chapter provides examples of post-capitalist practices and highlights two strategies that community economies scholars and activists use to help strengthen these practices. One strategy is to identify existing economic diversity and the ways it is being used for more just and sustainable economies; the second is to engage in actions to strengthen these economies.	ENG
Chatterton, P. (2016). Building transitions to post‐capitalist urban commons. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 41(4), 403-415.	Paper	This paper opens up a novel geographical research agenda on building transitions beyond the capitalist present. It brings into conversation two previously disconnected areas of academic debate: sociotechnical transition studies and more radical work on post-capitalism. The paper offers empirical evidence of real-life socio-spatial practices that build post-capitalist socio-technical transitions through a case study of the daily experiences, motives and values of residents in a community-led cohousing project in the UK.	ENG
Gibson, K., Cameron, J., Dombroski, K., Healy, S., & Miller, E. (2021). Cultivating community economies: tools for building a livable world. In J. G. Speth & K. Courrier (Eds.), The New Systems Reader: Alternatives to a Failed Economy, 410-432.	Book Chapter	A model of “community economies” is arising from a feminist critique of political economy that rejects its features of dominance and subordination. This model is an ongoing process of negotiating our interdependence based on six coordinates: survival, surplus, transactions, consumption, commons, and investment. One set of emerging strategies activates a politics of language to describe economic diversity and make current ethical economic practices visible. A second set broadens the horizon of economic politics so that ethical economic practices might multiply. More than a dozen projects in various parts of the world illustrate how these collective actions work in practice.	ENG
Gibson-Graham, J. K., Cameron, J., & Healy, S. (2016). Commoning as a postcapitalist politics 1. In A. Amin & Ph. Howell, Releasing the commons,192-212. Routledge.	Book Chapter	This chapter explores how the process of commoning offers a politics for the Anthropocene. It needs to step outside of the ways that the commons have generally been understood to reveal the political potential of communing. The chapter discusses the capitalocentric framing of the commons and raise concerns about how this framing limits the potential of commoning as a politics for the Anthropocene.	ENG
Holloway, J. (2010). Change the World Without Taking Power: The Meaning of Revolution Today. Pluto Press.	Book	In this book, John Holloway asks how we can reformulate our understanding of revolution as the struggle against power, not for power.After a century of failed attempts by revolutionary and reformist movements to bring about radical social change, the concept of revolution itself is in crisis. John Holloway opens up the theoretical debate, reposing some of the basic concepts of Marxism in a critical development of the subversive Marxist tradition represented by Adorno, Bloch and Lukacs, amongst others, and grounded in a rethinking of Marx's concept of 'fetishisation'-- how doing is transformed into being. The struggle for radical change, Holloway argues, far from being marginalised, is becoming more and more embedded in our everyday lives. Revolution today must be understood as a question, not as an answer.	ENG
The P2Pvalue Project Promoting the Tech Commons	Video	Short video introducing the commons and the peer to peer value project.	ENG
David Bollier - The City as a Commons	Video	A new type of citizen economy is emerging – the City as a Commons. This is not a tech platform or economic strategy as such, but a bold re-imagining of the city as a living social organism that invites everyone to co-create, open-source style. Through FabLabs, data sharing, platform co-operatives and many participatory systems, innovative urban commons are transforming city governance, commerce, design, social services, and everyday life.	ENG
Hudson, R. (2009). Life on the edge: navigating the competitive tensions between the ‘social’and the ‘economic’in the social economy and in its relations to the mainstream. Journal of economic geography, 9(4), 493-510.	Paper	Drawing on detailed empirical research in the UK, in this article Hudson explores the motivations that lie behind the formation of social economy organisations (SEOs) and the multiple trajectories that these can then follow and the tensions to which this can give rise as the ‘social’ runs up against the ‘economic’.	ENG
Laville, J. L. (2015). Social and solidarity economy in historical perspective. In Utting, P. (ed.), Social and solidarity economy: Beyond the fringe, 41-56.	Book Chapter	In this chapter Laville argues that different historical junctures generate contexts that largely explain the rise and fall of different forms of SSE. Drawing in particular on the experience of Europe and South America, this chapter begins by examining the evolution of democratic solidarity throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, identifying various shifts in orientation. These involved: early forms of associative democracy, the ‘welfare state’, social economy centred on non-profits and cooperatives; and, more recently, solidarity economy, focused on both economic and political empowerment. It then goes on to specify key differences between these forms and their implications for environmental and social justice.	ENG
Holloway, J. (2002). Change the World Without Taking. Power. London: Pluto Press.	Book	In this book, John Holloway asks how we can reformulate our understanding of revolution as the struggle against power, not for power.After a century of failed attempts by revolutionary and reformist movements to bring about radical social change, the concept of revolution itself is in crisis. John Holloway opens up the theoretical debate, reposing some of the basic concepts of Marxism in a critical development of the subversive Marxist tradition represented by Adorno, Bloch and Lukacs, amongst others, and grounded in a rethinking of Marx's concept of 'fetishisation'-- how doing is transformed into being. The struggle for radical change, Holloway argues, far from being marginalised, is becoming more and more embedded in our everyday lives. Revolution today must be understood as a question, not as an answer.	ENG