Jean-Louis Laville

The Solidarity Economy: An International Movement (p. 7-47)
This article shows how a solidarity economy movement has arisen in different national and continental contexts. The diversity of practices embedded in local and international civil society networks should be underlined. Emerging in the last decades, this generation of associations and cooperatives, assuming political and economic dimensions, has extended the social economy and provided concrete proposals for another economy in a period of capitalist crisis. Thus, it has to be integrated in the research of a renewed economic model and public action.

Pedro Hespanha

From the Expansion of the Market to the Metamorphosis of Popular Economies (p. 49-63)
Recognising the existence, in this context of crisis, of widespread dissatisfaction with an economic and social system which is blind to social inequalities, insensitive to the social effects of unbridled competition, and complacent as regards the depredations wrought on non-renewable resources, this article reflects on the persistence of economic forms differing from the capitalist system, which exist alongside it, as well as on the emergence of social movements and practices of resistance to the logic of this system, as is the case of the solidarity economy. The article goes on to ponder how these forms can serve as a basis for a far-reaching paradigm change, and thus contribute to a fairer system, better equipped to match resources to needs and maximise human and social well-being.

Rui Namorado

Towards a Solidarity Economy – A View Based on the Portuguese Case (p. 65-80)
In the current context, the solidarity economy should be viewed as synonymous with the social economy. It operates within capitalism, although based on a different logic. For this reason, the solidarity economy should not detach itself from the social movements and dynamics that present resistance or propose alternatives to the capitalist logic, especially because of the natural synergies that they can generate. Although the vocation of the solidarity economy is to give swift responses to nearby problems, it is always imbued with a future-oriented energy. Its territorial embeddedness makes it one of the most reliable partners in processes of local development, and its identity has worldwide relevance.

Luiz Inácio Gaiger

Antecedents and Current Expressions of the Solidarity Economy (p. 81-99)
This article examines the new forms of collective organisation and mobilisation currently displayed on a global scale and associated with the concept of the solidarity economy. It presents its singularities and common bases, comparing realities and terms that define the historical antecedents of the solidarity economy or that are connected to current practices of solidarity, such as the social economy and the third sector. The analysis considers the corresponding modalities of action in their genesis and normative orientations, and highlights their ability to preserve the plural nature of economic activity, in contradistinction to the rationality of the market and of private accumulation. They respond to material needs and express a rejection of the sociability intrinsic to the capitalist economy.

Jordi Estivill

Public and Private Spaces. Building Dialogue around the Solidarity Economy (p.101-113)
The solidarity economy, an emerging and itinerant concept, requires dialogue which will help delimit it and make its contents clear. Taking as a reference the contributions of J.L. Laville, this article reflects on economic, household, market, public and solidarity spaces. It also puts forward the proposition that, by revisiting the history of the solidarity economy in the peripheral and Mediterranean countries of Europe, a picture emerges of an itinerary which does not correspond to the case of France, but rather more closely to that of Latin America.

José Portela

The Economy is Either Solidary or Fratricidal (p. 115-152)
This text reflects on the notion of the solidarity economy from the ground up. I begin by considering two public-benefit NGOs (ANDC and Life and Peace Community), whose action and economy cross paths with four micro-entrepreneurs and their units, all differing greatly one from the other: two small businesses are run by women and two others by men, one of whom is an immigrant. Then, inductively, a more in-depth reflection is put forward based on two aspects: both the solidarities observed in the familial and socio-political contexts of the micro-entrepreneurs and the economies of their units and the NGOs which supported them. I conclude that solidarity is a plural notion (altruistic, familialist, associational and statal) and that the economy is either “political economy,” as was the case when it emerged, or an ideological notion which denies life and people in loco and in terra mundi. That is to say, the economy is either solidary or fratricidal.

Marília Veríssimo Veronese

Subjectivity, Work and the Solidarity Economy (p. 153-167)
This article relates the processes of subjectivation, understood as always relational processes that generate diverse forms of sociability, to work in the solidarity economy. Initially, discussion will centre on the theoretical articulation between subjectivity and work. Then, the article problematises the difficulty of constructing self-management based on shared authority, drawing on empirical data recently gathered from solidarity economy enterprises of different sizes and from different sectors in the State of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.

Sílvia Ferreira

The Strategic Invention of the Third Sector as a Structure for Mutual Observation: A Historical-conceptual Approach (p. 169-192)
This text analyses the discursive field of the third sector and its social actors from the viewpoint of the theoretical articulation between the strategic relational approach, the theory of complex autopoietic systems and cybernetics. Centring on the concept of observation, the text develops four propositions on the third sector. First, it is a “discursive field” where discourses and practices reflect and shape actors’ structural selectivities and strategies. Second, it is a relational category, constructed through a set of relations that are established between different modes of organising social relations. Third, it is contextual, shaped by the spatio-temporal configurations of the societies in which it is set up and of the concrete conditions in which the transition from Fordism to post-Fordism occurred. Fourth, the semantics of the third sector and the organisations and interactions that comprise it interconnects social relations which are typical of the different modes of coordination or different subsystems, allowing for mutual observation.