This refers to all the activities involving production, exchange, funding and consumption whose purpose is to democratize the economy from a starting point of citizen participation.

Presented by Dr Isabelle Hillenkamp, Research Associate, Institute of Socioeconomics, Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences, University of Geneva, and Professor Jean-Louis Laville, Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers (CNAM) (Economic sociology and democracy) and Co-editor The Human Economy: A Citizen's Guide (2010).
 

The lecture will focus on Solidarity economy (économie solidaire, economia solidaria). This refers to all the activities involving production, exchange, funding and consumption whose purpose is to democratize the economy from a starting point of citizen participation. This presentation aims to show a range of initiatives that have taken place under this rubric in Europe and Latin America, identify some of their common principles and specify their value from the actors’ point of view.

Solidarity economy (économie solidaire, economia solidaria) refers to all the activities involving production, exchange, funding and consumption whose purpose is to democratize the economy from a starting point of citizen participation. This presentation aims to show a range of initiatives that have taken place under this rubric in Europe and Latin America, identify some of their common principles and specify their value from the actors’ point of view.

The forms of solidarity economy reflect a history defined by a succession of capitalist crises. A first wave of initiatives took place in the 1970s when the dominant model of development came under sustained attack. A second wave was in response to the economic crisis of the 1980s – the end of Fordism in Europe and the external debt crisis in Latin America. From the 1990s the main question hinged on the consequences of dismantling of the public sphere.

Finally, the financial crisis since 2008 has posed problems for models of solidarity at all levels from the local to the global. Throughout the last half-century, the issue has been how to achieve economic democracy.