Description

Ilcheong Yi, Fulvia Farinelli,band Raymond Landveld:

"While many SSE organizations and enterprises (SSEOEs) are established to respond to specific needs of people and communities, some also aim to transform the economic operating system into the ones based on such values as participatory democracy, solidarity, equity, human and Earth rights, self-determination, mutuality and cooperation. All SSEOESs emphasizes human social values and ethics in economic activity and relations, and economic practices built upon democratic governance and self-management, reciprocity, solidarity, and active citizenship. Over the last decades, SSEOEs have rapidly grown in numbers in both developed and developing countries. Organized at the grassroot level, they have contributed to mitigating long-run damaging trends such as a rise in poverty and inequality especially in the developed world, environmental degradation and de-industrialization placing skilled workers into unemployment. Furthermore, SSEOEs play a pivotal role to offer social services across communities especially in a time where government budgets are stressed and subject to cutbacks. In addition to providing fair services SSEOEs have by and large demonstrated a remarkable capacity as employers to maintain and create jobs in times of crises where the government and the market failed."

(https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/files/social_and_solidarity_economy_29_march_2023.pdf)

Typology

1.

" At least four different approaches in terms of the emphasis on SSE features can be identified.

1. Social entrepreneurship: This is a dominant approach in the US and the UK. Voluntary and community sector organizations, often funded by the state with innovative skills and entrepreneurship are the core of this approach. A key concern is how to provide better services at a cheaper cost in ways that meet citizens’ needs in ways that the centralized state never could.

2. Social economy: This approach is particularly prominent in Europe, North America and Northeast Asia. It is often associated with statutory organizations that emerged in the 19th century Europe and contemporary variant of social enterprise. Organizations associated with social economy operate in an economic space that can be distinguished from both the public sector and conventional for=profit private enterprise or a space in which economic or commercial and social objectives are blended. Proponents of social economy often emphasizes as key roles its capacity to foster well-being and its potential to complements the role of the public and private sectors.

3. Solidarity economy: This approach has burgeoned and become dominant mainly in Latin America with its focus on myriad indigenous and community-based organizations and local-level solidarity and collective self-help practices and recently in the southern parts of Europe that have been most affected by the European sovereign debt crisis which peaked between 2010 and 2012 (such as Spain and Greece). Organizations associated with solidary economy includes:enterprises recuperated by workers (empresas recuperadas), networks and organization for fair trade, food sovereignty, ecology, artisanal networks and solidarity finance. It emphasizes the role of social movements.

4. SSE: This approach focuses on bringing together diverse actors and perspectives regarding development strategy and social-economic and political change. It proposition is that despite the differences of various approaches mentioned above, SSE as a big tent can adopt and promote overarching principles and values including reciprocity and redistribution in resource allocation, the primacy of social objectives within circuits of production and exchange of goods and services, democratic governance within organizations, participation or co-construction within the policy process, local community and territorial development, and environmental protection. Organizations of SSE promote the idea that the economic system should be biased in favour of inclusion, equality and planetary health. They adopt a non-profit orientation or practice some form of constraint on profit distribution and the sale of assets."

2.

"Traditional SSEOEs: cooperatives and mutual associations which commit to solidarity, democratic self-control and reciprocity in their charter.

Livelihood SSEOEs: self-help groups, saving schemes, community currency systems.

Environmental SSEOEs: agroecological and community fishery cooperatives, community environmental groups.

Financing SSEOEs: credit unions, mutuals, solidarity financing, ethical banks.

Welfare providing SSEOEs: non-profit organizations or social enterprises providing social services such as care and proximity services.

Workers SSEOEs: Associations of informal sector workers, workers- or employee-owned enterprises. Digital SSEOEs: solidarity-based crowdfunding, free software and open-source movement, and other forms of digital commons.

Trade SSEOEs: consumer cooperatives, social enterprises in tourism and hospitality, fair trade organizations.

Educational SSEOEs: cooperative schools, cooperative colleges and universities. Cultural, leisure and sports SSEOEs: sport and cultural associations and social enterprises."

(https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/files/social_and_solidarity_economy_29_march_2023.pdf)