social solidarity economy

Ethical commodity networks have been advanced as a means to promote cooperative development, engender more democratic forms of governance, promote environmental conservation, and redistribute a greater share of returns to farmers and workers. This essay draws upon long-term ethnographic research on the role of solidarity within two Mesoamerican coffee-producing cooperatives to understand the effects of certification regimes that undergird many ethical commodity networks today.

When the United Nations (UN) proposes that it is the social and solidarity economy (SSE) that will lead the way towards a well-functioning, prosperous and inclusive economy, it is time to identify the bold steps needed to normalize all forms of economic activity that put people and the planet before private profit making. Through a critique of capitalocentrism, this chapter counters certain perceptions of the SSE's capacity for radical leadership and transformation as limited.

En este texto reflexionamos sobre los aportes de los denominados materialismos a la concepción epistemológica de nuestro programa de investigación. Nos orientan las siguientes preguntas: ¿qué puntos comunes podemos identificar entre autores de las corrientes denominadas materialistas, tales que enriquecen nuestra construcción epistemológica, con efectos metodológicos y teóricos?

As opposed to political democracy and its attempts at power control in the public sector, the concentration of economic power, and its antidote, the concept of economic democracy, has received much less attention.