The principles, practices and social impacts of solidarity economy are prefiguring, at the local level, many of the intended outcomes of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are challenging their premises and forms of delivery. Their proliferation results as much from their capacity in bringing different goals into synergy, as well as from the inadequacy of public institutions in mediating new claims to expand rights and better redistribute public goods. Solidarity economy can be framed as a strategy for the manifestation of a “pluriverse” of non-hegemonic epistemologies, centred on the interdependencies underlying human culture, that support tendentially collaborative and place-based approaches supporting different forms and scales of community-building. This edited book analyses how such epistemologies promote the development of alternative economic spatialities, namely by supporting initiatives in constituting themselves as forms of collective action and counterpower, therefore creating opportunities to generate social value through multi-stakeholder and multi-level institutional formations. This introductory chapter provides a conceptual framework for integrating the theoretical and case study analyses contained in the following chapters. It also suggests directions for future research in this field.

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• Sociology - Social Sciences

This publication is an output of the following project(s):

• Transnational networks for regenerative development in Europe: A comparative perspective on grassroots mobilisation and policy advocacy