Solidarity economy and political mobilisation: Insights from Barcelona

• Published date: 01 July 2020
• Date: 01 July 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/beer.12283
• Author: Michela Giovannini

Business Ethics: A Eur Rev. 2020;29:497–509. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/beer  

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  497© 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

1 | INTRODUCTION

The global fin ancial crisis of 20 07–2008 and the consequent a us-

terity measu res triggere d protest movemen ts all over the worl d.

In Southern Eur ope there has be en a strong wave of mob ilisations

directed towar ds the defence of prov ision of public welf are. These

anti-austerit y social movement s have been char acterised by a c all

for social justi ce framed in solidarity and in clusion, against the per-

ception of a reduce d state capaci ty for addres sing citizens' nee ds

(della Porta , 2015). This low level of trust in inst itutional politics has

triggered th e creation of alternative spaces of de liberative and par-

ticipatory democracy, directed towards experimenting with differ-

ent forms of politi cal expression.

Against thi s background, a crucial ques tion is whether and how

this call for dif ferent forms of democrac y has been also reflected in

the developmen t of grassroots o rganisation al forms that bri ng in-

creased democracy into the economic sphere. This article focuses

on those grassr oots economic act ivities that origin ate in civil society,

and that are char acterised by t he prevalence of so cial and politi cal

objectives over m aximisation of profits.

Several analys es from the soci al movement pers pective have

taken into conside ration the crea tion of alternati ve spaces of eco-

nomic activi ty linked to politic al mobilisation, es pecially as a reacti on

to austerity m easures in time s of economic crisi s. These initia tives

have taken diffe rent labels, en compassing, on t he one hand, som e

comprehensive approaches, like grassroots economic activism

(D'Alisa, Forno, & Mau rano, 2015), polit ical consumer ism—at least

in its collect ive version (Gra ziano & Forno, 2012), an d direct socia l

actions (Bosi & Z amponi, 2015), and on the ot her hand more specific

concepts such as a lternative forms of resilience (Kous is & Paschou,

2017), alternative ac tion organisati ons (Loukakis, 2018), and su stain-

able community movement organisations (Forno & Graziano, 2014).

The prolifera tion of these terms points to the n ecessity for arriving

at a shared concept w hich is able to explain and grasp t he specifici-

ties of alternati ve economic organisations t hat bring together social

and politica l aims. One contributio n in this sense can be foun d in the

Received: 3 Janu ary 2019 

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  Revised: 5 March 20 20 

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  Accepted: 13 March 20 20

DOI: 10 .1111/bee r.12283

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Solidarity economy and political mobilisation: Insights from

Barcelona

Michela Giovannini

CES, Centre f or Social Studies, U niversity of

Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal

Correspondence

Michela Giovannini, CES, Centre for Social

Studies, Uni versity of Coimbr a, Colégio de

S. Jerónimo, A partado 30 87, Coimbra 3000-

995, Port ugal.

Email: michelagiovannini@ces.uc.pt, michela.

giovannini@gmail.com

Funding information

H2020 Marie Skł odowska-Curie Ac tions,

Grant/Award Number: 747082

Abstract

The solidarity e conomy has been interpreted as being char acterised by a political di-

mension: however, empirical and t heoretical analysis suppo rting this statement is st ill

embryonic. D rawing on a qualitative study in the ci ty of Barcelona, this article an aly-

ses the politica l dimension of the solida rity economy and it s transformative charac-

ter with respect to n eoliberalism by engaging with critic al approaches related to the

social movement studi es. The main objec tives were to investigate f actors enabli ng

the upsurge of solidari ty economy organ isations and how the op position of social

movement particip ants to neoliber al rationalities im pacts on the w ay the solidarity

economy is conceived and im plemented in practice. The result s highlight three main

dimensions in which the p olitical dimension is reflected, a nd some general as well as

context-specific fac tors enabling the up surge of solidarit y economy organisati ons.

Findings show how the co mpensative ration ale that distinguis hes most approac hes

in the field of social ent repreneurship studies is con tested by the solidarity econo my:

its transfor mative character is r eflected in discour ses and prac tices that define th e

solidarity econ omy as a prefigurative socio-economic p roject.