Venue: Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), Lisbon, Portugal

Date: 6 – 8th November 2019

Organiser: Centre for International Studies (CEI-IUL)

The second international conference “Social Solidarity Economy and the Commons” will be a meeting point for researchers, activists, public officials and social entrepreneurs involved in social and solidarity economy, governance of the commons and new social movements in different parts of the world.

The conference will take place from the 6th to 8th of November 2019 at the Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL) in Lisbon, Portugal. The aim is to co-create an open, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary space for exchange of knowledge and socio-political experiences on new approaches to economic organisation and governance based in solidarity, cooperation and common ownership from across the world.

The conference is organized by the Centre for International Studies (CEI-IUL), with the support of the Department of Political Economy at ISCTE-IUL, the Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes (CE3C) in the School of Natural Sciences at the University of Lisbon and the Solidarity Economy Incubator at the Federal University of Alagoas (UFAL) in Brazil.

This document launches the conference’s call for contributions. It also includes information about organization of the conference, the topics addressed, registration details and participation costs. We will post regular updates about its organization on the event’s webpage (https://ssecommons.cei.iscte-iul.pt ), as well as send them by e-mail and through the social media accounts of CEI-IUL (Facebook and Twitter). Any questions regarding organization of the conference or participation can be sent to  [email protected].

Thematic Fields

The current political, economic and social crises have provoked constructive action on the part of many social movements and progressive governments. Increasing numbers and diversity of initiatives are proactively creating and enacting new socio-economic models and genuinely democratic forms of governance, by mobilizing endogenous practices and resources and promoting collaborations and synergies between civil society and the state. Prominent among these movements, and intersecting with many of them, are Social Solidarity Economy and the Commons.

This international conference “Social Solidarity Economy and the Commons” aims to promote understanding of and dialogue about new, emerging and rediscovered forms of governance and economic organization that offer potential to overcome the challenges that communities, governments and organizations working towards sustainable prosperity currently face. This year’s edition of the conference focuses on conceptual and normative frameworks that support the development of cooperative and sustainable alternatives to neoliberal capitalism and strengthen civil society and the state through participatory democracy.

We invite researchers, activists, public officials and social entrepreneurs to submit proposals for contributions to the conference. Submissions might be based on formal research or on concrete activist, economic or public policy initiatives. Potential topics include, but are not limited to, social movements, processes of knowledge production and diffusion, public policies and alternative strategies of economic governance based on Social Solidarity Economy, and the democratic and collective management of the Commons. In addition to conventional formats such as papers, posters and panel sessions, contributions might take participatory, co-creative and/or artistic formats. We are open to suggestions that can help capture the diversity of actions, experiences and ways of knowing and expression involved in this field.

We aim to promote interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary perspectives at both theoretical, conceptual and methodological levels. We accordingly invite academics, para-academics, supporters and practitioners to explore these topics from multiple perspectives, including civil society organizations, enterprises and governments. The goal is to work towards a convergence of concepts and strategies among scholars, entrepreneurs, activists and public officials.

In order to promote transdisciplinarity, methodological and empirical diversity and epistemological pluralism, the conference is structured around five thematic fields:

1. Social movements, Social Solidarity Economy and the Commons: Initiatives of social solidarity economy and commons-based governance promoted by “new” social movements promoting epistemological, cultural, functional, sexual and gender justice, diversity and inclusion; 

• Contributions of Social Solidarity Economy and Commons-based governance to the deepening and widening of Democracy;

• Applications of Social Solidarity Economy and Commons-based governance to urban regeneration and rural development, with a focus on initiatives and programs aimed at revitalizing rural and urban spaces through the promotion of local/regional/bioregional economies and supply chains, along with the commoning of public spaces and productive assets;

• Social Solidarity Economy, the Commons and inclusive social technologies: This thematic field focuses on actions involving social solidarity economy initiatives that combine local/vernacular knowledge with technical/scientific expertise, with the goal of developing replicable and socially transformative products, technologies and forms of governance;

• Applications of Social Solidarity Economy and Commons-based governance to climate change and other sustainability, by promoting transitions to renewable energy, agroecology, sustainable water management and other sustainable socio-technical configurations. 

Proposal Submission Guidelines

Proposals should have a maximum length of 800 words (including any reference) and indicate which thematic field/s of the conference they address, along with five keywords. They can be submitted in English, French, Portuguese or Spanish. However, the language of presentation shall be English. 

Paper, poster and panel proposals should include:

a) Title;

b) Thematic field;

c) Theoretical or empirical question and literature review;

d) Summary of methodology;

e) Main argument;

f) Summary of conclusions and implications for research, activism, practice or policy-making;

g) Main references.

Please submit proposals by email to  [email protected] . The submission deadline is May 31st 2019.

After the conference, the organizing committee will launch a call for chapters of an edited, open-access volume of the collection of ebooks of the Centre for International Studies (CEI-IUL). All the authors who presented papers, posters and panels at the conference will be invited to develop their presentations into publishable manuscripts for peer-review.

Other conference outputs may take many possible formats, formal and informal, depending on the nature and scope of submissions and range of dissemination channels available. Participants will be invited to contribute to these, and are welcome to suggest documentation and reporting initiatives within, or as a supplement to, proposal submissions.

Organisers will offer translation (English/Portuguese) during opening, closing and keynote sessions. Translation at other times and in other languages may be available if offered and self-organised by participants.

Important dates

Deadline for proposal submission – May 31st 2019

Notification of contributors – June 30th

Deadline for registration (conference presenters) – October 6th

Publication of final program – October 15th

Deadline for registration (non-presenters) – October 20th

Beginning of the conference – November 6th

Conference registration

Site: https://ssecommons.cei.iscte-iul.pt/

Professors/lecturers, researchers and other professionals – € 100, 00

Students (Proof of enrolment in a higher education program required)* – € 50, 00

Members of Solidarity Economy initiatives and community development organizations (documentary proof or letter of reference from the organization required) – FREE

*Registration is FREE for students of ISCTE-IUL, FCUL and UFAL

Organizing committee

Ana Margarida Esteves (CEI-IUL)

Rogério Roque Amaro (CEI-IUL)

Maria de Fátima Ferreiro (Departamento de Economia Política, ISCTE-IUL)

Raquel Silva (CEI-IUL)

Leonardo Leal (CEI-IUL; Universidade Federal de Alagoas– UFAL)

Gil Pessanha Penha-Lopes (Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, FCUL)

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21-23 November 2018

ISCTE-IUL, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa

Organiser: CEI-IUL, Centre for International Studies

With the support of the Department of Political Economy (ISCTE-IUL) and Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes (CE3C), Faculty of Sciences, University of Lisbon

In response to the current global social and environmental crisis, various social movements are developing alternatives to the socio-economic status quo by mobilizing endogenous practices, institutions and resources and networking among grassroots initiatives. Within these movements stands out Solidary Social Economy and the Commons. This international and interdisciplinary conference, guided by an action research strategy, aims to respond to challenges that have arisen from recent research on forms of shared governance between the state, the market and the third sector, promoted by movements and public policies for the Social Solidarity Economy, as well as criticisms made by authors such as Martin Deleixhe, David Harvey and Massimo de Angelis to the theory developed by Elinor Ostrom on the management of common property:

• How to promote a strong sense of community belonging, necessary to promote the cooperation between stakeholders that is necessary for the harmonious governance of Social Solidarity Economy and the Commons, while preventing the emergence of totalizing visions, ensuring pluralism and promoting democratic deepening?

• How to promote shared governance strategies between the state, the market and the third sector, aimed at supporting the development of Social Solidarity Economy networks as spaces of self-organization, in which participants can autonomously construct themselves as economic and political subjects?

• How to promote organizations based on the constitution and / or management of Common Goods (Integral Cooperatives, Ecovillages, associations of users and / or producers, etc.) based on fair, inclusive and participative forms of governance, and integrated into grassroots socioeconomic dynamics?

The purpose of this event is to promote an intersectoral dialogue on this topic at the international level. We invite researchers, activists, public officials, social entrepreneurs and other actors in these fields to present communications that explore possible configurations which the convergence between the approaches proposed by the Solidarity Economy and Common Goods movements can assume in the following fields:

– Production and distribution of food, water and energy;

– Infrastructures (management of territories, means of communication and transport, information technologies, housing and economic and cultural activity spaces);

– Health, Education and Culture

– Financial systems (ethical finance, social currencies, crypto-coins).

The objective is to develop theoretical and empirical materials that facilitate convergence and the establishment of common action plans for the promotion of socially and environmentally resilient communities, in particular through:

(a) adaptation to climate change, transition to the use of renewable energies and promotion of “environmental ethics”;

b) public policies and participatory democracy mechanisms to promote social justice through empowerment and a more effective exercise of social, economic and civic rights by vulnerable social groups;

c) the revitalization of local economies through “short circuits” of production and consumption that stimulate the creation of employment and the establishment of wealth at an autochthonous level.

Please email paper abstracts of no more than 300 words to  [email protected] by May 31 2018. Acceptance and rejection notices will be sent in mid-June 2018.

The organizing committee will subsequently selected papers presented at the conference to be published in the ISCTE-IUL Centre for International Studies (CEI) open source e-book collection. The authors and actors present at the thematic sessions will also be invited to contribute chapters on the topics discussed for publication.

Photo by pedrosimoes7

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This is an excerpt from the upcoming book Funding the Cooperative City: Community finance and the economy of civic spaces.

In the past decade, with the economic crisis and the transformation of welfare societies, NGOs, community organisations and civic developers – City Makers – established some of the most important services and spaces in formerly vacant buildings, underused areas and neglected neighbourhoods. Consolidating their presence in the regenerated spaces, these initiatives are increasingly looking into the power of the local community, the dispersed crowd and new financial actors to invest in their activities.

Two years ago, the cultural centre La Casa Invisible collected over 20.000 euros for the partial renovation of the building including the installation of fire doors and electric equipments to assure the safety of their revitalized 19th century building in the centre of Málaga. A few months later, East London’s Shuffle Festival, operating in a cemetery park at Mile End, collected 60.000 pounds for the renovation and community use of The Lodge, an abandoned building at the corner of the cemetery. In order to implement their campaigns, both initiatives used the online platforms Goteo and Spacehive that specialise in the financing of specific community projects. The fact that many of the hundreds of projects supported by civic crowdfunding platforms are community spaces, underlines two phenomena: the void left behind by a state that gradually withdrew from certain community services, and the urban impact of community capital created through the aggregation of individual resources.

The question if community capital can really cure the voids left behind by the welfare state has generated fierce debates in the past years. This discussion was partly launched by Brickstarter, the beta platform specialised in architectural crowdfunding, when it introduced to the public the idea of crowdfunded urban infrastructures. Those who opposed Brickstarter, did in fact protest against the Conservative agenda of the “Big Society”, the downsizing of welfare society and the “double taxation” of citizens: “Why should we spend on public services when our taxes should pay for them?”

Nevertheless, in the course of the economic crisis, many European cities witnessed the emergence of a parallel welfare infrastructure: the volunteer-run hospitals and social kitchens in Athens, the occupied schools, gyms and theatres of Rome or the community-run public squares of Madrid are only a few examples of this phenomenon. European municipalities responded to this challenge in a variety of ways. Some cities like Athens began to examine how to adjust their regulations to enable the functioning of community organisations, others created new legal frameworks to share public duties with community organisations in contractual ways, like Bologna with the Regulation of the Commons. In several other cities, administrations began experimenting with crowdfunding public infrastructures, like in Ghent or Rotterdam, where municipalities offer match-funding to support successful campaigns, or with participatory budgeting, like in Paris, Lisbon or Tartu. Yet other public administrations in the UK, the Netherlands or Austria invited the private sphere to invest in social services in the form of Social Impact Bonds, where the work of NGOs or social enterprises is pre-financed by private actors who are paid back with a return on their investment in case the evaluation of the delivered service is positive.

Largo Residencias, Lisbon. Photo (cc) Eutropian

Alternatively, some cities chose to support local economy and create more resilient neighbourhoods with self-sustaining social services through grant systems. The City of Lisbon, for instance, after identifying a number of “priority neighbourhoods” that need specific investments to help social inclusion and ameliorate local employment opportunities, launched the BIP/ZIP program that grants selected civic initiatives with up to 40.000 euros. The granted projects, chosen through an open call, have to prove their economic sustainability and have to spend the full amount in one year. The BIP/ZIP project, operating since 2010, gave birth to a number of self-sustaining civic initiatives, including social kitchens that offer affordable food and employment for locals or cooperative hotels that use their income from tourism to support social and cultural projects. In 2015 the experience of the BIP/ZIP matured in a Community-Led Local Development Network, as identified by the European Union’s Cohesion Policy 2014-2020, which will grant the network access to part of the Structural Funds of the City of Lisbon. The CLLD is a unique framework for the democratic distribution of public funds: it foresees the management of the funding to be shared between administration, private and civic partners, with none of them having the majority of shares and votes.

While, as the previous cases demonstrate, the public sector plays an important role in strengthening civil society in some European cities, many others witnessed the emergence of new welfare services provided by the civic economy completely outside or without any help by the public sector. In some occasions, community contribution appears in the form of philanthropist donation to support the construction, renovation or acquisition of playgrounds, parks, stores, pubs or community spaces. In others, community members act as creditors or investors in an initiative that needs capital, in exchange for interest, shares or the community ownership of local assets, for instance, shops in economically challenged neighbourhoods. Crowdfunding platforms also help coordinating these processes: the French Bulb in Town platform, specialized in community investment, gathered over 1 million euros for the construction of a small hydroelectric plant in Ariège that brings investors a return of 7% per year.

ExRotaprint, Berlin. Photo (cc) Eutropian

Besides aggregating resources from individuals to support particular cases, community infrastructure projects are also helped by ethical investors. When two artists mobilised their fellow tenants to save the listed 10.000 m2 Rotaprint in the Berlin district of Wedding, they invited several organisations working on moving properties off the speculation market and eliminating the debts attached to land, to help them buy the buildings. While the complex was bought and is renovated with the help of an affordable loan by the CoOpera pension fund, the land was bought by the Edith Maryon and Trias Foundations and is rented (with a long-term lease, a “heritable building right”) to ExRotaprint, a non-profit company, making it impossible to resell the shared property. With its sustainable cooperative ownership model, ExRotaprint provides affordable working space for manufacturers as well as social and cultural initiatives whose rents cover the loans and the land’s rental fee.

Creating community ownership over local assets and keeping profits benefit local residents and services is a crucial component of resilient neighbourhoods. Challenging the concept of value and money, many local communities began to experiment with complementary currencies like the Brixton or Bristol Pounds. Specific organisational forms like Community Land Trusts or cooperatives have been instrumental in helping residents create inclusive economic ecosystems and sustainable development models.

Homebaked, Liverpool. Photo (cc) Eutropian

In Liverpool’s Anfield neighbourhood, a community bakery is the symbol of economic empowerment: renovated and run by the Homebaked Community Land Trust established in April 2012, the bakery – initially backed by the Liverpool Biennale – offers employment opportunities for locals, and it is the catalyst of local commerce and the centre of an affordable housing project that is developed in the adjacent parcels. Similarly, a few kilometres east, local residents established another CLT to save the Toxteth neighborhood from demolition. The Granby Four Streets Community Land Trust, with the help of social investors and a young collective of architects (winning the prestigious Turner prize), organised a scheme that includes affordable housing, community-run public facilities and shops.

The economic self-determination of a community has been explored at the scale of an entire neighbourhood by the Afrikaanderwijk Cooperative in Southern Rotterdam. The cooperative is an umbrella organisation that connects workspaces with shopkeepers, local makers, social foundations, and the local food market: they have developed an energy collective in cooperation with an energy supplier that realises substantial savings for businesses in the neighbourhood; a cleaning service that ensures that cleaning work is commissioned locally; and a food delivery service for elderly people in the neighbourhood.

With community organisations and City Makers acquiring significant skills to manage welfare services, urban infrastructures and inclusive urban development processes, it is time for their recognition by established actors in the public and private sectors. The EU’s Urban Agenda, developing guidelines for a more sustainable and inclusive development of European cities, can be a catalyst of this recognition: it can prompt the creation of new instruments and policies to enable such community-led initiatives. While the Cohesion Policy 2014-2020 has developed the CLLD framework, not many Member States chose to use this instrument. The Urban Agenda could therefore envision the adoption of more methods to be experimented by City Administrations, to allow for a more sustainable and inclusive allocation of resources. Whether through matchfunding, grant systems, or simply removing the legal barriers of cooperatives, land trusts and community investment, municipalities could join the civil society in developing a more resilient civic economy with accessible jobs, affordable housing, clean energy, and social integration.

Lead image from homebaked.org, Liverpool UK. All other images from Eutropian.

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