But what does citizenship mean in the context of untrustworthy political institutions and isolation from quality education and basic public services? While some scholars have referred to the condition of people living in peripheral urban areas of 21st-century cities as “subcitizenship,” Portuguese sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santos argues that citizenship cannot be obtained via the concession of rights for people living in such conditions, but instead obtaining citizenship demands the transformation of global processes of socialization and models of development. In effect, rights may not be sitting there waiting to be accessed. Even with ascension in socio-economic status, for instance, they may instead require collective action.

Anthropologist James Holston writes of what he sees as a uniquely Brazilian “inclusively inegalitarian citizenship.” This combines two conflicting components: formal membership and principles of incorporation into nation-state (largely established in the 1988 Constitution as the country transitioned to democracy), together with “substantive distribution of rights, meanings, institutions, practices that membership entails to those deemed citizens.” Given that these two factors are so often at odds, Holston investigates what he calls ” insurgent citizenship,” a form of confronting this gap in formal and substantive rights in an insurgent way in the peripheries, through the auto-construction of the periphery, through protest and petition, and through identities that challenge exclusionary norms of society and citizenship.

It could be argued that solidarity economy initiatives are an example of “insurgent citizenship,” and of transformative models of socialization and development. Sociologist Pedro Demo summarizes the capacity to access citizenship rights as a type of agency, describing citizenship as the “human capacity to become a subject, to make your own collectively organized history.” He argues the bases of this kind of critical capacity are constructed via education, political organization, cultural identity, information, and communication.

So, which rights are actors in the solidarity economy organizing to access, or to establish in a meaningful way for themselves and their communities? Sociologist Paulo Henrique Martins divides citizenship rights into three categories: civil rights (individual liberties of freedom, equality, property, security), social rights to access well-being and social good (the right to work, to health, to education, to retirement), and political rights (electoral participation and freedom of association, meeting and political and union organization).

Social rights and the solidarity economy

In terms of social rights, solidarity economic enterprises, or empreendimentos econômicos solidários (EESs), offer member-workers means to build access to dignified working conditions, both in the physical workplace and in term of informal benefits as far as schedule flexibility and the absence of the threat of unexpected termination.

EESs also provide workers a channel for access to continued education through support organizations, such as university-based solidarity economy enterprise incubators or, in Rio’s case, the Municipal Secretariat of Solidarity Economy. Relatedly, another social right that EES participation can lead to is exposure to new physical spaces through commercialization opportunities such as Circuito Rio EcoSol, with the potential to alter a member-worker’s relationship to their city, and to themselves as a protagonist.

Working conditions go beyond dignified (non-abusive) to being generative of positive gains in well-being, such as therapeutic benefits of socializing, with reference to trauma, depression, and drug addiction.” Fuxico saindo da boca, criando fuxico com as mãos.” I first heard this in a Porto Alegre tailoring collective. One woman grazed her throat and another touched her tongue, as they explained what this meant to me: “Fuxico — gossip — coming out of our mouths, making fuxico — small fabric flowers for adornment — with our hands.”

I heard this again as Clarice from Devas, the sustainable clothing association based in the Complexo da Maré favela in Rio de Janeiro’s North Zone, told me that the origin of Devas was a “fuxico group.” She explained that a project at Maré’s health clinic in the early 1990s taught women how to sew, including fuxico flowers, and they together engaged in the other meaning of fuxico, discussing “personal dramas, children who had died, children who had become involved in crime, discussing the impact of trafficking on the community.”

A social worker who works with the Univens seamstresses in Porto Alegre relayed that the first thing she noticed about the group was that it “goes beyond production.” This “beyond” includes, as she put it, “the exchange of information and the strengthening of these women as people.” The conversation in the group is not just gossip, but is an airing of personal challenges, a space to give and receive advice, and a space to talk about community issues.

While the value of women getting together to gossip and vent about their lives could be downplayed, taking into consideration the context of some of these women, it becomes clear why this space is so critical. As the social worker put it, “This is the space.” She explained that many of the women have become socially isolated, due to safety issues in their neighborhoods and overburdened schedules between work and caregiving, especially for female heads of household.

Though this isolation is not a universal reality in favelas or other low-income neighborhoods, which can be highly social spaces, many of the women I spoke to in my research referenced it, and have perhaps sought out collective work for this reason. Even in communities with high degrees of social interaction, there may be a difference between solidarity economy workspaces and strictly social spaces in terms of the the themes being substantively discussed.

One of the member-workers at the Porto Alegre seamstress collective echoed these themes: “Because I take care of my disabled son, I don’t have other spaces in which I see friends.” Another member of the same group teared up explaining how the group is a family to her.

Clarice of Devas explained that she believes that “belonging to a group” outside the family is critical for anyone. She identified part of the importance of group belonging as dealing with violence-related trauma: “If there was a shootout today, violence makes you sick, but the group makes you strong, you have people to talk to, people to go out with.”

Indeed, depression and the therapeutic nature of the group came up in interviews with Clarice from Mulheres Guerreiras de Babilônia (Warrior Women of Babilônia), and with both the seamstress and food production collectives in Rio Grande do Sul. In Devas, one woman who suffered from debilitating depression and panic attacks has assumed a leadership role within the association. Clarice said of her story: “Society tells us as women that we are not capable of anything, and here we work against this.” The Babilônia seamstresses said of their work, simply: “It is therapy.”

In the food production cooperative in Rio Grande do Sul, member-workers said of their work: “It is a pure time” and “it is a paradise, you forget everything, and do what you like. Before, I felt alone; here, I speak what I feel.” One member-worker who has suffered particularly from debilitating depression said: “This work represents not staying focused only on the things that bother me. Getting out and being active, so things that bothered me internally go away. It is hope.” Indeed the leadership of this cooperative had this dynamic in mind from the outset: “The cooperative is a dream, it is companionship, it saves things that can only be spoken in the group. With whom else would you say these things?”

EESs also support continued education, through intentional skills-building. Often member-workers teach each other new skills. And through training processes with civil society or public sector actors, member-workers learn new technical skills, business management, and how to navigate other services.

Mara Adell, a leader of Mara Adell Sustentável in Complexo do Alemão, told me that the training course she did through the SEDES was “everything.” She explained: “Before, I wasn’t separating home income from business income, I didn’t have a sense of how much profit my products were making.” In the case of the Rio Grande do Sul EESs, they were more engaged with university-based solidarity economy enterprise incubators than government agencies. While at times that technical assistance felt exhausting, in other cases, it was welcomed both for the skills learned and for workshops on broader topics, such as the functioning of local government agencies.

Finally, health is another social right to which EES participation can expand access. Flexibility means not only that caregivers are able to better attend to family members, but also, in some cases, to their own health. For example, two of the member-workers in the food services cooperative in Rio Grande do Sul were able to continue working despite severe musculo-skeletal injuries that prohibited their employment at previous jobs.

Civil rights and the solidarity economy

In terms of civil rights, the basic right to freedom and security is implicated in the role EESs play as a space of support for women in situations of domestic violence. This dynamic was present for at least two of the member-workers in the Rio Grande do Sul food services cooperative. One of these women said that part of the importance of the cooperative for her was that “here, they take you seriously,” whereas she reported that she was often not believed when sharing about domestic violence incidents with people outside the cooperative. Clarice from Devas paraphrased one member-worker who stepped out of an abusive relationship with the support of the cooperative: “Before, if he mistreated me, I wouldn’t have anywhere to go. Now, I know I could come here to sleep.”

Political rights and the solidarity economy

In terms of political rights, the solidarity ties between members that emerge from participation in EESs can be a platform for collective action. The extent to which EES member-workers access this potential is mediated by several factors in personal and group background, including experience with activism, existing barriers to collective action, internal leadership, and types of external assistance present.

Additionally, the type of collective action varies, in some cases specific to solidarity economy movement spaces (forums, counsels, etc.) and in other cases applying to broader community action. Practicing democracy within collective management in EESs can act as a space for leadership development that translates to engagement with collective action, though this is limited in the context of EESs where collective management is informal and unstructured.

The fact that EESs are rooted in member-workers’ communities and offer a regular space to come together to talk about community dynamics can lead to increased community participation. In the Rio Grande do Sul tailoring collective, the group constantly discusses neighborhood issues, and one member was able to speak at a university and civil society meeting on community dynamics. This took place through the technical assistance of a university-based incubator, and demonstrates a political function of connections to such civil society actors. The food services cooperative in Rio Grande do Sul also engages in constant discussion about the neighborhood and its challenges. In Rio, Clarice says that member-workers have become more active in Maré’s Neighborhood Associations, while Mara Adell says that members have begun to use more neighborhood services in Alemão now that they are based in the community for work and can exchange information.

EESs often seek to give back to their communities directly, as well. The food services cooperative previously operated a community space with popular education opportunities, though this ended along with the administration of a more progressive municipal government that had subsidized the activity. Mara Adell Sustentável is subsidized by building materials company, LafargeHolcim, and in exchange for the free space, Mara Adell Sustentável gives workshops on tailoring and repurposing of materials in Complexo do Alemão. The group also shares its space for cultural events with local entrepreneurs who only have to pay for maintenance of equipment proportional to their use.

Outside of their communities, increased interaction with different kinds of actors also represents an increased freedom of mobility and even perhaps an insurgent claim to these women’s “right to the city.” The 1988 Brazilian Constitution established “the right to come and go” and Rio de Janeiro’s 1992 City Master Plan explicitly states the goal of “integrating the favelas into the formal city” and “preserving their local character.” Pursuit of real access to the right to come and go has been central to many recent favela struggles for rights, especially given the fact that favela residents continue to be unfairly profiled in the asfalto, or formal city.

The Solidarity Economy Circuit’s fairs take place throughout both the periphery and the asfalto in some of the city’s most prominent public spaces. Given this, and the dominance of favela residents in the Circuit, the fairs can be seen as a space of interaction between the favela and the formal city, a form of the “hill descending” as these women assert their right to the city. As Ana Asti asserts, “The extent to which producers and consumers interact directly in Rio’s fairs is a defining feature.” Insurgent citizenship, and its performance, does not only take place through marches, protests, and demonstrations, but also through more everyday practices to claim public space.

Conclusion

Participation in the solidarity economy through collective work done in EESs can be an opportunity for all sorts of people, but particularly those who have been systematically shut out from economic opportunity and from many of their rights as citizens. For residents of favelas and other economically disadvantaged communities, for example, educational levels and discrimination may act as barriers to “good jobs.” EESs can be “good jobs,” not only in terms of income-generation and skill-building, but also in terms of being a non-exploitative and flexible workplace; in terms of creating new spaces of social interaction (inside and outside the EES) that can increase security, combat isolation, and foster joy; and in terms of building increased community awareness, engagement, and leadership.

EESs should be evaluated against their internal logic, which differs from enterprise to enterprise. Though the EESs interviewed in the Rio circuit of fairs were managing to provide living wages to member-workers, this was not true in the case of many of the Rio Grande do Sul EESs interviewed. While EESs are not always financially sustainable, members may stick around both because of a lack of better options and/or for the compensating social benefits. The internal logic of some of these EESs may include that they offer women an opportunity to merge family and work life more than in traditional workspaces. This has the potential to be a radical reimagining of how different kinds of labor are valued more than a regression in the struggle for women’s rights.

In terms of public policy, the economic and political crisis affecting Brazil is leading to cuts in all sorts of social programs and solidarity economy institutions are falling prey to that process. However, movement actors point out that, given the relatively autonomous, protagonista, post-development nature of solidarity economy initiatives, the need for government support, while critical, is minimal. EESs as a development strategy are not designed to make individuals completely self-sufficient, but rather to help them take more active roles in their lives, including fighting to access rights owed to them as citizens.

In Rio de Janeiro right now, where the Solidarity Economy Circuit is at risk, entrepreneurs point out that their main costs are those of the critical public spaces the City grants to the fairs, as well as subsidized facilities maintenance. These fractional costs are helping to keep afloat not only another kind of economy, but all sorts of ripple effects in these entrepreneurs’ lives, families, and communities of origin. Their rallying cry is: “The solidarity economy is ours!”

This is the third of a three-part series on solidarity economy in Brazil.

Author Anna Cash conducted research on the solidarity economy as a platform for increasing social inclusion in 2015 in the greater Porto Alegre area, as part of a Fulbright Fellowship in partnership with the EcoSol Research Group at Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos (Unisinos), and with the guidance of Professor Luiz Inácio Gaiger. She is currently a student in the Masters in City Planning program at University of California, Berkeley.

Article and images re-posted from RioOnWatch. 

The post 3 Key Rights Underlying the Solidarity Economy in Brazil appeared first on P2P Foundation.

There are upwards of 300 solidarity economic enterprises, or empreendimentos econômicos solidários (EESs), participating in the 14 fairs that make up Circuito Rio EcoSol, Rio’s solidarity economy circuit. Many of the participants are from favelas, and many EESs have joined together in networks.

The Mulheres Guerreiras da Babilônia (Warrior Women of Babilônia), for example, form an association of 10 women who make bags and accessories with imagery from their community, including imagery representing strong Afro-Brazilian women. They have joined together with other EESs to form a network of solidarity economy entrepreneurs from Pavão-Pavãozinho, Mangueira, Babilônia, and Santa Teresa.

Mara Adell Sustentável, an association in Complexo do Alemão, is also in the business of bags and accessories, but with a sustainable focus. Their eight-person association reuses PVC banners, water bottles, and “anything they can get their hands on” to repurpose as creative accessories. Mara Adell, an important leader for the association, formed a network of solidarity economy enterprises in Complexo do Alemão, with 13 EESs, including Mara Adell Sustentável, participating at present.

Devas has been operational in Complexo da Maré for 18 years making sustainable clothing. Today, there are 12 women participating, though there were 26 at the association’s peak. Devas founder and facilitator, Clarice Cavalcanti, has played an important leadership role in the push for Rio de Janeiro to have more supportive solidarity economy public policy, winning some important victories. Today, she coordinates four of the 14 fairs that make up the Circuit.

Why solidarity economy?

So, why do these people, in this case largely women from Rio’s favelas, make their living in the solidarity economy?

Survival and ideology are the two primary important and interlinked components. In some cases the same person is motivated by both of these components: those who know from the deepest firsthand experience that “capitalism is not for everyone and it never was,” in Clarice’s words, sometimes end up being the most deeply convinced that another world — and another work — are not only possible, but necessary.

On the other hand, Mara Adell from Complexo do Alemão distinguishes between “vendors” and “militants,” and there certainly does exist a divide in the solidarity economy between those who merely see the commercial opportunities as a survival strategy and those who have a more ideological commitment to the cause. Mara explains that the Complexo do Alemão solidarity economy network she established is down to the 13 most committed EESs because many of those who initially sought to participate were only interested in selling goods. Mara explains that “those goods often came from China; we know they are made with slave labor, and that is not what the solidarity economy is about.”

Solidarity economy and quality of life

Clarice sees the most important victory of the solidarity economy in Brazil as the “social organization of work.” Essentially, solidarity economy efforts aim to address both labor market gaps and broader societal deficiencies. This happens through two main mechanisms:

1. EESs can meet a need for income generation where labor market exclusion — via both educational disparities and spatial discrimination — is strong.
2. EESs can provide supportive workspaces that meet a need for social interaction that addresses trauma related to poverty and violence.

Addressing market exclusion

As of the first trimester of 2016, Brazilian unemployment jumped to 10.2 percent. There aren’t enough good jobs in the country, and furthermore, with only 40 percent of favela residents obtaining a high school education or higher, many do not have the schooling necessary to get the quality jobs that do exist.

Beyond skills and opportunity mismatches, many favela residents face employment discrimination because of their address. This is sometimes called “spatial discrimination.” Clarice from Devas points out that many applications are thrown out when an applicant lists a Complexo da Maré address, to the point that Maré residents often list nearby neighborhood Bonsuccesso on applications instead.

Researcher Janice Perlman comprehensively summarized favela employment dynamics in a 2005 study that revisited initial survey data from 1969. Favela residents surveyed viewed a “good job with a good salary” (or “decent work with decent pay” in the informal sector) as the “single most important factor for a successful life” — over good health, education, housing, land tenure, governance, and personal security.

Perlman then highlights the primary barriers to sought-after livelihoods. These barriers include:

• Higher educational standards for job entry because of structural advances in education;
• Loss of manufacturing industry in Rio de Janeiro’s metropolitan area;
• Reduction in construction jobs after the 1960s/1970s boom;
• Reduction in domestic service jobs, which were the single biggest source of female livelihood in 1968, due to tighter middle class budgets, automation, and availability of quick-fix food;
• Pervasive stigma against favela residents.

Perlman’s study shows that favela residents are well aware of spatial discrimination: on perceptions of barriers to livelihood, 84 percent of respondents listed favela residency as a biggest barrier, compared to 80 percent skin color, 74 percent appearance, 60 percent origin, and 54 percent gender. Perlman goes on to illustrate that when comparing incomes between favela residents and other Rio residents, there are drastically lower rates of return to educational investment for those living in favelas (controlling for other demographic traits).

What is clear is that favela residents are often shut out from livelihood opportunities. This is an important discussion, especially given the fact that residents view a good job as a key to mobility.

Where jobs are accessible, however, there can still be a difference between earnings in the traditional economy and the solidarity economy. For example, Clarice points out that each Devas product budget accounts for labor costs at R$23 per hour, whereas she cites typical labor costs in a seamstress workshop at R$2.50 to R$3 per hour.

Creating supportive spaces

Salary, benefits, and workplace conditions often differ between solidarity economy work and the traditional economy jobs that are most accessible to favela residents.

When EESs are informal, there are challenges to their ability to provide benefits to member-workers. This underscores the importance of creating accessible legal forms for EESs. In the cases of Devas, Mulheres Guerreiras da Babilônia, and Mara Adell Sustentável, all are registered as associations and thus have the ability to pay benefits. Clarice underscores that Devas member-workers receive social security benefits and that a recent member-worker who had become pregnant was able to take maternity leave that she wouldn’t have been able to negotiate in other forms of employment previously available to her.

There are also informal benefits to working in an EES, particularly for female heads of household and mothers in general. Rio de Janeiro is a city that has relegated many service workers to the hills and the suburban periphery, making childcare a challenge for mothers who work far from home due to long commutes. EES member-workers often come from the communities where their workplace is located, or in some cases produce from home, coming together just for meetings, organization, and commercialization, all of which allow increased flexibility for caregiving.

At a food services solidarity economy cooperative in Rio Grande do Sul, during fieldwork conducted with my colleague, psychologist Marilene Liége Daros, and the cooperative members, female member-workers spoke extensively about these dynamics:

“Here, you can leave running if your sick daughter has a problem in the house, for example. Because it’s all by foot, you know? That was the objective.”

“If you’re five minutes late in regular work, you’re on the street the next day.”

“Yesterday, we all couldn’t come due to (scheduling) conflicts, so we decided to come Friday instead.”

We conducted an exercise asking these member-workers to compare traditional work and solidarity economy work through free association:

Reimagining the relationship between private and work life

Employment that blurs the line between domestic caregiving and workforce labor may seem like a step backwards for women’s rights, relegating women to the private sphere without offering opportunities for professional advancement. Furthermore, the EESs in this article are all in industries that might be considered typically feminine: crafts, food, tailoring.

However, as Brazilian sociologist Helena Bonumá argues, solidarity economy arrangements can bring “the private to the productive sphere,” reimagining both of these spheres and “highlighting the reproductive sphere as fundamental for the production of life.” In the example of the food services cooperative, member-workers’ freedom to respond to family needs has a bearing on work arrangements, and their constant conversational reflection on family life is indicative of this.

Indeed, many feminist scholars point to the rigidity of the division between public “work” spheres and private spheres of unpaid care work as a key part of the maintenance of structures that are oppressive to women. Prominent feminist political scientist Nancy Fraser has said, “There can be no ’emancipation of women’ so long as this structure… [of] gendered, hierarchical division between ‘production’ and ‘reproduction’… remains intact.”

Many women in Brazil’s low-income communities are either engaged in both production and reproduction as female heads of household, or are engaged in care work in two contexts — for their own family, as well as under the employ of a wealthier family. In that second circumstance, Fraser notes that it is important to be cognizant of the ways in which “lean in” feminism means “lean on” feminism: In the current structure, women in the professional-managerial class can only benefit from more time spent on their careers if they rely on others for care work and housework. This might be a supportive partner, but is often a low-wage, precarious, female worker.

A story of community and political organizing

One success story that is well known in Brazilian solidarity economy circles and which highlights how EESs can offer an alternative to “lean in” feminism is that of Univens, a tailoring cooperative in Porto Alegre. When Univens member-workers struggled without anyone to take care of their children, they started a community daycare center. The cooperative offers courses, which members feel are especially important as crack takes a stronger hold in the neighborhood. They are interested in expanding these classes from tailoring to theater, painting, and other cultural programs. The courses started with 18 people but now have a large waiting list. Univens also has a solidarity fund in order to help out with crises in the community and is thinking of starting a community bank.

Leader Nelsa Nespolo attributes the cooperative’s success to three important factors: first, relationships — everyone in the cooperative lives in the neighborhood and will continue to see each other in the community no matter what happens in the cooperative; second, experience with organizing — Nelsa had previously been involved in youth and factory workers’ organizing, which leads to an understanding of democratic practices; and finally, transparency — there is good financial control in the cooperative and due to transparency there has never been an issue with the application of internal resources. Possibly as a cross-cutting factor, Nelsa points out that Univens does not want to grow beyond 30 people, because their internal democracy works well at this scale.

The story of Univens is one of community and political organizing. Twenty years ago in this neighborhood, the residents did not have any infrastructure in terms of paved streets or garbage collection. At that time, the city of Porto Alegre’s participatory budgeting policy had a huge impact — the neighborhood came together to ask for needs to be met one street at a time. In the face of high unemployment in the 1990s, women from the neighborhood began to come together to make money through seamstress work. Initially working in their homes, they eventually started the cooperative. There were no supports for cooperatives at that time, so they went article by article creating their own statute, modeled after a housing cooperative. Today, they have social security, vacation leave (10 days in July and 20 days in February), sick leave, and surplus at the end of the year.

Given the realities of double shifts and of unpaid labor in the home, EESs like Univens, which reimagine the relationship between home and work, may be liberating even if they do not mesh with certain Western notions of what women’s advancement looks like. Indeed, EESs can be a means for solidarity economy entrepreneurs to construct a more participatory citizenship, which will be the topic of the final article in the series.

This is the second of a three-part series on solidarity economy in Brazil. Read part one here.

Author Anna Cash conducted research on the solidarity economy as a platform for increasing social inclusion in 2015 in the greater Porto Alegre area, as part of a Fulbright Fellowship in partnership with the EcoSol Research Group at Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos (Unisinos), and with the guidance of Professor Luiz Inácio Gaiger. She is currently a student in the Masters in City Planning program at University of California Berkeley.

Article and images re-posted from RioOnWatch.

The post Why Women in Brazil Are Turning to the Solidarity Economy appeared first on P2P Foundation.

There are many examples of this in both consumption and labor: favelas have been practicing collective consumerism since their inception (and well before the “sharing economy” was trendy); favelas come together in mutirão collective work sessions for infrastructure upgrades, such as building sewerage systems or cleaning up abandoned lots; and favelados (favela residents) have come together in work collectives, such as the baking and skills sharing collective Mangarfo featured in the short documentary, “Here Is My Place.”

These grassroots collective economic practices are all examples of the “solidarity economy” that exists in favelas and in other communities all over Brazil and the world. Solidarity economy has many definitions but, most broadly, is both an umbrella term and a movement that seeks to promote alternative economic structures based on collective ownership and horizontal management instead of private ownership and hierarchical management. Such structures include community banks, credit unions, family agriculture, cooperative housing, barter clubs, consumer cooperatives, and worker cooperatives or collectives, most well-known in Brazil in the industries of recycling and crafts. The goal is to decentralize wealth, root wealth in communities, and financially and politically empower stakeholders participating in these structures toward another, more just, economy.

Much of solidarity economy ascribes to the seven principles of cooperativism:

1. Voluntary and free participation
2. Democratic management
3. Economic participation of members
4. Autonomy and independence
5. Education, training, and information
6. Cooperation among cooperatives
7. Interest in the community

Solidarity Economy Enterprises and Protagonists

Solidarity economic enterprises, or empreendimentos econômicos solidários (EESs), are at the heart of this movement. Such initiatives typically combine individuals excluded from the labor market, or moved by the initiatives’ ideology, in the search for collective alternative means of survival.

As Brazil’s former National Secretary of Solidarity Economy, Paul Singer (widely considered the father of the Brazilian solidarity economy movement), said in a public assembly in Porto Alegre last year: Solidarity economy is predominantly “spread by women, young people, the unemployed — by all of the victims of capitalism.”

The solidarity economy, blending the public sector, private sector, and third (civil society and philanthropic) sector, is one manifestation of a Brazilian development model where development beneficiaries take a more active role. A 2015 UNESCO Report describes how in Rio’s favelas there is a strong presence of social organizations that are “bottom-up, without outside intervention, motivated by people who were born, grew up, and continue living in favelas.”

Indeed, a common word used to described actors in the Brazilian solidarity economy is protagonistas, or protagonists, taking leading roles in their own lives. Notably, this language is not the “self-help” language that is common amongst many “community economic development” initiatives in the U.S. and in places like India, where initiatives that in some ways resemble solidarity economy can be observed with slightly different framing language.

Asset-based development experts Alison Mathie and Gord Cunningham ­frame producer cooperatives as an example of “group capacity-building,” which contrasts with “individual capacity-building.” Development projects that focus on individual capacity-building aim to improve the economic success of individuals (for example, microfinance clients), taking for granted that this will thereby lead to community economic development. However, the group capacity-building perspective sees collective action as an end in itself and development, thus, as an endogenous process. Notably, in such a framework, Mathie and Gord delineate the role of external agencies as a “facilitator of a process, and as a node in a widening network of connections the community may have with other actors.”

Solidarity Economy as Public Policy

The solidarity economy movement has had a high degree of ostensible political success in Brazil, in part because of the wave of unemployment in the 1990s, but also because of an existing strong labor movement. Brazil created not only a national Solidarity Economy Secretariat (SENAES), but also forums and councils at the metropolitan, municipal, state, and national levels. The Brazilian Forum of Solidarity Economy (FBES), brings together state and civil society actors nationally to discuss public policy for supporting solidarity economy.

However, despite apparent policy victories, the solidarity economy political infrastructure faces many challenges nationally. First, it is still logistically difficult for EESs to formalize in Brazil. Currently, the most common forms are informal groups, associations, and cooperatives. The Brazilian cooperative law was not created with solidarity economy cooperatives in mind. The cooperative form is subject to high rates of taxation, while the association legal form is broad, serving for non-revenue generating social projects along with work collectives. There is a national campaign for a solidarity economy legal form that is based on the internal logic of cooperatives and collectives that ascribe to the solidarity economy.

While informal economy and solidarity economy are not interchangeable terms, the current state of the Brazilian solidarity economy is very informal. Of all EESs in Brazil mapped through the SIES National Mapping project finalized in 2013, 31 percent of EESs are informal groups, 60 percent are associations, and 9 percent cooperatives. In Rio de Janeiro state, likely due to the relatively younger solidarity economy landscape, it is even more informal, as 68 percent of EESs are informal groups, 25 percent associations, and 6 percent cooperatives.

However, it is important to distinguish the solidarity economy from the informal economy for a couple of key reasons. First, to be a part of the informal economy does not mean that one is practicing solidarity economics based on principles of collective benefit. Secondly, the solidarity economy movement strives for formal recognition in order to be able to take advantages of the benefits traditional businesses receive. Formal recognition does not mean fitting EESs into existing purely profit-maximizing legal forms, but creating new ones that better fit with the logic of EESs, which seek to make returns to pay workers a fair wage and reinvest in the EES and, when possible, the community.

Rio’s Solidarity Economy

Since January 2009, Rio’s Special Secretariat of Solidarity Economic Development (SEDES) has been the first municipal secretariat dedicated to solidarity economy in Brazil. (In other Brazilian cities solidarity economy initiatives sit under departments of work and employment.) The secretariat’s objective, according to its official page is to “formulate and execute public policy designed to widen the market and democratize access to the economy of the city. Projects of local and solidarity economy development, based in associativism and collectivism, in self-management and productive networks, are the focus of SEDES.” The SEDES website goes on to explain that “networks of small businesses, cooperatives, productive arrangements, and poles of EESs” are “vectors of an intelligent and efficient strategy of confronting and overcoming social exclusion, unemployment, and precarious work in the world’s big cities.”

A large part of SEDES’ work has been to work towards certifying Rio as the first Latin American capital to be a Fair Trade Town. Mayor Eduardo Paes committed to five related goals: Create a coordinating committee of the campaign; declare support for and utilize products of fair trade in the public sector, for example by purchasing school lunches from local producers; support the placement of solidarity economy products in local markets; incentivize businesses in supporting and consuming these products, for example by utilizing uniforms made by solidarity economy entrepreneurs; and publicize the campaign in the media.

SEDES has also established goals to create two circuits of fairs in the city: Circuito Rio EcoSol, or Rio Solidarity Economy Circuit, which is a network of artisan fairs, and Circuito Carioca de Feiras Orgânicas, or Carioca Circuit of Organic Produce Fairs.

According to Ana Larronda Asti, Director of Solidarity Economy and Fair Trade at SEDES, the solidarity economy artisan fair circuit has an intentional focus on women who are residents of favelas and low-income communities. It is made up of 14 fairs around the city’s major poles, such that solidarity economy entrepreneurs have commercialization opportunities throughout each month.

Circuito Rio EcoSol locations include Complexo da Maré, Méier, and Manguinhos in the North Zone; Campo Grande, Paciência, and Santa Cruz in the West Zone; Freguesia in Jacarepaguá and Praça Saens Pena in Tijuca; Cinelândia, Praça Mauá, and São Cristóvão downtown; and Largo do Machado, Ipanema, and Leme in the South Zone.

As of June 2016, there were over 300 EESs participating. In order to participate, a group must have the legal form of association or popular cooperative, be in the business of production or commercialization, and have three or more people working for it. In addition, the group must be registered to CADSOL, the national registry for solidarity economy enterprises, and must confirm that its members have attended at least four municipal forum meetings, as well as undergone solidarity economy training from SEDES. Many of the EESs are organized into networks, facilitating collective commercialization.

Current Political Threats and Uncertainty

Unfortunately, given the political crisis at the federal level, SEDES is in a very vulnerable position. In late May, two-thirds of the 40-person staff were let go and the R$37 million budget was cut. The Special Secretariat at the time was without a boss and “without direction, in matters both strategic and practical.”

SEDES now has a new Secretary — Franklin Dias Coelho — but the agency’s status as a Special Secretariat means it was created by an action of Mayor Eduardo Paes and not by the City Council. Its special status therefore means that it can also be disbanded by the mayor as quickly as it was established. At the national level, the Solidarity Economy Secretariat is also undergoing changes that will dramatically alter its character, including the replacement in June of Secretary Paul Singer, who was a key figure in establishing the secretariat.

Solidarity economy entrepreneurs are now organizing politically to make SEDES into an institution that is permanently part of the municipal government. This year’s turmoil leaves them vulnerable given that the majority of the solidarity economy entrepreneurs’ income is dependent on the fairs and SEDES is responsible for helping to secure the public spaces where they are held. Some of the entrepreneurs at the fairs have been fighting for two decades for supportive public policy, such as the 2012 Solidarity Economy Law which defined terms for solidarity economy and established a Municipal Council in addition to SEDES, for civil society and public sector actors to dialogue. Many of the actors in this movement fear for their livelihoods, worried that their hard-earned victories could unravel in the current political context.

This is the first of a three-part series on solidarity economy in Brazil. With solidarity economy political infrastructure at risk, so too are the opportunities that EESs offer workers for increased quality of life and supportive spaces for women, as well as new forms of accessing rights, which will be the topics of the next two articles in the series.

Author Anna Cash conducted research on the solidarity economy as a platform for increasing social inclusion in 2015 in the greater Porto Alegre area, as part of a Fulbright Fellowship in partnership with the EcoSol Research Group at Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos (Unisinos), and with the guidance of Professor Luiz Inácio Gaiger. She is currently a student in the Masters in City Planning program at University of California, Berkeley.

Article and images re-posted from RioOnWatch. Clique aqui para Português. 

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