Sustainable Economic Alternatives

The last decades have seen a mushrooming of new approaches to production, trading, consumption and finance. Variously labelled as (eco) social and solidarity enterprises, grassroots innovations for sustainability, alternative economic spaces or heterodox economic initiatives, they include community-supported-agriculture schemes, local renewable energy systems, community currencies, autonomous cultural, education and housing projects, communal organic farm and garden movements, local development trusts and many more. They often fly in the face of conventional wisdom on how economic enterprises should function, and their protagonists invoke values such as sustainability, social equity, community and resilience.

Building on fifteen years of empirical research in the field as well as on relevant literature, this book describes and analyzes such entities and looks at their role in a world where the old paradigms of aggregate economic growth, free trade and perfectly competitive markets are fast losing their appeal in the face of mounting environmental constraints. What do the eco-social enterprises do? How do they differ from the mainstream? What are the motivations and implications of their organisational and governance structures? How are they conceptualised from different ideological and geopolitical perspectives? Are they indeed a new phenomenon or can they be linked to older traditions that pre-date the Industrial revolution? What strategies do they espouse to survive in unforgiving globalised economic environments? These are some of the questions this book strives to answer.