Building bridges, Interlacing Futures and Constructing Alternatives: Social and Solidarity
Economy as Practice(s) of Development Education
La Salete Coelho
The main objective of this workshop was establishing points of contact between the two
concepts – Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE) and Development Education (DE) in order to
better understand the contribution of DE in the actual crisis and in the actual debate on
alternative economical and development models.
We started the workshop with a reflection about what are the main problems/challenges the
world is facing, nowadays, that Development Education tries to address or has a word about it.
This reflection started in pairs and, then, we share ideas with all the group.
These are the challenges that came:
-
Sustainability,
Climate changes
Equity
Intolerance
Human Rights
Racism
Capitalism
Development
Identities
Responsible consumption
Production of knowledge
Discrimination
Solidarity
Power
I proposed some others:
-
Poverty
Corruption
Economic crisis
Violence
Wars
Dictatorships
Unemployment
Work exploitation
…
When asked which were, from these lists, the problems related with Economic Issues, the
answer was, for unanimity, “all of them”.
Having agreed in that, we moved for the presentation of a definition of DE accepted by me,
just for highlight the main elements:
Development Education (DE) is a dynamic, interactive and participatory process aimed at:
achieving full education for all; raising public awareness and understanding of the causes of
development related problems of local and global inequalities, in a context of
interdependence; effective intercultural understanding; the commitment to change inducing
actions founded on justice, equity and solidarity; the upholding of the right and the duty to
all persons and all peoples to engage in and contribute towards a fully sustainable
development (…)1.
I also had that my understanding of DE is, as it is proposed by Manuela Mesa, in her theory of
the Five Generation of DE2, a Global Citizenship Education, meaning that the citizenship need
to be educated to open their eyes to what is happening in the world in order to understand its
complexity, to have the courage to face the problems, trying to create some alternatives and
put them in practice.
This took us to an analyse of the concept of globalisation, as the supremacy of a unique
thought, according to the theory of Boaventura de Sousa Santos (a Portuguese researcher who
works in the field of economic and social alternatives, one of the founders of the World Social
Forum).
Analysing the globalisation, he sees two dangers and propose two solutions3:
Dangers
Proposals
A very short vision of the present
A sociology of absences
Short-sightedness in face of the
alternatives and which has reinforced
the theories and hegemonic models
That identifies and recovers experiences
and forms of knowledge that are
currently neglected
An extremely widened visualisation of
the future
A sociology of emergences
Where nothing is foreseen and happens
really fast, for which no one can be
prepared.
Which expands the field of possible
social experiences by investigating the
alternatives
We also referred to what he calls the vision of the monocultures imposed by the globalization
(monoculture of: scientific knowledge and rigor, linear time, naturalization of the differences,
dominant scale and capitalism productivity) and its replacement by ecologies (ecology of:
knowledge, temporality, recognition, trans-scale and productivities.
Facing this, we quote Charlot4 who says that in view of the consequences of globalisation,
there are three positions:
1
Despacho n.º 25931/2009. Ministérios dos negócios Estrangeiros e da Educação. Estratégia Nacional de Educação para o
Desenvolvimento, pp. 48391- 48402.
2 Mesa, M. (Dir.). 2000b. La educación para el desarrollo en la Comunidad de Madrid: tendencias y estrategias para el siglo XXI.
Madrid: Informe a la Dirección General de Cooperación y Voluntariado de la Comunidad de Madrid
3 Santos, B. S. 2007. Renovar a teoria crítica e reinventar a emancipação social, São Paulo: Boitempo Editorial
- those who want to maintain a current position, defending its advantages and privileges;
- those that adhere to the present neoliberal globalisation, in the name of initiative,
efficiency, of liberty and of competition, etc.;
- and a third, that embraces, for example, “the Antiglobalist movement” (.....), that denies
at the same time the actual order and the neoliberal globalisation and argues that “another
world is possible” (2007:135).
The concepts that we addressed, in the workshop, are both committed with this third position.
We moved to the concepts of Social and Solidarity Economy5, highlighting some aspects:
-
-
Social Economy - European concept; XIXth century; related to the legal status of the
organisations, their mission, the ownership of assets and the kind of goods and
services produced (public goods);
Solidarity Economy – South American concept; late XXth century; encompasses all the
economic experiences resulting from the initiative of the citizens that represent a
rupture, an alternative, to the capitalist system.
In order to provoke a little discussion, we saw two videos – one from a cooperative in Brasil,
related to the solidarity economy, and other about a meeting promoted by the United
Nations Research Institute for Social Development, called “Voices to Social and Solidarity
Economy”.
The main idea was, through them and what we had been discussing during the workshop, to
present the connections between the concept of DE and SSE.
The discussion brought a lot of different sensibilities and issues:
- the similarities of the 1st video with the communist propaganda in the East countries;
- the possibility, or not, of the replacement of the capitalism and the market, by this
kind of initiatives;
- the need, or not, of publicity to this kind of solidarity experiences;
- the differences between these experiences and the communist system – these
experiences come from the people, because of the engagement and the commitment
of the citizens and it is not imposed “top-down”, from the governments;
- the possibility of thinking “outside of the box” in order to create alternatives;
- the desire, or not, of the SSE to replace the market and become an hegemonic way of
thinking;
- the relationship between these experiences and the DE concept, once one propose the
engagement of the citizens in order to analyse the situation and to propose
alternatives, building them, and SSE, which are exactly these kind of proposals.
4
Charlot, B. 2007. Educação e Globalização: uma tentativa de colocar ordem no debate. Texto de conferência proferida na
Faculdade de Psicologia e de Ciências da Educação da Universidade de Lisboa, a 14 de junho de 2007. Sísifo. Revista de Ciências
da Educação, 04: 129-136.
5
Laville, J-L. & Gaiger, L. I. 2009. Economia Social. In Cattani, A.D., Laville, J-L., Gaiger, L.I., Hespanha, P. (orgs), Dicionário
internacional da outra economia: 162-168. Coimbra: Almedina/CES.
Not having too much time, we had to finish the discussion and move on to our own way of
seeing the connections between the two concepts.
Accepting the three main stages of transformative learning proposed by the North-South
Centre of the Council of Europe6:

An analysis of the present world situation

A vision of what alternatives to dominant models might look like

A process of change towards responsible global citizenship,
if to educate for development is to prepare citizens for integration into the world which
surrounds them, then, it will promote the arising of different alternative proposals to address
the challenges that come – from economic issues, political issues, educational issues,
environmental issues, etc.
Following this line of thought, the SSE is a proposal of alternatives that arise, from the
economic world, to address, in a holistic way, a wide range of actual challenges.
Almost in the end of the workshop, I presented the conclusions of a study case I had done,
analyzing an NGDO working and funded by Development Education lines of funding, which
addresses economic issues, like Fair Trade and Responsible Consumption.
Those were the main “bridges” that came up, the elements in common, and therefore the
main learning points were:
The foundations: concepts and core values
1. Battles to fight: issues addressed
6
Centro Norte-Sul do Conselho da Europa. 2010. Guia prático para a Educação Global. Conceitos e metodologias no âmbito da
Educação Global para educadores e decisores políticos. Lisboa: Conselho Norte-Sul do Conselho da Europa.
2. Dilating the present: concept of globalisation
3. An economy intrinsically social: concept of economy
4. The search for well-being in fair and solidary relationships: concept of development
5. Committed participation: concept of citizenship
6. Emancipatory process: concept of education
7. Participation, questioning and coherence: methodologies
8. The protagonists: actors involved
9. Alternative proposals: pathways
At the end of the work, some participants shared that it is very important to DE to address
economic issues because they are one unavoidable issue when it comes to discuss
development models, whether politically, socially or purely in an economic point of view.
That´s perhaps the main implication for research discussed in this workshop.