This project will measure, map and analyze economic forms of production, consumption, exchange, finance, and governing of common resources that pursue social and environmental sustainability associated with the broad range of activities known as "the solidarity economy." Organizations participating in the solidarity economy are considered to be those that prioritize ethical commitment to cooperation, democratic participation, ecological resilience and social inclusion. Examples of organizations in this group include worker cooperatives, such as Cooperative Home Care Associates in the Bronx and Isthmus Engineering and Manufacturing in Wisconsin; consumer cooperatives, such as REI and Lancaster Farm Fresh; community land trusts, such as the Champlain Housing Trust in Vermont; credit unions; food cooperatives; and other enterprises, such as Wikipedia and local bike-sharing programs. This interdisciplinary research project will gather information about the solidarity economy in the United States, with its core hypothesis being that the U.S. solidarity economy has substantial and often unrecognized impacts on local communities in terms of increasing economic activity, employment, well-being, and overall socio-environmental sustainability. The investigators will use mixed methods from geography, economics, and other social sciences, including geographic information system-based analyses, surveys, in-depth interviews, and economic impact modeling. They expect to produce the first estimate of the spatial distribution, economic output, and locally significant influences associated with the solidarity economy in the U.S., both nationally and at local levels in Philadelphia, New York City, and Massachusetts. The project will make available a website for research, education, and participatory mapping of the solidarity economy, and it will generate a guide to enable replication of the analysis across the country by researchers, community groups, and policymakers.
This project will establish the groundwork for the solidarity economy as a new object of geographic, economic, and social research in the U.S., and it will develop methods for analysis of its nature and influence. The mapping and measurement of the role of the solidarity economy will help identify place-based strategies for local economic development. Project findings will contribute to efforts to create more socially and environmentally sustainable economic institutions that produce equity alongside jobs, goods, and services. With local community members participating in the project as researchers along with senior researchers and both graduate and undergraduate students, the project is expected to yield new insights regarding the efficacy with which solidarity economy organizations generate solutions to the pressing social problems of inequality, unemployment, and ecological unsustainability.
