Workgroup on Solidarity Socio-Economy

21 Proposal Papers

A red card for tourism?
Tourism has numerous consequences on societies and environment. It is the sole human activity that leads, in a massive way, for better and for worse, to a face to face encounter between the well-to-do populations of the North and the sometimes poor populations of the Southern continents, because of their beauty, of their climate, and often because of their preserved cultures as well. This (...)

Companies Beyond Profit?
This proposals paper is a synthesis of the work by the "Companies and solidarity" Workshop. If the main question is how to invert the aims of the economy, in order to reinsert mankind in the core of the project, and in which the companies are just one of its parts, an initial debate concerns the level of the business enterprises' responsibility for the process of globalization and its (...)

Debt and structural adjustments
Case study on a microfinance experiment in Thailand. This work will be used to create a DPH data sheet and to launch a preparatory debate forum for the Dhaka meeting in November 2000, which will be the INASIA network's first significant meeting addressing the subject of economic initiative. Documents

Economic policies
Currently, economic polices synthesise the main characteristics of the neo-conservative system. They have been responsible for borrowing and updating conservative principles, previously thought obsolete, once again giving impetus to the expansion of a new wave of accumulation by the capitalist economy. The challenge is to make economic policies capable of redistributing revenues and wealth, (...)

Ethical Consumption
This proposals paper is a synthesis of the work by the "Ethical Consumption" Workshop. The acceleration of the production cycle and the use of natural raw materials, added to the enormous amount of waste generated throughout the process, is leading the system towards a growing entropy, which in the long-term represents ecocide, the gradual destruction of the environment, which is the basis (...)

Fair Trade
This Proposal Paper is a summary of the work accomplished by the Fair Trade Workshop The proposals of the Thematic Workshop on Fair Trade of the Alliance for a Responsible, Plural and United World are the provisional result of two years of collective international and cross-cultural debate on this issue. They are based on the experiences, discussions, and innovations that took place in this (...)

Fiscal policies and social welfare
Tax policy should be designed as an instrument for redistributing wealth within societies and ensuring social protection. At government level this means that defining economic policies in general should no longer be done to the advantage of financial markets, but as a function of social values decided democratically. Experiments such as participatory budgets are the sparks needed to set such (...)

From the Failure of the WTO in Seattle ... to the Conditions for Global Governance
This proposals paper is a synthesis of the work by the "From the WTO's setback at Seattle... to the Conditions for Global Governance" Workshop. Ever since the WTO Conference in Seattle, there has been growing awareness of globalisation issues within civil society and this awareness has now spread beyond the circle of the best-informed activists. Many categorically and perhaps a little (...)

Growth and sustainable development
Overall sustainable development supposes that two concepts are called into question: 1) the pseudo law of "market self-regulation"; 2) the notion of "human insatiability" as the basis of "needs". A sustainable culture must give precedence to the fulfilment of "being" rather than to "having". All its facets should be made clear: cultural (there is no single system of sustainable development, (...)

Health and its Issues in the Twenty-first Century
The current crisis of humankind manifests itself principally through the fact that a great part of its members suffer from, among other things, poverty, injustice, discrimination, inequality, lack of technologies and difficulties in accessing health services. Health is a fundamental factor of human development, and an health-centred analysis is thus essential, and can provide us with elements (...)

How Can Companies Exercise Their Responsibilities?
For Sustainable Prosperity. Proposal for a code of conduct on how to exercise economic, social, and environmental responsibilities in companies. Company legitimacy, in the eyes of civil society, is based on the whole of their impact on society and not only on their economic role. The influence of companies on the evolution of societies is all the more significant that traditional systems of (...)

Precarity and exclusion
An attempt to unite the "socially excluded" and the "socially accepted" who are determined to fight against a society that generates and trivialises precarious situations. Furthermore, to offer support in their working towards achieving a different society, where property, power and knowledge are shared. Is there another way of apprehending business, the market and society? In any case, it (...)

Production, Investment, and Technology
This proposals paper is the summary of the "Production, Technologies and Investment" Workshop debates on the electronic forum and the meeting at Bangalore, India on the 5th and 6th of May 2001. Societies which have had free markets and have had bad experiences loudly proclaim the merits of a socialist state controlled economy, while those societies which have suffered the ills of socialist (...)

Social Money: Lever of the Economic Paradigm
This Proposal Paper is a synthesis of the work by the "Social Money as a Lever for the New Economic Paradigm" Workshop. During the last two decades, a variety of experiences related to complementary currencies have been developed in different social and cultural contexts, in which the shortage or absence of money is met with creativity through distinct instruments of exchange. These (...)

Solidarity Economy
This proposals paper is a synopsis of the work of the Solidarity Economy Workshop. Today both Northern and Southern countries are faced with common challenges. The hegemonic model of economic development, rooted in the globalization of capitalism, seems to be reaching its limits. Although it allows moderate rates of economic growth, it also leads to more and more alarming rates of (...)

Solidarity Finance
This proposals paper is a synthesis of the work by the "Solidarity Finance" Workshop. The interventions of Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) in Northern countries create a link between savers (those who possess financial assets) and borrowers (those who lack such assets) by conferring an ethical nature on savings. The social link is created between populations with financial means (the (...)

The Trade-union Movement at the Dawn of the Twenty-first Century
The Socioprofessional Network of Trade Unions of the Alliance for a Responsible, Plural and United World has tried to identify strategies and tactics that can modernize and improve the trade-union movement’s response to the challenge of globalization, precarious working conditions, and communication difficulties that can arise between trade unionists and members of other social movements (...)

Toward Sustainable Finance at the Service of the Common Good
This proposals paper is a synthesis of the work by the "Escaping from the financialisation maze: finance for the common good" Workshop. The importance of finance in the western vision of society has grown in parallel to an increased confidence in the future of the system and to the multiplication of assets and financial transactions. This process can be qualified as the "financialisation" (...)

Women and the Economy
This proposals paper summarizes the work of the Women and the Economy Workshop, in which more than 50 people took part via an electronic forum (women@socioeco.org), and two meetings, one in Paris between October 9th and 11th 2000 and the other in Le Havre between April 9th and 11th 2001. Women live, work and produce in strongly contrasting conditions. However it seems that they share an (...)

Work, Employment, and Activity
A summary document of the work resulting from the electronic forum of the "Work, Employment" workshop, the Synthesis Congress, carried out in Florianopolis/Brazil, from 27th to 29th April 2001 and the Congress of the 15 PSES workshops, in Findhorn, from 9th to 15th June 2001. The document deals with transformations in the world of work as well as the theme of syndicalism, related to the (...)

World Trade Organization
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