Transmuting solidarity: hybrid-economic practices in the social economy in Greece

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article explores the consequences of fusing market-based and social principles for how ‘the social’ and solidarity is understood. To do so, I turn to the recently formalized ‘Social and Solidarity Economy’(SSE) in Greece. I conceptualize the SSE as a governmental mode of power that attempts to render social and market-based principles as commensurate. I claim this occurs through the codification and proliferation of what we may call ‘hybrid-economic practices’ – such as social impact measurement, and social innovation. Hybrid-economic practices fuse a utilitarian, efficiency-maximizing logic that weighs costs and benefits, with narratives of solidarity and collective social purpose. Based on a qualitative analysis of the SSE law in Greece and interviews with practitioners and policy-makers, I claim that fusing market-based and social principles come at the cost of depleting the political and ethical components of solidarity and ‘the social.’ Yet, rather than depoliticizing them, I argue hybrid-economic practices more appropriately transmute how solidarity and ‘the social’ is understood through three mutually constitutive processes: economization, entrepreneurialization, and communitarianization.