The New Social and Impact Economy. An International Perspective, Under the Direction of Benjamin Gidron and Anna Domaradzka, Springer, 2021

“Crises require us to find solutions to daily problems in a different context, they serve as a trigger for change which was blocked before and provide a context for creative thinking; crises may also overthrow predominant ideologies” (Gidron and Domaradzka, 2021, p. 4). The starting point of this inspiring book is the role of the 2008 global economic crisis in challenging the liberal economic model based on the separation between economy and society. Crises provide an opportunity to highlight the social economy’s importance in responding to the environmental, economic, and social challenges raised by sustainable development. They enhance and stimulate the hybridization and the renewal of social economy’s organizational forms. The book’s redaction and publication right at the heart of another crisis, the Covid-19 pandemic one, add weight to this founding argument which brings together the contributions. Benjamin Gidron is an Emeritus Professor at the Guilford Glazer School of Business & Management of Ben-Gurion’s University of the Negev, Israel. He is a pioneer in third-sector research in Israel, as a participant in the Johns Hopkins Comparative Study of the Nonprofit Sector. He had already published work proposing an international comparative perspective on third sector development (e.g.: Gidron and Bar, 2009). Anna Domaradzka is an Assistant Professor and the Associate Director for Research at the Robert Zajonc Institute for Social Studies at the University of Warsaw, Poland. She specializes in civil society organizations and social movements. They are the two editors of this newly published collective work which comprises twelve contributions as well as introductory and concluding chapters. Twenty-five authors propose rich insights on the social economy’s dynamics in ten national contexts covering Europe, North and South America, and Asia. This work was conducted through the FAB-MOVE research program funded by the European Commission between 2016 and 2018, which many contributors participated in. The book carries the ambition to open a research agenda on the so-called new social and impact economy. The need for new terminology, or more accurately the juxtaposition of the old term of social economy with both the adjective new and the recent impact economy term, is advocated for in the introductory chapter. It proposes a clarification of the concepts of social economy, social entrepreneurship, and impact economy. Before opening the way for the new social economy, the former one’s historical and political roots are richly described, from its links with and distinction from socialism to the frictions between its solidarity project with philanthropy-based competing perspectives, which influenced Corporate social responsibility (CSR) approaches. Social economy is reshaping itself through hybrid organizational forms (social enterprise) and new tools aiming at both social utility and financial profitability (impact investment). This reflects a global shift from a communal orientation of social economy to the proliferation of more individual-based and individualistic ways of engaging in social change (social entrepreneurship). Social economy roots in a European-centered tradition dating back hundreds of years, associated with the predominant forms of cooperatives and associations. The editors demonstrate how its trajectory has always been punctuated by the European crises. According to the editors, the choice to evoke the new social economy underlines the renewal of its organizational forms driven by the 2008 crisis, which may be accelerated by the Covid-19 one. Bringing together this well-anchored concept with the emerging one of impact economy would enable us to comprehend the diversity of unique social economy evolutions as being the localized and context-specific signs of a macro-scale, global transformation of capitalism. The book’s proposal is thus to understand the global social economy’s dynamics linked to crises in proposing an international approach that …