Social Economy and the Economics of Sustainable Development: complex relationships, major stakes

Abstract

Social Economy and Sustainable economics are two independent fields that sometimes refer one to another. The former is primarily concerned with “social capital” issues, while the latter deal with “natural capital” stakes. When referring to the other field, there is no systematic analysis of the interrelations between their respective goals, tools, methods and concepts. As a matter for fact, it happens that goals of social economy actors are opposite to those of sustainable economy actors; conversely, they sometimes lead to the same conclusions and policies. In this paper we explore the positive and negative relations between the two fields in order to evaluate in a systematic way how they could cooperate. We show that social economy concepts were developed much earlier and, thus, without reference to sustainable development issues. Nowadays, social economy studies remain primarily focused on social capital development. However, sustainable economics might find very useful tools and concepts in the field of social economy, which should encourage cooperation between scientists and actors of the two fields.Sustainable development; strong sustainability; weak sustainability; social economy; social utility; social enterprises; growth; index;