L’ancrage territorial constitue, avec le fonctionnement démocratique et la solidarité économique, l’une des caractéristiques majeures de l’économie sociale et solidaire (ESS). Loin de postuler une territorialité spontanée de l’ESS, nous proposons de réintégrer l’observation des dynamiques d’ESS dans les jeux de complémentarité, de coopération ou de concurrence propres aux processus de constructions territoriales. Le statut de l’ESS dans les transformations globales des modes de coordination des systèmes productifs territoriaux est d’abord analysé. Deux pistes de recherche concernant l’ESS et la gouvernance territoriale sont ensuite déclinées. La première concerne l’institutionnalisation de l’ESS en tant que secteur de l’action publique territoriale. La seconde interroge le postulat d’une congruence parfaite entre le tournant horizontal et territorial de l’action publique et les objectifs affichés de l’ESS.Like democratic management and economic solidarity, local embeddedness is one of the main features of the social and solidarity economy. Far from arguing that the social and solidarity economy is naturally embedded in the community, we propose to bring the observed dynamics of the social and solidarity economy back into the complementarity, cooperation or competition specific to the processes of territorial constructions. The role of the social and solidarity economy in the global transformation of the coordination of territorial productive systems is then examined. Two lines of research concerning the social and solidarity economy and territorial governance are presented. The first concerns the institutionalisation of the social and solidarity economy as a sector of local community action. The second questions the premise that the horizontal and territorial transformation of local community action and the declared objectives of the social and solidarity economy are perfectly compatible

International audienceThis article brings to a conclusion the series of three special sections published in 2015 and 2016 by Religion, State and Society on ‘Religion and local politics in southern Europe’. We set up a research agenda on the interactions between religion and local politics in Southern Europe. In doing so, we focus on the localisation of religion, including religious debates, and on the impact of the recent economic crisis. More specifically, we address the local as a contested concept, the multilevel governance of religion as a scalar opportunity structure – in relation to the transnational dimension of religious actors – the effects of such changes in the welfare landscape and the impact of the economic crisis on the activities and strategies of religious actors in Southern Europe. Our research agenda focuses on the interactions between two main dimensions: the territorial impact of political and economic changes, and the multiscalar schemes of territorial governance

International audienceInteractions between politics and religion are frequently reduced to ethical and civilisational issues which are politicised and given prominence in the media. Focusing instead on the role of religious – here Catholic – actors in the local experience of social economy and welfare provision in times of economic crisis helps instead to highlight the discrete interactions between politics and religion. In particular, the strong involvement of religious actors, beyond their traditional charity-oriented activity, also concerns more solidarity-oriented socioeconomic experiences as well as political advocacy. These articulations generate new forms of politicisation with respect to both social movements and policymakers. In this article I address these issues comparatively in a Spanish region (the Basque Autonomous Community) and an Italian region (Emilia-Romagna)