Alternative Action Organizations During Hard Economic Times: A Comparative European Perspective

Abstract

The aim of this Special Issue is to offer new systematic analyses on European alternative (non)economic solidarity practices since the global financial crisis, that have attracted limited media and scholarly attention. Its seven articles are devoted to multidimensional analyses providing complementary perspectives on alternative action organizations across Europe and rest on Action Organization Analysis, a new hubs-website approach extending Protest Event Analysis. They deal with the emergence and continuity of alternative action organizations in different contexts, while they focus on its multiple tactics and the ways in which they address crisis-related needs under diverse conditions of vulnerability and hardship. Our contributions rely on original data produced in the context of Work Package 6 of the EU-funded FP7 project “Living with Hard Times: How Citizens React to Economic Crises and Their Social and Political Consequences” (LIVEWHAT), conducted across nine European countries.

Beyond Europe: Alternative visions of Europe amongst young activists in self-managed spaces in Italy

“…Many people also began to try to re-appropriate, from below, their free time and spaces for socialising and leisure, that have been increasingly threatened by processes of commercialisation, consumerism, and commodification (Milan, 2019). Inspired by mutualist and cooperative values, these alternative forms of resilience (Kousis, 2017) spread throughout Southern Europe. They took the form of activism that tended 'to cover basic and urgent needs related to food, shelter, health, childcare and education, as well as echoing a quest towards alternative economic models' (Kousis, 2017, p. 120).…”

Waves of transnational solidarity organisations in times of crises: actions, obstacles and opportunities in Europe

“…In fact, the financial and refugee crises of the past decade have witnessed the rise of solidarity organisations within and beyond national boundaries, including citizen initiatives, producer-consumer networks, time banks, cooperatives, NGOs, volunteer organisations, social movement groups/organisations, and unions. Such organisations often surface in response to hard economic times (Moulaert and Ailenei, 2005;Kousis and Paschou, 2017;Kousis, Kalogeraki and Cristancho, 2018), but are likely to sustain their activities for groups in need also in less turbulent periods.…”

Automation for the artisanal economy: enhancing the economic and environmental sustainability of crafting professions with human–machine collaboration

“…An associated site, commonstransition.org, is further distanced from dependence on earlier digital labor models and provides the Commons Transition Wiki as a repository with larger scale case studies and other potential sources for training data. Other sets of potential sources are those associated with MIT's FabLab initiative, including FabCity and the FabEconomy platforms (Gershenfeld et al 2017), and the LIVEWHAT project, which was conducted in France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK, gathering data on 46,550 websites of "alternative action organizations" for grassroots economic and civic activity (Kousis et al 2018).…”