Eco-social enterprises: ethical business in a post-socialist context

The end of postsocialism (as we knew it): Diverse economies and the East

“…6 Furthermore, while the few existing accounts of diverse economies in the East contribute to revealing the complexity of local economic practices, they tend to emphasise their negative aspects. For instance, Smith and Stenning's (2006) inventory mentions grey and black economies while omitting other less controversial alternatives such as the pre-socialist cooperative tradition in CEE (Johanisova et al, 2020). This and later work (Stenning et al, 2010) recognises the importance of self-provisioning and care work, but it mostly discusses the power relations in these practices, which reproduce inequalities based particularly on age and gender.…”

“…In this time of growing relevance of critical economic thought, a curious blind spot remains in the geography of research on diverse economies. Apart from a handful of exceptions (Cima, 2020;Ichinkhorloo, 2018;Johanisova et al, 2020;North, 2020;Pavlovskaya, 2004Pavlovskaya, , 2013Smith, 2020;Smith and Stenning, 2006;Sovová, 2020), scholars identifying with this approach have shied away from an area which experienced one of the most turbulent transformations in modern history: the former Eastern Bloc or Second Worldthat is, the former Soviet Union (FSU) and parts of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). What we refer to as the (postsocialist) East 1 faced socioeconomic reforms of unprecedented scale throughout the last century, representing an exceptional context for the study of social change that is however largely neglected by diverse economies scholars.…”