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PurposeThis research article addresses the role of processes of normative regulation, driven by distinct approaches to collective action and underlying narratives of social change, in the construction of "solidarity economy" initiatives as parallel spatialities to that of the mainstream economy.Design/methodology/approachThis article is based on a comparative case study analysis, informed by aspects of the Grounded Theory and Extended Case Study methods, of an ecovillage, an alternative commercialization network and an "integral cooperative". The analysis is illustrated with fieldwork data on food production, commercialization and consumption, given its centrality in the construction of human livelihoods and lifeworld.FindingsThe resulting conceptual framework identifies three methodologies of normative regulation: Prefigurative social technologies and capitalizing upon power and reputation to exert influence over other economic actors; being part of a wider class-based emancipatory political project; mobilizing online peer-to-peer platforms and community currencies to construct an alternative institutionality.Research limitations/implicationsThis article constitutes an exploratory analysis. Further research, based on the application of mixed methodologies to larger samples, will further expand the setup and applicability of these concepts.Practical implicationsThis analysis will allow scholars and practitioners alike to gain a deeper understanding of how different approaches to collective action, based on distinct structural standpoints and narratives of change, constitute alternative economic spatialities to those of the mainstream economy.Social implicationsThe comparative approach used in this article, as well as the resulting concepts, have the potential of contributing to the convergence of "solidarity economy" strategies between initiatives and movements with different approaches to collective action, therefore contributing to improve their capacity to exercise influence upon incumbent institutional regimes, as well as promote socio-economic change.Originality/valueThis article aims to bridge a significant gap in the understanding of how "solidarity economy"-based parallel spatialities emerge and coexist with the mainstream economy: It analyses how processes of normative regulation result from narratives of change with distinct approaches to collective action, based on the standpoint of actors located differently within structural power relations.

AbstractOn his study of the counterculture of the '60's and '70's, Fred Turner argues that the application of systems-thinking and cybernetics to community-led initiatives (CLIs) makes them particularly vulnerable to internal factionalism and conflict, resulting from social and material pressures leading to the reproduction of mainstream norms and practices. Through the case study analysis of Cooperativa Integral Catalana (CIC) an "integral cooperative" for regional-level community development, this article explores how a governance strategy, combining online platforms for whole-system regulation and local nodes based on in-person relationships, promotes forms of normative regulation that contain factionalism and centrifugal tendencies in community-led initiatives (CLIs). Fieldwork evidence indicates that the use of online platforms and alternative currencies for overall network regulation does not prevent the accumulation of power by a core group of "professionalized activists". The lack of processes of socialization aimed at building a common "habitus" among members of the cooperative with distinct identities, backgrounds and motivations creates difficulties to the development of relationships based on trust, as well as obstacles to the overall management of the cooperative. However, the in-person relationships of proximity build in regional-level nodes created "micro-public spheres" of praxis-based, co-constructed normative regulation that prevented the escalation of internal conflicts to reach a point of rupture. Such relationships provided a "cushion" of resilience that allowed CIC to begin, at the time of fieldwork, a process of decentralization and simplification of its structure.

AbstractThis article explores an understudied dimension of Solidarity Economy, which is how spaces of community development-oriented commercialization balance the embedment of their activities in cooperative norms and practices, while at the same time mobilizing support from mainstream society and its institutions. The analysis is based on the case study of the Solidarity Economy markets organized by Esperança/Cooesperança, a community development project based in the town of Santa Maria, in the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. It engages the concept of "edge work", from Social Permaculture Design, in framing Solidarity Economy markets as spaces that manifest Karl Polanyi's vision of an "active society" in counter-movement to market commodification. This materializes as a reconciliation of cooperative practices with market mechanisms, based on trust-building and political mobilization, among different social sectors and agents, around direct producer-to-consumer exchanges. The analysis frames these markets as "mobilizational commons": Sites of re-signification of market activity through the engagement of otherwise competing producers in experimenting, enacting and coordinating cooperative practices, as well as of consumers, social movements and the state in the re-framing economic activity over time. It concludes with an analysis of the political limitations to the "edge work" promoted by Esperança/Cooesperança, posed by electoral rotation and political socialization, as well as the suggestion to frame further research on this topic in the context of structural power relations.

Abstract This article sheds light on the exclusionary dynamics that emerge when the construction of commons-based alternative political ecologies does not take political economy considerations into account. It analyses the relationship between Tamera – Healing Biotope I, and the ecosystem, population and institutions of the region of southwestern Alentejo, Portugal, where this ecovillage is located. Tamera is based on a prefigurative process of "commoning", transplanted from Central European counter-culture, which created a "borderland" that spatially segregates and at the same time creates a point of contact between two contrasting cultural, ecological and socio-economic realities. However, maintaining the "borderland" granted the community access to the resources needed to develop its vision, while countering existing regulations, although eventually involving the state in the development of a new regulatory framework. Since the mid- 2000s, Tamera has been engaging in cultural dialogue with the local population, with the support of the municipality. The analysis raises the question of how to develop regulatory and financial instruments that support ecovillages in promoting inclusive strategies of economic sustainability, integrating them in placebased dynamics of regional development. The specificities of their biophysical and social processes must be taken into account, as well as their vocation as "testfields" for sustainability. Keywords: Regional political ecology, ecovillages, regional development, social exclusion, cultural dialogue, regulatory innovation, Portugal

AbstractMost literature related to the study of processes of knowledge production within social movements neglects how power relations between participants rooted on structural inequalities shape such processes. It also underestimates how such inequalities and the very dynamics of movements intersect in the setting up of the 'boundaries' of 'insidership' and 'outsidership', as well as of the terms implicit in different forms of participation. This article makes a review of theoretical and methodological literature that is relevant to the study of processes of knowledge production within social movements. Based on that review, it proposes the concept of 'multi‐level power dynamics' as a tool for future research on the way in which such processes are shaped by power relations between movement members endowed with, or experiencing a differentiated access to different forms of knowledge, as well as with actors within the state and networks promoting the diffusion of ideas and strategies.

This article offers insights on how the institutional and material limitations, posed by the Israeli/Egyptian blockage on Gaza, promote learning processes that impact the strategic choices of an activist collective. It uses ethnographic data to explore micro processes of reasoning and decision-making in "Green Knowledge Community, Beats for Gaza", a network of Palestinian and international group of young activists aiming to promote grassroots-level resilience to Israeli occupation in this Palestinian territory. It analyses the shift from an initial focus on building an arts therapy school, which turned out to be unfeasible due to limitations both of the ground and among potential international donors, to a focus on permaculture, regarded as a strategy that could circumvent those limitations by mobilizing endogenous resources. The collective became progressively aware of the need to direct transnational knowledge diffusion to the support of the struggle for food sovereignty and grassroots economic self-determination through the localizing of agricultural production. This was due to the circumstances of the Israeli military occupation, Israeli/Egyptian blockage and the inclusion of a significant amount of arable land in the Gaza/Israel buffer, as well as to strategic choices of international donors, as well as the Hamas government.

Introduction: Exploring the Role of Education and the Pedagogical in Pathways to Twenty-First Century Socialism in Latin America; Sara C Motta --. - PART I: ON THE PHILOSOPHIES, THEORIES, AND HISTORIES OF EMANCIPATORY EDUCATION IN LATIN AMERICA --. - 1. Naming the World: Situating Freirean Pedagogics in the Philosophical Problematic of Nuestra Am̌rica; Jon L. Mansell --. - 2. Marxism and Popular Education in Latin America; Liam Kane --. - 3. On the Pedagogical Turn in Latin American Social Movements; Sara C Motta --. - PART II: EDUCATION STRUGGLES AND/IN LEFT GOVERNMENTS --. - 4. Nicaragua: Deprivatizing Education, the Citizen Power Development Model, and the Construction of Twenty-First Century Socialism; Thomas Muhr --. - 5. A Critical Theoretical Perspective on Education and Social Change in Bolivia A Contested Alternative Pedagogy; Mieke Lopes Cardozo --. - 6. Epistemic Independence Struggles: A Comparative Analysis of Two Indigenous Universities in Peru and Ecuador; Lenin Arturo Valencia Arroyo --. - 7. Education for the Creation of a New Venezuela; Francisco Dominguez --. - 8. Hugo Ch̀vez, Social Democracy and Twenty-First-Century Socialism in Venezuela: An Alternative to the Neoliberal Model; Mike Cole --. - INTERLUDE: Some, Our Leaves of Fall; Angela Martinez Dy --. - PART III: EDUCATION AND PEDAGOGY FROM BELOW --. - 9. Movement Methodologies and Transforming Urban Space; Jennifer L. Martinez --. - 10. Which Education for Which Democracy?: The Case of the Penguins' Revolution in Chile; Ivette Hernandez --. - 11. Experiential and Relational Dimensions in the Pedagogical Practice of Solidarity Economy: Insights from Brazil; Ana Margarida Esteves --. - 12. Colombia: Education and Gender in Context; Glory Rigueros Saavedra --. - 13. Cali's Women in Collective Crossing through Three Worlds: Popular Education, Feminisms, and Nonviolence for the Expansion of the Present, Memory and Nurturing of Life; Norma Lucia Bermdez --. - Conclusion: The Current Crisis in Capita