Action Research as a tool for the Strengthening of the Small Businesses Collective (Copec) in Salto, Uruguay

Abstract

This article looks at the intervention process in the universe of the so-called family businesses or small business in the outskirts of the city of Salto, Uruguay. These are made up of commercial units whose economic function is linked, or better said, integrated, to the family structure function. This work is preceded by work done at the Universidad Cenur Litoral Norte between 2014 and 2015 with a group of about 15 entrepreneur units. On the whole, their location and influence area are neighborhoods; their importance lies in the relevance they have for the livelihood of the family. The family-business unit is seen as an integrality that broadly surpasses the economic factor; it is a family lifestyle with a specific identity that responds to a new production scenario. During 2016, a new experience with another group of seventeen business units took place, after reformulating the project’s objectives based on the previous experience. This time the participation methodology proposed by Tomás Rodríguez Villasante and the Citizens’ Network and Sustainable Environment (Cimas, acronym in Spanish) was adopted and as Rodriquez states in his book, through the incorporation of specificities of the process itself. In this participatory work dynamic, the actors themselves participated in the path to be taken by the small business collective of Salto through the generation of systematic training and exchange scenarios. Within this framework, this text presents this experience which seeks the creation and strengthening of the collective actor, highlighting the actors of the social and economic reality of the city of Salto.

Keywords

• actores sociales
• estrategia colectiva
• familias
• fortalecimiento
• Investigación Acción Participante
• pequeños comercios
• visibilidad.