Community learning and learning-by-struggling in solidarity economics

Abstract

The article covers the concept of solidarity economics developed by autogenous revolutionary struggles – potentias – in the Global South from the 1950s onwards. Theoretical placement and contextualisation of solidarity economics is critically discussed in the second section, followed by methodological and theoretical work on the concept in the third section. Findings and observations from field research in India and Venezuela conducted by the author in 2007 and 2008 are presented in the fourth section, where solidarity economics is seen as an epistemic community with the new language of struggle and also as an attempt at other epistemologies. Perspectives for mutual, participatory, and community learning from the aspect of ‘learning-bystruggling’ and the educational platform embedded in assemblies, encounters, and different forms of group discussion and decision-making processes are considered in the fourth and fifth sections, together with the idea of the authentic re-creation of community.

Keywords

• Solidarity economics
• militant research
• social transformation
• community learning
• learning-by-struggling