6EMESconf - Thematic lines and conveners

July 03 — July 06

2017

Can social enterprise help overcome the current crises? Issues such as growing social inequalities, massive unemployment, the lack of economic democracy, and environmental unsustainability have increased the global expectations of social enterprises. Each in its own way, governments, civil society actors, non-profit leaders as well as the business sector, are seeking to discover, or rediscover, new possibilities of promoting economic approaches while targeting social aims. Indeed, examples of social enterprise and initiatives to support these goals have dramatically increased.

However, do these innovative practices promote institutional economic diversity and democracy or do they contribute to the weakening of solidarity through the marketization of society? Likewise, is their potential to address the major current and future economic, social, environmental and societal challenges fully understood?

Social enterprises naturally cross various types of borders, in terms of sectors (public, business, cooperatives, associations), resources (drawing them from the market, public procurement and grants, volunteering, etc.) and activity fields. Their social mission usually marks the activity field where they operate, ranging from more traditional fields such as access to social services and health and work integration to the most innovative ones, such as social and ecological transition, social finance and culture.

In a truly worldwide and interdisciplinary perspective, this conference will discuss the challenges faced by social enterprises in this critical period and the opportunities and challenges they face to build sustainable societies. The conference will aim to bring together research communities from all over the world related to the third sector (non-profit sector, cooperatives, social economy, solidarity economy and civil society) and researchers working on social innovation, social entrepreneurship, commons, sustainable transition, popular economy, etc.

In order to organize the discussion across fields and disciplines, the conference will be structured along the following 10 main thematic lines, each of them supported by various conveners. The titles and conveners of the 10 thematic lines are included below; for a detailed description, please download the “Full call” on the right.