The social and solidarity economy regains its value in both the North and the South. It demonstrates, once again, the hybrid nature of the economic action and the plural nature of the economy; in addition, it represents a critique to the antisocial nature of the capitalist economy.
This paper explores the historical ties between the experiences and movements in the North and in the South through a comparative analysis that seeks to identify the common foundations that lay under the singularities. To this end, we examine the configurations and appellations of the movements prior to the social and solidarity economy, namely the social economy and the cooperativism, but also the intertwined practices, such as the popular economy and third sector.
These collective arrangements of the economic action will be analysed from the point of view of their normative orientations, juridical and institutional morphology and their genesis. Not only particular historical contexts will be taken into consideration, but also the expectations of the protagonist social groups of these initiatives.