Mapping a Better World
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Where is that elusive, nearly invisible, essential economy that cares for people caring for each other?
Recent circumstances have forced me to reflect on a career that has traversed the seemingly unrelated fields of geology and social innovation.
Keywords: social and solidarity economy (SSE), doughnut economy
Ardnamurchan Central Complex in Scotland, known for its unique geology. Image credits: Natural Environment Research Council and British Geological Survey.
Perhaps now, in these strange pandemic times, it is important to start to join the dots and construct some kind of order from the chaos. The joined-up picture seems to reveal the innate talent and kindness to be found in every individual; the potential of neighborhoods as places of happy lives and the unit of social change; support mechanisms greatly skewed in the wrong direction when it comes to building a future for our common good; and the need for more awareness of how the social and solidarity economy (SSE) can lead us to a better future for people and the planet – if we can only find it.
Have you ever tried to prove the value of something only to be flabbergasted by how others view the evidence and extrapolate their own judgements? The experience of setting up and running a ‘neighborhood incubator’ was part of my learning journey in this respect. It is a place where local residents of Tøyen in Oslo can come and be supported while they experiment and then start their own social enterprises: enterprises that have a social mission driving them but which sell enough services and products to make them sustainable, and with legal certifications that reflect their primary goal of social value creation.
The incubator is run by Tøyen Unlimited¹ and has had about 50 adults and the same number of young people involved so far. The impact that each of these people has on making life good is significant. Over 60% are still actively working with their enterprise three years after starting up. But one always wonders what would happen if the support for each of them were doubled, tripled or mainstreamed as the blueprint for positive change in the area and beyond.
It has become clearer and clearer over the years that there is a massive lack of structural, systemic or even much solidaric support for these individuals, the social economic businesses they run, the support structures behind them, and the related initiatives that increase awareness of the impact made by the social and solidarity economy as a whole. Some grants are given here or there, some minor newspaper articles written, an occasional invite arrives to speak at a conference, and a continuous struggle remains to find a way to provide support through access to physical spaces and expert knowledge.
If you cross the street, or the town, to the largely tech-based start-up labs, innovation hubs and co-working ‘shiny places’ the picture is quite different. Investment in a community grassroots incubator would pay off many times over, not in maximum shareholder profit but in social return on investment and in making places where people can thrive and live out lives of happiness and well-being. But when did an innovation agency, government or philanthropist invest long-term in the more local, alternative spaces making social value, far from the co-working spaces with streamlined design and expensive coffee machines?
“It has become clearer and clearer over the years that there is a massive lack of structural, systemic or even much solidaric support”
What is it about our extraordinary ability to neglect the economies that care for people who care for each other? One explanation is the absence of visibility of the social and solidarity economy through the most powerful, most mind-boggling way of opening our intellects to what is possible: beautiful images and evocative stories.
Joining dots, creating pictures
The maps of the 19th Century geologists certainly changed our understanding of the world. I spent many years observing geological features on every scale. Each field observation, for instance, was written down and sketched in little brown notebooks. It was only back at the office, that the data-dots were collected in representations of time and space via (back then) hand-drawn ink and water-colour painted maps and drawings of cross sections of the earth’s crust. These were illustrations of great pride and some beauty that had the potential to communicate data, thoughts and interpretations from a myriad of sources.
I was reminded of the power of maps when I read the first chapters of Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics². Therein is a section called The Power of Pictures that begins:
“we need a new economic story, a narrative of our shared economic future that is fit for the twenty-first century. But let’s not forget one thing: the most powerful stories throughout history have been the ones told with pictures. If we want to rewrite economics, we need to redraw its pictures too, because we stand little chance of telling a new story if we stick to the old illustrations.”
The chapter lists the London Underground map, Imago Mundi map and Copernicus’s map of the universe as examples plotting patterns from complex issues into unforgettable graphic representations. The Doughnut is the rising star of new economic imagery. Introduced as a ‘twenty-first century compass’ it aims to be a new kind of map for a new framing of a new kind of economy.
The doughnut’s ability to communicate an ecological ceiling of planetary boundaries we mustn´t pass combined with a social foundation for human well-being, at the same time as showing there is a limited space for a ‘safe and just space for humanity’, and calling it by such a universally transferable and recognizable object as a doughnut, gives a powerful new image to build a future from. Like the geological map equivalent, the doughnut is designed to holistically absorb a huge variety of data; these are the mega-containers we so desperately need to be able to refer to when we want to show what is important and why, and these pictures can enable us to move forwards to a better world in a joined-up holistic fashion.
The “Doughnut” is visualising the necessary social foundation (inner green circle) and the ecological ceiling (outer green circle). In between these two a “safe and just space for humanity” can exist. Image credit: DoughnutEconomics
Personally, the most moving images for a new economy that have changed me forever are the photographs of real people from Tøyen – cool and stunning pictures of Desta, Ole, Wid, Shamsa, Amina, Hussein, Suad and Edvard to name a few. More well-known faces representing a solidarity economy might be Bernie Sanders, Jacinda Ardern, Nicola Sturgeon, or the citizens of Iceland queuing up with their ideas for the constitution. But in Tøyen is it Tina, Shad, Yoana and Quais that remind us of what a different economy can create when it is inspired and driven by the people living next door.
Then there is the image of the Brixton pound note³ with David Bowie on it – a community currency designed to lock value into this neighborhood that needs it. No sucking out and profit redistribution to far-distant shareholders, but instead a feeling of pride and belonging from the image of the local hero on the banknotes, and a feeling of local solidarity for when paying with it.
The Brixton Pound 10-pound note with a picture of David Bowie on one side and a peace sign on the other. Image credits: Brixton Pound
There are other small signs that help guide our way to the SSE: CIC (Community Interest Company⁴) at the end of a company name; a Social Enterprise Mark⁵ stamp; a ‘Buy Social⁶’ or ‘We take Bristol Pounds⁷’ sign stuck on a shop door; or possibly a B-Corp certification⁸ creeping into bigger businesses that want to show they are ready to be accountable to the planet and people as well as financial returns. Each time I see these signals, I cheer up and smile to myself – the social and solidarity economy is out there, you just need to look hard to spot it.
Any economy is not static. All economies have greater-goals to achieve over time, they want to make societal change. Any illustration hoping to change the world must take a time dimension into account. Social change might be captured best not in reporting annual profits in an Excel sheet but in powerful storytelling (and in SROI⁹ (social return on investment) calculations if it makes sense to do so). The stories are those of the changes made by local changemakers, global changemakers, changes in neighborhoods and changes in planetary distopias/oases.
Historical time is the only dimension we can use to record what really works when changing an economy in a more solidaric direction. The story of how Brazil’s important SSE came to be is now over a century old¹⁰. It started with multiplying acts of local grassroots solidarity initiatives that led to a real movement, that in turn became more organized into local and regional forums. These then started co-creating with local public sector actors, who then influenced their colleagues upwards, and eventually SSE became institutionalized with a dedicated government minister.
Can we see a comparative branch of evolution in our western, high-income countries, linked to a dramatic awakening of global crises and shift towards taking responsibility for more positive societal and environmental impact?
There are concrete signs of an informal movement becoming more structured (e.g. through new legal forms – CICs, B-Corps, measurement and procurement practices¹¹). Policy makers and politicians are talking about co-creation with their citizens. Visionary leaders (New Zealand¹², Amsterdam¹³ and Costa Rica) are showing how to do it differently. Mission driven banks (Scotland¹⁴) and mission innovation policies (Sweden¹⁵) are the new way of investing in change. Ethical and mutual banks are trying to grow¹⁶ as alternative financial institutions catering to social enterprises and community needs in a more human way. The World Economic Forum is talking of stakeholders over shareholders. The social value agenda is slowly taking more space on the European Commission’s agenda. Citizen assemblies and participatory budgeting are showing their wider benefits. Not all of these are SSE per se, but they are signaling a trend, a shift in that direction.
Trained to observe
Geologists consider themselves 'trained to observe' - the skill we use to identify secrets living within rocks and landscapes: the difference between ‘fool’s gold, black gold and real gold’. Now it is more about observing social phenomena, observing people at the margins of mainstream culture, observing creativity flourishing when given a safe space and faith in your abilities, observing who wields power how and where, observing hierarchy, observing bravery and failures by leaders we depend upon, observing who wins and who loses, who´s visible, who´s invisible, and who is supported through life and who is not. All these observations are data-points that are collected, analyzed and combined with overarching societal trends and planetary crises. And the joined-up whole is what represents a new map for a better world.
“After we have made the invisible visible we can change the systems and build the social infrastructure for what will work for our universal common good”
Since the data around social and planetary problems is massive, we need a starting point for our observations. The SSE¹⁷ most often comes from the local communities and influences upwards. Decision makers would do well to follow what is happening in neighbourhoods and place-based settings. They should observe and listen carefully and empathetically with sensitivity and open mindedness, and support what they observe.
Supporting each little observation does not have the power to change the established knowledge of what works for our common good (where everyone can thrive) but gradually, slowly, the micro-data points and the emerging megatrends can be put on a single map or in a doughnut, and give us useful, positive, hopeful dots to join and thus create the pictures to refer to as we envision the way forward. After we have made the invisible visible we can change the systems and build the social infrastructure for what will work for our universal common good¹⁸.
Imagery is often associated with ‘the arts’ and indeed a current exhibition in Oslo, ‘Actions of Art and solidarity’, runs parallel to many of the themes in this article¹⁹:
“The exhibition proposes that the solidarity imaginaries expressed by artworks, and embodied by specific artistic actions, are always the outcome of the extensive processes of artist-led care-building that precede and succeed them. Moreover, it is those very networks of personal connectivity and empathy created by artists over time around a particular issue (in alliance and in friendship with everyday citizens and activists) and configured within their artworks of solidarity, that inspire society at large to imagine life differently and step-forward in ways that generate profound transformation”.
Bringing these sentiments and impact into a visible and mainstreamed economy would indeed bring profound transformation. To do so we have to have all sectors and every talent working not for themselves, not for charity, but for solidarity and mutualism.
The grandfather of mutualism²⁰ – Kropotkin – began his working life as a geologist. Maybe there is something about being trained to really observe; to learn how to join dots and deal with complexity in time and space, that naturally leads to the social and solidarity economy as the only sensible way forward for the planet and for people.
Our home, our stone. The Earth is a finite world in infinite space, containing the visible and invisible, changing in time and space- with one mission for all of us, its crew: let's map ways for all future generations to thrive and prosper in balance with nature. This photograph of the Earth taken by astronaut Bill Anders during the Apollo 8 mission, popularised as ‘Earthrise’. Image credits: Wikimedia Commons/NASA
P.S
What images light in your brain when you read ‘social and solidarity economy’? I asked various friends and colleagues and their answers included:
A city full of flowers, the Human Kindness book by Bregman, a beehive of connections of interlocking hands, a woven tapestry of collectively owned economic activities, the Tool Library in Portobello Edinburgh, a yearly calendar drawn as seasonal plants, Lech Walesa…
We each have our own wildly different image; we need an SSE container that has room to collect all of these – and that is supported by the most visionary and boldest leaders of our time, be they in local communities or at the top of corporate companies and political systems.
¹ Tøyen Unlimited https://www.veiviseren.no/forstaa-helheten/eksempler-og-erfaringer/toyen-unlimited
² Raworth K., 2017 Doughnut Economics, Random House Business Books, https://www.kateraworth.com/
³ Brixton pound website https://brixtonpound.org/
⁴ Community Interest Companies, UK government office of the regulator of Community Interest Companies, https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/office-of-the-regulator-of-community-interest-companies
⁵ Social Enterprise Mark: Social Enterprise Accreditation Authority https://www.socialenterprisemark.org.uk/
⁶ Social Enterprise UK, Buy Social Campaign, https://www.socialenterprise.org.uk/campaigns/buy-social/
⁷ Bristol Pound – the UK’s largest local currency https://bristolpound.org/
⁸ Certified B-Corpoations https://bcorporation.net/about-b-corps
⁹ Sopact guide to SROI https://www.sopact.com/social-return-on-investments-sroi
¹⁰ Helmsing, A.H.J. & Lemaître, Andreia. (2011). Solidarity economy in Brazil: movement, discourse and practice. Analysis through a Polanyian understanding of the economy.
¹¹ Social Value Portal, Social Value in Scotland https://socialvalueportal.com/social-value-in-scotland/
¹² Well Being Economy Alliance https://wellbeingeconomy.org/
¹³ Nugent, C. 2021 Could Amsterdam's New Economic Theory Replace Capitalism? https://time.com/5930093/amsterdam-doughnut-economics/
¹⁴ The Scottish National Investment Bank https://www.thebank.scot/
¹⁵ Missions – an innovative way to tackle societal challenges https://www.vinnova.se/en/m/missions/
¹⁶ Dodds, G.B. 2020. Barriers to growing the purpose-driven banking sector in the UK, the Finance Innovation Lab https://financeinnovationlab.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Purpose-Driven-Finance-Finance-Innovation-Lab.pdf
¹⁷ https://www.socialeconomy.eu.org/
¹⁸ Britton, T. (2020) Universal Basic Everything - Creating essential infrastructure for post Covid 19 neighbourhoodshttps://tessybritton.medium.com/universal-basic-everything-f149afc4cef1
¹⁹ Actions of Art and Solidarity, e-flux. https://www.e-flux.com/announcements/361924/actions-of-art-and-solidarity/
¹⁹ Whitely, M. 2020 Why ‘Mutual Aid’? – social solidarity, not charity, Open Democracy https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/why-mutual-aid-social-solidarity-not-charity/
