The defi nition of the concept of solidarity economy (Eme and Laville 2006), 1 at the end of the 1980s and beginning of the 1990s, was based on the work of Karl Polanyi. This work and, more broadly, those on the plural economy (Roustang et al. 1996) adopted the Polanyian approach, according to which the market is not the sole economic mechanism and the economy has to be apprehended as a substantive approach rather than a formal one:

The substantive meaning of economic derives from man’s dependence for his living upon nature and his fellows. It refers to the interchange with his natural and social environment, in so far as this results in supplying him with the means of material want satisfaction.