ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the fragilities and strengths of solidarity economy in Portugal, emphasizing, in epistemological terms, some important differences with other similar-sounding concepts. Social economy enjoys a greater institutional recognition when compared with solidarity economy, which has to do with the role that it can play, and it actually plays, as a substitute of a new-liberalized Welfare State. Social enterprise in Portugal may be characterized by a strong concern with replicability, so that the concepts of scale and impact are fundamental for the evaluation of these experiences; and by a concern with the “efficiency” of the experiences understood as a measure of suitability to the market. Made of a multitude of experiences and present in all aspects of the daily life of either the rural or urban population, solidarity economy in Portugal assumes the most diverse forms and seeks to solve practically all the problems that involve the management of scarce resources.
