Introduction

The book deals with the evolution of initiatives connected to the social and solidarity economy, and its political cultures and educational implications, in the south of Europe and in Latin America. It employs a comparative perspective and presents studies on Argentina, Chile, Portugal, France, Italy, Spain, and Catalonia. Faced with the interpretative schemes used for the Anglo-Saxon sphere, which are the usual reference in international research, this volume's geographical and cultural matrix of analysis is the Latin world. In this area, certain convergences emerge in the evolution of associationism, cooperativism, and mutualism, with ideological influences and shared policies, and organisations often characterised by functional polyvalence. The cyclical crises of capitalism with the corollary of inequalities have created, in peripheral societies such as those studied, proposals of reform accompanied by solid practice, the knowledge of which is now functional. The scarcity of previous comparative works in this field gives more relevance to this contribution.