ABSTRACT
The hegemonic economic order is damaging the planet’s biospheres and by now even threatens the ecological foundations of our existence. A transformation of the economic system is urgently needed. This requires conceptualizing economy, understood as the provision of people for a good life, in harmony with the biospheres and thus in a circular way. This paper examines the relationship between the technical and the social in the concept of the circular economy. It analyzes attributions to circularity in both technical and social contexts. It then discusses definitions of circularity and requirements derived from them and argues two impossibilities of the mainstream concept of the circular economy. Based on this, the programmatic content of the circular economy concept is further analyzed, and the impossibilities identified are further substantiated. The chapter describes the assumptions of the social economy made in such concepts, drawing on studies in the corporate context, the policy context, and empirical research. Finally, conceptual implications are discussed and a practical approach is presented to leverage the potential of the social economy for a circular economy.
