Atlas: Toward a coherent theoretical framework of social economy: an analysis of the gandhian paradigm by Anup Kumar Dash

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ISTR Sixth International Conference
Toronto, Canada / July 11-14, 2004
Contesting Citizenship and Civil Society in a Divided World

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Toward a coherent theoretical framework of social economy: an analysis of the gandhian paradigm
by
Anup Kumar Dash
Utkal University, JF-4,Vani Vihar, Bhubaneswar - 751 004, Orissa, INDIA

Of the two pillars of the Third Sector (Civil Society and Social Economy), Social Economy has received much less serious research and policy attention. Social Economy today is an umbrella for a loose federation of diverse concepts(e.g., solidarity finance, socially responsible investment,social enterprise, alternative money, peoples' economy, fair trade, microfinance etc) anf experiments (some based on a rediscovery of the old ones like cooperatives, self-help groups, local savings groups etc., which were marginalised by the force of the liberal-capitalist regime, and other new ones like time banks, collective kitchens, local exchange systems, proximity services etc.). While each of them represents innovative forms of social and economic arrangements at the micro level, primarily oriented to create an emancipatory space for the excluded, they appear as "small nests" within the broader institutional framework of the market economy, leaving its "deep structures" untouched. The range of social economy literature and the programmes on the ground seem to be rooted on the assumption that social economy is only a "ground floor economy", or an economy creating a "second chance" for the excluded. This does not take the "social economy paradigm" very much beyond an "integrative" agenda, and hence donot hold much promise as a new social movement with a transformative agenda, as an alternative to the dominant economic system.

In order to move beyond this scenario, this paper argues that there is a need to reconstruct a coherent theoretical framework with a strong explanatory power to capture the diversity of these scattered approaches, based on an alternative philosophical foundation, The search for such a coherent philosophical foundation takes us to revisit Gandhi. This paper throws loght on Gandhi's philosophical system, which represents a "paradigm of reversals" with a transformative agenda and striking the dominant economic paradigm at its very roots. The Gandhian paradigm seeks to bring about a societal self-reorganisation from within through a moral transformation of the homo economicus. A new ethical revolution, founded on a new moral agency and the law of non-violence, reshapes the entire economic structure embedding it on culture. The creative and generative force of the Gandhian praxis, with its multi-level "unity of existence", strengthened by a new moral resource, opens up an expandind autonomous space, democratic and non-violent in character, and independent from the apparatii of the State and Market. Thus an authentic and vibrant third sector is carved out for the self-realisation of the homo humanis. The paper concludes that the Gandhian paradigm creates a Third Sector, which is "third" not in a residual sense, but in the sense in ehich the "third" overcomes the "first" and the "second" sectors.

Date received: September 23, 2003