Solidarity is akin to community. “Community,” of course, is a slippery notion that may be used in several different senses. It can name simply any collectivity— workers at Wal-Mart, sociologists, and students and faculty at a university. I will use it in a more restricted sense to mean a collectivity animated by a “sense of community” among its members. In this sense, both community and solidar...

While the social economy originated in Europe (Desroche, 1983; Gueslin, 1997; Vienney, 1994), by the nineteenth century it emerged in North America as well, particularly in Canada and Quebec with its ties to the United Kingdom and France as well as other European countries, especially Germany and Belgium. Today, it is interesting to explore the renewal of the social economy in Europe and in Can...