Beyond Nonprofit: Alternative Forms of Social Economy

Catalog description

Three institutional forms—the for-profit, the nonprofit, and the governmental—are typically presented as the three organizational forms of economic organization. This conventional schema renders invisible all of the many alternative forms of social economy in which more than a billion people throughout the world participate—as workers and consumers, as producers and protectors, and as stewards, trustees, and beneficiaries. In this course, we will consider the theory (secular and religious), the history, and the contemporary practice of social economy organizations, including cooperatives, community land trusts, resource trusts, kibbutzim, employee stock ownership, social housing, open source, local currencies, alternative financial institutions, and a broad range of other commons organizations variously utilizing shared ownership and democratic governance while advancing a host of social objectives from economic democracy to racial and gender justice, from indigenous sovereignty to ecological sustainability.