IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/entreg/v25y2013i3-4p272-292.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A resilient social economy? Insights from the community food sector in the UK

Author

Listed:
  • Roberta Sonnino
  • Christopher Griggs-Trevarthen

Abstract

At a time of global economic and environmental crisis, academic and policy debates are re-emphasizing the potential of the social economy in providing an alternative development model that reconnects communities with their resource-base and enhances their ‘resilience’. The goal of this paper is to explore this potential through a focus on the practices and values of those who are concretely involved in the social economy. Based on data collected on five community food enterprises in Oxfordshire, UK, the analysis focuses on the perceptions of social entrepreneurs in relation to the ‘alternativeness’ of the social economy, its potential for expansion and its resilience. The research highlights the capacity of social entrepreneurs to empower local communities through a process of collective mobilization of local resources. Theoretically, this study generates new insights into the nature and meanings of resilience as a process of creation of more self-reliant communities of people, places, tools, skills and knowledge. From a policy and practice perspective, the paper raises the need for regional development strategies that capture the gains of these isolated initiatives, particularly in relation to their innovative capacity to create a shared vision that fosters synergies between local ecological, social and economic resources.

Suggested Citation

  • Roberta Sonnino & Christopher Griggs-Trevarthen, 2013. "A resilient social economy? Insights from the community food sector in the UK," Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(3-4), pages 272-292, April.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:entreg:v:25:y:2013:i:3-4:p:272-292
    DOI: 10.1080/08985626.2012.710268
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/08985626.2012.710268
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/08985626.2012.710268?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Alison Blay-Palmer & Roberta Sonnino & Julien Custot, 2016. "A food politics of the possible? Growing sustainable food systems through networks of knowledge," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 33(1), pages 27-43, March.
    2. Xiyuan Xiang & Jing Wang & Zehai Long & Yangjie Huang, 2022. "Improving the Entrepreneurial Competence of College Social Entrepreneurs: Digital Government Building, Entrepreneurship Education, and Entrepreneurial Cognition," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(1), pages 1-16, December.
    3. Giuseppe Terzo, 2021. "Social capital, social economy and economic resilience of Italian provinces," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 100(5), pages 1113-1135, October.
    4. Mara Willemijn van Twuijver & Lucas Olmedo & Mary O’Shaughnessy & Thia Hennessy, 2020. "Rural social enterprises in Europe: A systematic literature review," Local Economy, London South Bank University, vol. 35(2), pages 121-142, March.
    5. Josephine Mylan & Helen Holmes & Jessica Paddock, 2016. "Re-Introducing Consumption to the ‘Circular Economy’: A Sociotechnical Analysis of Domestic Food Provisioning," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 8(8), pages 1-14, August.
    6. Nigel R Curry, 2021. "The rural social economy, community food hubs and the market," Local Economy, London South Bank University, vol. 36(7-8), pages 569-588, November.
    7. Maria Bastida & Alberto Vaquero García & Luisa Helena Pinto & Ana Olveira Blanco, 2022. "Motivational drivers to choose worker cooperatives as an entrepreneurial alternative: evidence from Spain," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 58(3), pages 1609-1626, March.
    8. Huong Dinh & Ben Freyens & Anne Daly & Yogi Vidyattama, 2017. "Measuring Community Economic Resilience in Australia: Estimates of Recent Levels and Trends," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 132(3), pages 1217-1236, July.
    9. Giaime Berti & Catherine Mulligan, 2016. "Competitiveness of Small Farms and Innovative Food Supply Chains: The Role of Food Hubs in Creating Sustainable Regional and Local Food Systems," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 8(7), pages 1-31, July.
    10. Bacq, Sophie & Hertel, Christina & Lumpkin, G.T., 2022. "Communities at the nexus of entrepreneurship and societal impact: A cross-disciplinary literature review," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 37(5).
    11. Ignazio Cabras & Gary Bosworth, 2014. "Embedded models of rural entrepreneurship: The case of pubs in Cumbria, North West of England," Local Economy, London South Bank University, vol. 29(6-7), pages 598-616, September.
    12. Donghyun Kim & Up Lim, 2017. "Social Enterprise as a Catalyst for Sustainable Local and Regional Development," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(8), pages 1-15, August.
    13. Leticia Canal Vieira & Silvia Serrao-Neumann & Michael Howes, 2019. "Local Action with a Global Vision: The Transformative Potential of Food Social Enterprises in Australia," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(23), pages 1-16, November.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:entreg:v:25:y:2013:i:3-4:p:272-292. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/TEPN20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.