Canadian Public Policy and the Social Economy/Assembling Understandings: Findings from the Canadian Social Economy Research Partnerships, 2005-2011

Canadian Public Policy and the Social Economy. Edited by R. Downing. Victoria, BC: University of Victoria, 2012. 427 pp. ISBN 9781550584530.Assembling Understandings: Findings from the Canadian Social Economy Research Partnerships, 2005-2011. Edited by M. Thompson & J. Emmanuel. Victoria, BC: University of Victoria, 2012. 165 pp. ISBN 9781550584578.Understanding Canada's social economy as it exists today has been an ongoing challenge for academics, practitioners, and the general public. While there lacks clear consensus on what the social economy is, there has been no lack of effort to demonstrate its ubiquity. There have been several edited and authored books exploring different facets of the social economy released over the last number of years, many of which have been reviewed in this journal. I have found that keeping track of the diverse perspectives only adds to the confusion. What makes the three volumes recently released by the University of Victoria and the Canadian Community Economic Development Network different is that the multiple perspectives illustrative of the discourse of the social economy are fully evident throughout. The set serves as a good introduction to the different areas associated with the social economy. An added advantage is that they are available free of charge.This review will be for two of the three volumes: Canadian Public Policy and the Social Economy and Assembling Understandings: Findings from the Canadian Social Economy Research Partnerships. A review of the third volume, Community-University Research Partnerships: Reflections on the Canadian Social Economy Experience, already appeared in this journal (Wasniewski, Ewa (2013). Specifically, the two volumes of the set I review here summarize public policy issues and research findings in Canadian social economy research in recent years. The different chapters in both of the volumes are accessible to a variety of readers and lay out the different areas associated with the social economy. In fact, all chapters have the involvement of both practitioners and academics. These two volumes represent one of the many outputs of the five-year project funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, referred to as the Canadian Social Economy Research Partnerships. Regular readers of this journal will know the project that I am referring to, so I will not go into any more detail other than opening the discussion and providing evidence concerning two of the primary objectives associated with the partnerships: research findings and public policy. I encourage new readers to refer to earlier volumes of this journal for more details on the research partnerships.What the reader will quickly notice in these two volumes is the absence of a clear definition of the social economy. A strength of the books is that the authors meet the challenge of naming or characterizing the social economy head-on. While there appears to be incongruence with respect to definition, there is agreement in the following areas: the social economy exists within Canadian society and the crucial goals are to help identify it as a movement and to identify its efficacy on the well-being of Canadians. While the authors each explain the social economy in their own idiosyncratic way, they help add clarity to the confusion for the general public about whether the social economy represents a legitimate part of the economy, or if it is a humane alternative to the alienating affects of the private sector or a paternalistic public sector.The two volumes demonstrate what I would refer to as two pillars of the social economy: public policy and evidence-based research. Both of these are covered quite extensively in the texts through the sharing of direct experience, as well as examples of how the social economy is manifested in everyday life. In the volume entitled Canadian Public Policy and the Social Economy, Rupert Downing assembled ten interesting and comprehensive chapters that range from descriptions of public policies as well as an understanding of key considerations in the development of public policy that are supportive of the social economy. …

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