RIPESS Amérique du nord est l’organisation continentale du Réseau intercontinental de promotion de l’économie sociale et solidaire (RIPESS).

RIPESS Amérique du nord est composé de quatre réseaux: le réseau US SEN, le Réseau canadien de développement économique communautaire (RCDÉC), le Chantier de l’économie sociale du Québec et le Groupe d’économie solidaire du Québec (GESQ).

There are multiple motivations for holding the first continental Social Solidarity Economy Forum in North America, including:

    Visibility and recognition: A continental forum is a chance to promote visibility and recognition of our work, as well as a chance to deepen and widen networks through targeted and strategic outreach (see diversity below).

    Global vision: The Forum is an opportunity to build a common understanding about the solidarity economy, while at the same time respecting the differences grounded in the specific history, culture, language and economic/political realities of different places. RIPESS’ Global Vision statement provides a starting point for discussion and exploration. We hope to explore in greater depth important yet underdeveloped concepts and realities such as the role of  the solidarity economy in addressing issues pertaining to race/ethnicity/culture, class, gender, rural/urban development; the macro-economy; and the environment. This is also an opportunity to explore the common ground between the solidarity economy and other frameworks such as community wealth building, the social economy, green, popular, community, sharing and cooperative economies. This topic would be well suited for a plenary with breakouts in order to foster a common base of understanding.

    Workshops and Preparatory convenings/webinars: Workshops can be used to advance knowledge and work on issues. For example, single or multiple workshops could focus on:

        Policies:  In the United States, we are doing a scan of local solidarity economy policies and are planning a series of webinars, and a meeting to lay the groundwork for a track of workshops on public policies. CCEDNET, which tracks Canadian policy and RELIESS, which monitors public policy for the SSE worldwide have lots to contribute as well.

        Education:  the RIPESS SSE Education Working Group is conducting an inventory of solidarity economy educational materials and compiling a list of educators who are engaged in popular, alternative and formal education. We are planning webinars in English, Spanish and French and hope that these will lay a foundation for a meeting at the Forum.

        Mapping:  we can showcase the new United States solidarity economy map and the existing Canadian/Quebec ones, along with the RIPESS global map.

        Research: RIPESS discussed the question of developing an academic network, though we seek to adjust that to include community-based researchers as well as academics.

        Best Practices: a wide array of workshops on leading examples of solidarity economy innovation in production, distribution and exchange, consumption, finance and governance.

        Networking: strengthen the North American solidarity economy network

AND LOTS MORE

Diversity: A high priority is to ensure that we have a diverse group of participants in terms of class and identity (race, ethnicity, indigenous, LGBTQ, age, gender, people w. disabilities and so forth).  We will provide templates/tool-kits for organizations to do their own grassroots fundraising and provide some limited coordination support for caravanning. We anticipated implementing a sliding scale for registration and are committed to organizing for the provision of free or low cost solidarity housing.

Retrouver toutes les informations sur le site du Ripess North America.

The Department of ethics and philosophy at Lille Catholic University is organizing a two-day international conference on Workplace democracy: Arguments, policies, practices, which will be held in Lille (France), January 28th and 29th, 2016.

While democracy is usually taken for granted within the political sphere, it usually draws less attention in the economic realm and our societies tolerate highly undemocratic forms of economic organizations, which prompts many questions: How is it possible to question this asymmetry? Does justice require democracy in the workplace? How can we make sense of democratic ideals within economic organizations? Is it possible to draw an analogy between states and business firms? Which institutional forms can workplace democracy take? What are the best theoretical frameworks to articulate the ideals of workplace democracy? This international conference aims to bring together experts in political philosophy, business ethics, sociology, history, political science, economy and management around these issues.

More specifically, this conference aims to move beyond “minimalist” understandings of workplace democracy usually described under the label of “participatory management” and to investigate more demanding conceptions of the democratization of workplaces. Submissions will therefore focus on workers control, worker cooperatives, labor-managed firms, redistribution of power within firms, formal rights of decision-making for workers, etc.

Papers will focus on the normative or empirical aspects of workplace democracy. We invite submissions on the following themes (broadly conceived):
– Justifications of and problems with the democratization of workplaces
– Workplace democracy as a political project
– Which theoretical models of democracy?
– Economic and political obstacles to workplace democracy
– Workplace democracy and democratic citizenship: Can workplace democracy make better citizens ?
– Justice and/or democracy in workplaces?
– Division of labor, shared tasks and job rotation in democratic workplaces
– Gender and race inequality and workplace democracy
– Unions and workplace democracy: is there a conflict?
– Is workplace democracy the left’s new big idea?
– Emancipation, empowerment and cooperatives
– Links between scholarly works and activism

Organizers: Pierre-Yves Néron & Camille Ternier

Consulter le programme sur le site de la conférence.