The contribution of the solidar economy to development

The present paper aims to identify whether and to what extent Solidarity-based Economy may contribute for development strategies. Solidarity-based Economy is often seen as linked to radical changes into social, economical and political order, which leads it to an utopist horizon of overcoming the capitalist mode of production. The empirical basis of the paper is an exploratory research on Solidarity-based Economy that has been conducted at Post Graduation Program in Management of Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, within which social, economical and political innovations are assessed. Such innovations allows the researchers to state a set of previous conclusions on such relation between Solidarity-based Economy and Development. The main objective lies on identifying whether such innovations stand for simple creative alternative strategies of livelihood, in an extreme framework of social exclusion, or whether it may represent an on-building model of an economical, social and political sustainable development.