A CONSUMER’S GUIDE TO SOME EXAMPLES OF THE SOLIDARITY ECONOMY
IN BOSTON
Dear Visitor,
Thank you for visiting our website. This site highlights people and businesses who are proponents of solidarity and transformative business practices. From bike production, to fair trade, to vegetables and chocolates, these businesses are committed to creating secure employment and positive externalities for our community and communities around the world.
We gained inspiration for this project from an Economics course we took this past semester at Wellesley College under the instruction of Professor Julie Matthaei. Through our assigned readings and class discussions we were made aware of the Hierarchical Polarization Paradigm that dominates our current society and its business practices. Therefore, we are creating this as a resource to aid in the transformation of our economy and society to one “based on solidarity, cooperation, freedom, democracy, economic and social justice, diversity, and sustainability.”1
We hope that after reading the company profiles you will be inspired, as we are, to use your purchasing power to promote the solidarity economy. The responsibility for making sustainable consumption choices is on the consumer, so we hope you will take our advice and support these businesses and the Boston solidarity economy!
Sincerely,
Andrea and Jen
WELCOME TO OUR GUIDE
“SOLIDARITY means that we humans are inseparably interconnected with each other, with other forms of life, with all of nature and with the cosmos. It recognizes that we have a destiny in common amongst ourselves and with the natural environment. As a result, dialogue and cooperation are always a better answer to the problem of this existence than individualism and competition.”2
References:
1Matthaei, Julie. “The Transformative Moment Part II.” The Political Economy of the Present and Possible Global Future(s). Ed. Richard Westra. New York: Anthen Press, 2009.
2 Arruda, Marcos, ed. Exchanging Visions of A Responsible, Plural, Solidarity Economy. Rio de Janeiro, ALOE- Workgroup Visions of a Responsible, Plural and Solidarity-based Economy, 2008.
