Social enterprises and non-market capitals: a path to degrowth?

The aim of this paper is to look at alternatives to the classic for-profit shareholding enterprise and to suggest how such alternatives might be supported within the current economic system. Another aim is to link the social enterprise and degrowth discourses. We first re-define the economy as including non-monetised sectors (the core economy and the economy of nature) and discuss the liminal zone of not-for-profit and not-only-for profit organisations. We then look at social enterprise definitions from a degrowth perspective and explain why the dimensions of scale, place, environment and provisioning patterns need more space in the social enterprise discourse. After that, we define non-market capitals as capitals taken out of the market and placed under local/member/democratic control and explain their importance in a degrowth economy. We give examples of non-market capitals and suggest a model involving mutual support between primary and secondary social enterprises. Finally, we suggest areas where more research is needed in this emerging field of inquiry.