Social innovation

The objective of the Report is to demonstrate the importance of social innovation to the present day in Ontario and, on this basis, to argue for the importance of better understanding the process of social innovation. [...] Some of the sources of inspiration for their work include: the social transformations of the 1960’s and the 1970s; the democratization of institutions, the presence of social movements that confronted oppressive social conventions and the emancipation of the patriarchal family. [...] The objective of the work of this team was to illuminate the theoretical and empirical interest of the concept of social innovation targeting, as fields of interest, regional and local public policies and the transformation of the structures and governance of local communities. [...] The concept of the solidarity based economy as elaborated by Laville (1994) is similar to that of the social economy, in bringing together enterprises, associations and the state and in giving importance to the principles of equity and public action. [...] In this way, the importance of the gift economy, the survival of the practices of reciprocity, celebration and reciprocal values, village communities and the extended family(the last social support for reciprocal practices), constitute determinants of the popular economy.