BC / Alberta Research Node

The British Columbia and Alberta Social Economy Research Alliance, with the Canadian Centre for Community Renewal and Royal Roads University as lead institutional applicants, establishes a broad regional partnership among five universities and nine social economy stakeholder organizations, plus two federal agencies and an innovative municipality that actively promotes its local social economy. Aside from the six individual applicants, the research collaborators include 29 other stakeholders - committed researchers, faculty, and practitioners (with 40-60 students), mainly from Alberta and B.C. but also other parts of Canada, the U.S., and the U. K. Over the next five years, this Alliance will vigorously undertake a series of research initiatives to better understand and improve the range of activities and entities that make up the regional social economy and its infrastructure.

We see that troubled communities and small regions, in Canada and elsewhere, when faced with severe economic threats, have developed and applied new strategies and tools that have succeeded in stemming the tide of decline and responding to the needs of their marginalized citizens. These exemplary practices - that is, community economic development (CED) and other techniques of the social economy - have some common characteristics, the most fundamental being the reinsertion of social goals, reciprocity, and solidarity into economic thinking and decision-making – and, with that, concern for long-term sustainability. Based on this experience and the many significant published reports on CED and the social economy, we pose three strategic questions to meet our overall aim – that is, to strengthen the foundations for a solid growth in the social economy of the region:

These research questions will be addressed through three complementary and interactive streams of inquiry and practice. The first stream (mapping) will focus on systematically documenting the scope, scale, impact, and key characteristics of social economy initiatives in the two provinces, concentrating on the broad areas of housing, human services, and natural resource development; and secondly on developing an analytical framework to guide the analysis and evaluation of a series of case studies. The second stream (case analysis) will consist of a systematic review of documented social enterprise and CED cases with consequential innovative aspects - in the two provinces and elsewhere. The third stream (practice) will address a small number of emerging social economy initiatives that will, over the course of the research project, actively participate in a two-way exchange of knowledge between the practitioners in the field and the researchers who can bring outside perspectives/information to bear. These three streams will interact both formally and informally throughout the project, such that the development of theory is informed by the case research findings and ‘tested’ in the emerging social economy initiatives.

Both the project process and the project findings will contribute to key needs previously identified by the federal government’s 2005 consultations with the social economy sector in Western Canada: that is, improved understanding and awareness of the social economy sector; increased collaboration and enhanced networks; and training targeted to the needs and priorities of the sector.

The BC/AB alliance thus actively seeks both new knowledge and practical results.