Special Issue proposal for “Regional Science Policy & Practice”

Social economy and entrepreneurship in urban and local development - Theory, policy and practices of community engagement

Guest Editors:

Social economy and social entrepreneurship are no longer just an alternative development perspective or a symbolic, ethical or solidarity issue of the contemporary world. Social involvement in various spheres of communities, economy, or ecology is becoming more and more real and meaningful in urban and local policy and development. The term development means not only progress in the sense of a market economy but development as an increase of spaces of socioeconomic-ecological synergy, social and institutional trust, economics of inclusion, equality and equilibrium in all aspects of humanity.

We observe emerging critical currents as part of the theory and practice of entrepreneurship, business models innovation, (global) value chains and local economic (eco)systems. These evolving concepts in conjunction with prevailing uncertainty caused by epidemic threats, humanitarian crises, energy challenges, or environmental changes must result in ever faster socioeconomic development’s paradigm shifts. The concept of development should increasingly mean responsible transformation of existing lifestyles, social and business practices, and local and urban policies and planning.

Catalysts for changing existing paradigms include the emergence of social economy and social entrepreneurship as a conceptual-material frame for engaging local communities in real transformative activities for creating social values. These social and institutional practices are often linked to the level and specificity of social capital, cultural capital or habitus in Bourdieu's approach. The progression of community engagement in urban and local development in various entrepreneurial forms is also determined by inter-institutional play and organizational field structures in terms of DiMaggio and Powell's conceptualization.

In different parts of the world, there are different types of prevailing problems and different, often specific, ways of solving them. Increasingly, the potential and power to solve these challenges is linked to the level of community activism, in correlation with cultures of social practices, policy, and territorial governance.

This compels scientific exploration, which increasingly needs to be interdisciplinary, innovative and stereotype-breaking. The purpose of this special issue is to present innovative and/or critical research on the multi-level relationship between the emergence of social economic practices, particularly social entrepreneurship, and urban and rural development in different regions of the world. With this intention, we invite papers including contributions on the following main themes:

1. Conceptualization of social economy and entrepreneurship in territorial development based on grounded academic concepts in various academic traditions such as regional science, sociology, economics, theories of local and regional development, urban and rural geography, (neo)institutional theory, business studies, political science, and others.
2. Social economy and entrepreneurship for sustainable development and territorial resilience based on the legacy of regional science, theories and practices of local and regional innovation (eco)systems in integration with social sciences optics, environmental studies, ecology or business and organizational approaches, and others.
3. Nexus of territorial governance, local and regional planning, social entrepreneurship and community engagement in the context of exploring the interrelationships and impact between policy, governance and practice of local and regional planning and the performance of social economy actors and strengthening of community engagement.
4. Social innovations and leadership in the context of significant transformation from product and technological innovations to innovations in social processes, communities’ trust building, and participatory and cooperative culture. Social innovations also include new forms of volunteering, development of public services, or new forms of increasing citizen participation in urban and rural governance.
5. Operational features of social entrepreneurship like organizational and legal forms of social economy actors and/or performance levels as global social entrepreneurs or local community social entrepreneurs. Different countries have different legal frameworks for their social economy and of course different economic and planning backgrounds, so comparative studies between different regions of the world or countries are very welcome.
6. Case studies and best practices of community engagement in urban and rural development. The presentation of specific practices of communities' actions facing humanitarian crises seems particularly important in today's times. Just as important are daily and systematic communities’ activities at the very local level such as assistance to marginalized groups or food and medical aid in various parts of the world.

We invite papers from many perspectives and fields of academic research and from around the world. A variety of research approaches, both qualitative, quantitative or highly encouraged comparative studies and case studies, will be appreciated.

Authors are invited to submit an abstract by the February 28, 2023 to Piotr Pachura (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.); Aneta Pachura (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.); Neil Reid (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) and Kvetoslava Matlovičová (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.). You will be informed about the status of your abstract on or around March 15, 2023. Authors of selected abstracts will be expected to submit full papers no later than 30 September 2023, and publication expected in Spring/Summer 2024, following the peer review process.