Making the market moral? Understanding the "social and solidarity economy" in "emerging" Senegal

Post-2008 economic anthropology has made imaginative use of Polanyian concepts to explore the moral dimension of economic life. Developing a stronger account of the relationship between localised forms of economic "embeddedness" and those taking shape at macro-level remains crucial, both for anthropology and for broader social scientific enquiry into competing models and conceptions of an "inclusive economy".

The West African country of Senegal offers an appropriate case through which to explore this challenge. While infrastructure investment and sectoral liberalisation through the Plan Senegal Emergent (PSE) have stimulated growth, poverty and unemployment remain high. However, the PSE also contains initiatives suggesting a more heterodox approach to economic development, notably the "Social and Solidarity Economy" (SSE): a range of actions promoting the development of cooperatives, mutuals, and the "formalisation" of small "informal" businesses. Recalling Polanyi's famous "double movement", the SSE is seen by its local advocates as providing an alternative to neoliberalism and recovering distinctively Senegalese values of solidarity.

This picture may be too simplistic. Cooperatives are not new in Senegal; the mass-formation of agricultural cooperatives in the immediate post-independence period was marred by corruption and peasant exploitation. The substantial (sometimes predominant) female membership of many contemporary Senegalese cooperatives demands critical attention to the SSE's implications for gendered inequalities. Equally, as a rich literature attests, much Senegalese small business activity is already unmistakably "embedded" in social relations, often organised by ties of kinship or religious association.

This study will approach the SSE ethnographically, to explore how it might be understood not simply in terms of "double movement", but also in terms of the articulation of different "human economies" - or of diverse attempts to make the market moral. Participant observation among the petty entrepreneurs and cooperative members at the receiving end of these schemes will examine how the state-led SSE, as an attempt at economic "re-embedding" pursued at a national level, interacts with the various locally-embedded economic practices and life projects in which they are already engaged. Fieldwork will not only focus on specific moments of "intervention", such as business support activities, but will also engage more broadly with the daily lives and life worlds of participating entrepreneurs and cooperative members. As well as addressing anthropological problems, the study will thus speak to wider questions about the limits of institutional "convergence" as policy goal, and the possibility of alternative models of development which are more faithful to local "values" and imaginaries.