Bancos comunitários e a economia solidária: estratégias de desenvolvimento de baixo para cima em Montes Claros - MG

Abstract

This study examines an experience of Solidarity Economy in the field of solidarity finance or finance of proximity - the Community Banks of Montes Claros-MG based on the principles of self, cooperation and solidarity. The purpose of a Community Bank is to promote social development through credit and savings resources, important in the development of small economic activities and maintain the ties of trust and reciprocity. The study seeks to understand how the Solidarity Economy is materialized in a Community Bank and the participants have mobilized and are mobilized to organize to obtain resources for the satisfaction of their needs. The matrix of theoretical work is based in part of Plural Economy proposed by author Marcel Mauss, whose explanation of economic action based on the perspective of the donation or the Sun; Karl Polanyi highlights the validity of a reflective return to a substantive or economy embedded in social and Jean Louis Laville, which offers a look at the Solidarity Economy through logical market, no market and no money. The study identified that the Solidarity Economy which is materialized in the dynamics of Community Banks seems more of a hybrid combination of different principles in economic interaction. This means that beyond a utilitarian matter, the interstices of the groups studied, there is a spirit of solidarity and reciprocity that is reflected not only in maximization of individual interest, but also in strengthening the ties of belonging and relational. Such social and economic activities sui generis is located both in rural areas and in cities and suburbs are linked or receiving external support from nongovernmental organizations. The practices examined are collective experiences that emerge as a reaction of the poor conditions imposed by the dominant economic systems. From this framework of analysis, it was possible to decipher that the experiences of Banks Community, solidarity emerges not only from natural or spontaneous way, it stems from the exclusion from the labor market and financial, or shortcomings of the state, which configures how to cry another possible society, more just and egalitarian.