The value added of solidarity economies: Bureaucratic constructions of value for alternative economic policy in Ecuador

Abstract

The National Institute of the Popular Solidarity Economy (IEPS) in Ecuador was created to promote an alternative form of economy—the Popular Solidarity Economy (PSE). As a precarious institute with limited funding, IEPS staff worked hard to find alternative ways to support the PSE. In this article, I examine their work through the lens of valor agregado (added value), a commonly used local term for how economic value is created. Government bureaucrats intervened primarily by creating an audience that was interested in the social aspects of the alternative economy. Because valor agregado ambiguously refers to both monetary and social value, it helped the PSE better integrate with the wider economy. With this approach, I offer a potential new path for analyzing government support for alternative economies. By refocusing our attention on key actors' understandings of value creation, anthropologists can sidestep questions of whether alternative economies have been “co-opted” by capitalism and instead examine the necessary interfaces between these alternatives and the mainstream.