Solidarity Credit and Social Currency

This research investigated organizations that provide solidarity credit services and use social currencies seeking their contributions to the solidarity economy as a proposal for participatory local development emphasizing the potential and limitations for the construction of alternatives for social reproduction in the face of capitalism and its contradictions. In this work the research process and the procedures for systematizing the analysis were guided by the epistemology of dialectical criticism. From this approach an effort was made to go beyond the phenomenal appearances of the experiences and cases analyzed seeking the correspondence of their structure within the historical and social totality in its dialectical movement. The empirical approach to the object of investigation occurred through the analysis of three experiences of solidarity finance operating in Mato Grosso do Sul: the Community Bank Pire (Dourados); the Community Bank Ita (Itamarati Settlement/ Ponta Porã); and the experience of social currency implemented with the activities of the Evangelical Development Institute (Campo Grande).