Between the political and the cosmopolitical. Approaches between the commons, well-being and solidarity economy as development alternatives

Struggles for social emancipation and resistance to neoliberal ideals, in recent decades, have included and strained some of the canonical foundations of development, such as the watertight dichotomies that structure thought and action on the subject, such as society versus nature, countryside versus city, local versus global, production versus reproduction, growth versus equality, etc. Social actors of varied nature, such as communities, NGOs, urban and rural social movements from the Global North and South, have claimed the commons policy, the revaluation of work and collective action, the solidary economy, buen vivir and ubuntu as alternatives to the proposals of development of a typically western hue, associated with neoliberalism and globalization. Moreover, this is a movement that seems to transit between the political and the cosmic, since beings that traditionally were 'counted' outside the social space of the political, now appear as part of political communities. In these terms, there is also a fight for rivers, forests, fauna and flora beings, ancestral spirits and spiritual entities, to have their rights considered and, as occurred in recent constitutional experiences in South America. Universities have followed these struggles through research of empirical experiences in various spaces, highlighting their potential for institutional and epistemological innovation. The discussion on substantive economy and solidarity economy reinforce that the production of livelihoods is a phenomenon built on the substantive interaction between human groups and nature, on the one hand, and through the sharing of work, economic resources, decisions on the production and distribution of goods and wealth as a way to reduce social inequalities in our society.