Presentation

The research group Inclusive Societies, Policies and Communities (SoPCI in the Catalan acronym, Societats, Polítiques i Comunitats Inclusives) develops, from a feminist and intersectional approach, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research and evaluation centered on the analysis of social, political and economic processes of inclusion, as well as the resulting policies and practices. Our notion of inclusion is a holistic one: social inclusion, health inclusion, environmental and territorial inclusion, and sustainability. From this conceptual approach, we analyze multiple practices stemming both from institutional top-down initiatives as well as from bottom-up initiatives emerging from social innovation processes. Furthermore, the group works on establishing stable frames for the transfer of knowledge that can provide answers to the emergent social and economic needs in the current context of environmental, social, and political uncertainties through the generation of a collaborative dynamic and the development of synergies among university, public and community institutions, the third sector, the private sector, and civil society, and social movements.

Clearly situated within critical qualitative research and methodological traditions, we study social realities from the standpoint of the people who live them and make them possible. We focus on the activities that may not be visible in the official narratives of the social sciences but often are people’s most significant daily activities and become particularly important in contexts of crisis, economic and ecological uncertainty. In other words, here are some of the ongoing questions we ask in our research :

• What are some of the most invisible, and at the same time the most fundamental activities in economic and social life?
• What survival and economic strategies do people create in contexts of crisis in order to make “invisible” social and economic processes sustainable?
• How do they turn the “invisible” into an “alternative” to the official economic, political, and social logics?

In order to answer these questions, and building upon the theoretical traditions of Feminist and Ecological Economics and Social Sciences, we focus on the study of issues such as Agroecology, Food Sovereignty, and the Care Economy (as well as on the intersection of the two), paying special attention to informal and socially unacknowledged processes (food production, caregiving) that actually are the invisible basis of formal institutional, economic, and socially recognized ones (local, small scale, ecological food production versus the agroindustry; family and community caregiving processes versus public health and social policy and services, etc.).

In addition, we place great emphasis on the study of the democratizing potential of multiple social and political initiatives created in this context, particularly focusing on how they create spaces where people can have control over processes and decide around the use of resources and the strategies to follow; how they establish more horizontal and participatory relationships; how they challenge the “expert – non-expert hierarchy”; how they promote their life and communities sustainability both in its material and emotional dimensions; and how they contribute to build sustainability networks, the economy of “the commons”, and other shared social and economic spaces.

Finally, we want to highlight that, within this framework, our research team also has as one of its main lines of action, the participation in the following university programs:

• Participation at the Interuniversity Master’s Degree on Women, Gender and Citizenship Studies and at the Interuniversity PhD Program on Gender, Culture, Society and Policy Studies
• Participation at the Interuniversity Master’s Degree on Social Policy and Community Action
• Participation at the UAB Master’s Degree on Gender and Comunication
• Direction of the UVic-UCC Master’s Degree on Equality and Development (in collaboration with Cooperació)
• Participation at the UAB Graduate’s Diploma in Promoting Agroecological Farming at the Local Level