A Territorial-Driven Approach to Capture the Transformative Momentum of the Social Economy Especially from the Agricultural Cooperatives

In the last few lustrums, the literature has searched for more precise methods to assess the socio-economic importance of the Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE). On that basis, this article offers a new way of assessing the SSE impact, enhancing the understanding of the SSE potential for socio-economic transformation. An evolutionary micro–meso–macro and territorial theoretical framework is developed, utilizing, along with the assistance of a qualitative methodology, studies on the transformation promoted by the SSE on the sugar cane cluster of Veracruz (Mexico). The main results of the article are that the SSE boost beneficiaries, while the protagonists of the transformation cannot be defined a priori, but are rather conformed by transformation vectors promoted by the SSE: their values shared by a wide spectrum of actors, the SSE socio-economic and organizational specificities, and their rooting in the productive system. The fundamental conclusion of the article is the need for a “territorial-driven approach” of the SSE’s impact, compared to the dominant “stakeholder-driven approach”. The main limitations (and suggestions for future studies) are the empirical investigation of a single case, and the need to develop a qualitative and quantitative system of indicators of the transformative drive of SSE.