Sustainable solidarity economies: rhizomating practices for another world

The sociological study of solidarity economies suggests (1) a becomingness of a new form of life, comprehensible as unfolding material practice of enmeshed patterns of negotiation and innovation, and (2) an emergent trajectory of connectingness, marked by a sense of rapport and co-responsibility with one another as co-authors. This chapter suggests that the performative connectingness of emergent non-hierarchical horizontality of solidarity economy practices can be usefully framed and understood within a micropolitical cartography culled from the philosophical insights of Gilles Deleuze, specifically making use of his concept of “rhizome.” Rhizomes are performative offshoots that Deleuze refers to as “assemblages in their multiplicity.” The connectingness of performative offshoots of the solidarity economy is constituted in a meshwork of spaces, in-betweened-ness, trajectories, and path creativeness.