Community Wealth Building in Anytown
Gillian Murray (Yunus Centre)
The Scottish Government’s commitment to a national Community Wealth Building (CWB) policy, including the passing of a CWB (Scotland) Bill in March 2025, has captured the attention of people working in Scotland’s social economy. Research exploring the potential for CWB in Scotland identified a common refrain among social economy practitioners, that they were “already doing community wealth building” (Mazzei et al. 2024). Elsewhere, the third sector support organization Scottish Community Alliance has showcased a series of case studies, This is Community Wealth Building, publicizing that “community wealth building isn’t new, Scotland’s been doing it for years.” This article explores these claims using writing on Scotland’s social economy past and present, arguing that engaging with these grassroots perspectives is crucial for CWB movement building in Scotland.
This article reaches into the historical development of Scotland’s social economy through the writing of John Pearce, a community development worker by training, and an important figure in the community enterprise movement in the 1980s and 1990s, both in Scotland and internationally. Based on his experience of working with communities across Scotland and the UK to develop and realize models of community-led enterprise, Pearce’s writing provides insight into the shifting political economy that informed the conceptualizing of social economy in the UK. Written a decade apart, Pearce’s books At the Heart of the Community Economy (1993) and Social Enterprise in Anytown (2003), provide valuable touchstones for considering the distinctions between social economy and CWB, exploring points of shared learning, and prospects for future partnership.
This article is organised in three sections. This first sets out important distinctions between social economy and CWB. The second examines inclusive ownership as a pillar of CWB and an area of social economy practice. The final section argues that a historically engaged view of social economy provides insight into why people working in Scotland’s social economy today stress that they are “already doing CWB.”
Distinguishing CWB and Social Economy
Both social economy and CWB start from a critique of the current economic system – and the inequalities and ecological damage it creates. Social economy, especially from the 2010s, has been characterized as providing alternative ways to meeting social needs, particularly in areas where private sector disinvestment and public sector cuts have impacted economic growth and social cohesion (Amin et al. 2003). In contrast, CWB – as described in the introduction to this special issue – has been promoted as a systems-changing approach to economic development (Guigan and O’Neill 2019) guided by the concept of evolutionary reconstruction, where “community-structured forms of democratic ownership” can animate economic democracy (Alperovitz 2021, 299).
This distinction is apparent in how social economy and CWB can be related to theories of social innovation and radical social innovation, respectively. The social economy is vital to the realization of social innovation, with scholarship coalescing around the opportunity for the third sector to address wealth and health inequalities, and climate crisis (Moulaert 2013). Here there is some consensus that social innovation can be understood as “innovations that are social both in their ends and their means” (Mulgan 2000, 10), which again emphasizes the role of social economy and organizational forms, like social enterprises, as the means to deliver social outcomes. This definition sets social innovation apart from business-led innovation, where social benefits are an overspill rather than a driver of the innovative activity (Pol and Ville 2009).
However, definitions and theoretical perspectives on social innovation remain heavily contested and debated. Montgomery conceptualizes social innovation around two competing paradigms – democratic and technocratic – questioning whether the two can be reconciled (Montgomery 2016). While some scholars have argued that social innovation is a collaborative concept where tensions can be overcome (Zieglar 2017), elsewhere scholarship has coalesced around the idea of radical social innovation. Radical social innovation advocates explicitly for a post-capitalist economy and situates community economy as an ethical and political space to achieve this (Gibson-Graham and Roelvink 2013). Gibson-Graham and Roelvink connect the project of community economy with social innovators working in the democratic paradigm who advocate for social innovations to meet the needs of marginalized groups (Moulaert et al. 2005, 1970). Here there is a shared interest between community economy and social innovation in “strategies for including the marginalised by developing diversified social economies” (Gibson-Graham and Roelvink 2013, 455). For radical social innovation however, this is not the end point, but a “strategic entry point” for community economy, to reconceptualize “the entire economy as a diverse social arena, creating an alternative economic language of the ‘diverse economy’” (Ibid. 455).
From these theoretical standpoints, the economic alterity pursued by social economy stops short of the economic systems change that drives CWB. Nevertheless, they share an interest in how community-based organisations, cooperatives and social enterprises can contribute to social and economic inclusion, and for CWB the evolution of systems change. At this point, it’s possible to understand why those working in Scotland’s social economy may therefore claim to be doing CWB. In the five-pillar model of CWB, this activity is expressed through the inclusive ownership pillar. The next section analyzes these points of shared activity in more detail.
Inclusive Ownership in CWB and Social Economy
In CWB, inclusive ownership refers to developing more local and social enterprises, including employee-owned firms and co-ops, which generate community wealth (Economic Development Association Scotland 2023, 12). This is expressed as “inclusive and democratic enterprise” in the US version of the five-pillar model (The Democracy Collaborative). In Scotland, this work on inclusive ownership is being brought together under an ambition to increase the role of Inclusive and Democratic Business Models (IDBMs) in Scotland’s economy. In recognition of the capacity of IDBMs to increase autonomy in work, job satisfaction, and economic security, a report published by the Scottish Government in 2024 set out ambitions to triple the number of IDBMs in Scotland by 2034 (Scottish Government 2024). The report stresses that the role of IDBMs should not be “peripheral” but an integral part of the economy (Ibid. 11). There is a clear connection with CWB here where inclusive ownership is part of developing economic democracy, rather than operating in a third sector peripheral to the economic mainstream.
Following the announcement of Scotland’s commitment to a national policy, CWB has been piloted in five local authority areas: Clackmannanshire, Fife, Glasgow City Region, South of Scotland, and Western Isles. This builds on earlier work in North Ayrshire, Scotland’s first CWB Council. North Ayrshire has a well-developed CWB strategy, where work on inclusive ownership is described as “diverse ownership” (North Ayrshire Council 2023, 90). As an area experiencing high rates of unemployment, poverty, and vacant and derelict land, North Ayrshire has explicitly linked its activity on diverse ownership with the ability to bring vacant and derelict land back into use (Ibid. 90); highlighting how activity across pillars is being described and connected at a local level. CWB in Clackmannanshire, central Scotland, highlights a further example of this. Clackmannanshire Council launched a CWB action plan in 2020 and provided a progress report in 2022. Here, work on “plural ownership of the economy” is taken forward through plans to establish a Community Wealth Building Hub with priorities to support for women in and into business and strengthening support for cooperatives (Clackmannanshire Council 2022, 22-23). Looking across the pillars, the Clackmannanshire Third Sector Interface (CTSI) has been active in facilitating the inclusion of social enterprises and enterprise charities into work on progressive procurement, making it easier for these small, local organizations to bid for procurement contracts (Ibid. 13). Furthermore, asset transfers have been used to facilitate local Community Development Trusts – an important network of community-led action in Scotland’s third sector – to take ownership of land and buildings in Clackmannanshire (Ibid. 18). These examples highlight how, from a locus in inclusive ownership, the active engagement of Scotland’s third sector and social economy expertise is also informing connections between pillars on progressive procurement and land and property according to local need and priorities.
Comparing the action on CWB in Scotland with research in Canada, findings from a study of four mid-sized cities, have highlighted the importance of local leadership to launching and sustaining CWB projects, with that leadership frequently emanating from the non-profit sector. This research likewise argues that work is needed to bring these stand-alone initiatives in from the margins of economic development strategies (Jamal and Scholten 2025, 482). Earlier studies highlight the difficulty in pushing for meaningful alterity through social enterprise (Amin et al. 2003) and that organisations working in community economy spaces can find it difficult to express their activity and objectives beyond individualised terms of neoliberalism (Argüelles et al. 2017).
Thus, despite the clear theoretical gap between CWB and current conceptualizations of social economy, there are points of overlapping practice at a community level. This provides insight into the potential to draw from social economy knowledge and practice in CWB movement building to further economic democracy. Equally, however, evidence also reveals the challenge in realizing this potential. The final section of this article looks to the history of social economy in Scotland, to better understand the potential to mobilize Scotland’s social economy for CWB.
Locating Anytown
Social Enterprise in Anytown (2003) is a work that weaves insight from anonymized case studies across Scotland into an imaginary Anytown where Pearce envisions “an intricate network of social economy organizations…committed to community ownership and the reinvestment of profit into the community” (Pearce 2003, 23). Imaginaries and utopias have been an important feature of envisioning social economy and CWB alike and provide an important context to Pearce’s Anytown. As noted by Mazzei et al., in the early 2000s social enterprise was promoted as a utopian solution that could continue to meet social need while the state cut funding to public services. However, following the global financial crash in 2008, the ensuing austerity program hollowed out the utopian potential of the social economy because it was increasingly difficult for social enterprises to meet their social aims on the reduced public service budgets available. In this context social enterprises were faced with a series of trade-off decisions (Mazzei et al. 2021, 5).
At the time of writing Anytown, the work of Pearce and his colleagues building community-led enterprises across Scotland was fragmenting under the forces of systematic restructuring, which affected community business support organizations, local government, and sources of funding from the late 1980s into the mid-1990s (Murray 2019; 2022). Community business was reported as a failure, with evaluative research arguing that community development goals had been pursued at the expense of commercial goals and that new models that prioritized the business in community business were required (Hayton 1996). It was at this point that social enterprise, a relatively new term in the UK, came to dominate the policy conversation around social economy. It was eagerly supported by New Labour’s Tony Blair, who was elected Prime Minister of the UK in 1997 and established the UK Government’s first Social Enterprise Unit in 2001 (Alcock 2011). As a consequence of the increasing policy interest, funding for social enterprise increased and private enterprises sought to capture this funding by emphasizing their social credentials. Policymakers, keen to demonstrate the effectiveness of their efforts to increase the number of social enterprises, permitted private sector businesses to be counted as social enterprises – later identified as the social enterprise “growth myth” by Teasdale et al. (2013).
Anytown is in many ways a classic text of the third-way social economy that divides the economy into three systems: the private sector as the first system; the public sector as the second system; and the social economy as the third system (Pearce 2003, 24-27). However, the book can also be read as an attempt to make clear distinctions between social enterprise and private business and protect the values of social economy, which were perceived at the time as threatened by private enterprise. Further evidence of this reading can be identified in Pearce’s earlier text, written a decade earlier than Anytown. At the Heart of the Community Economy (1993) outlines Pearce’s vision of a community enterprise model within the context of community economy, his thoughts on a community enterprise continuum, and how this supports a multi-layered economy. While not explicitly advocating for systems change, Pearce was interested in the process of economy and in definitions of community economy beyond normative understanding of “localised business activity” (Gibson-Graham et al. 2020, 506). This understanding was derived from two early experiments in community-led economic development in Scotland, which can be described as cornerstones of Scotland’s modern social economy; the HIDB’s community co-operative scheme; and the community business movement.
In the 1970s and 1980s experimental work in community-led economic development across the Highlands and the Lowlands derived energy and support from a revival of interest in cooperation in the UK. A supportive policy environment funded the Industrial Common Ownership Movement and supported the tripling the number of worker co-ops from 300 in 1980 to 900 in 1984 (Cornforth and Thomas 1994, 642). In Scotland, a scheme developed by the Highlands and Islands Development Board (HIDB), a government agency established in 1965 to support economic and social development in the Scottish Highlands and Islands, pioneered a cooperative model of inclusive ownership. The community cooperative scheme, launched in 1977, created 25 cooperatives (Co-Chomuinn in Gaelic-speaking communities) by 1987. A number are still operational today. The community cooperatives created much-needed jobs, but arguably their most valuable legacy has been their ability to build community capacity to run local services and support opportunities for locally controlled economic development (Murray 2023). For example, on the Orkney Island of Papa Westray, Papay Community Cooperative (est.1980) took ownership of a local shop, converted vacant farm cottages into youth hostels, and established self-catering accommodations, which has helped maintain a viable community on the island (Pearce 1993, 7).
In the Scottish Lowlands, community businesses were not run as cooperatives, but as companies limited by guarantee with an asset lock. This meant that they functioned in comparable ways to community cooperatives in the Highlands by reinvesting all profits into community-owned assets and wider community activities. Again, these were typically not stand-alone projects and initiatives. For example, part of the work of Grampian community businesses (based in Aberdeen (northeast Scotland) and working across the city and Aberdeenshire) supported the establishment of a network of small credit unions. This work was established by working closely with the Grampian Regional Council, which – like Pearce’s work in Strathclyde – was heavily impacted by the restructuring of local government in Scotland in 1996. This early work informed how Pearce conceptualized the community enterprise and community economy in the 1990s and created an experimental and expansive program of work. Later research has also identified organisations in Scotland’s social economy that have sought to maintain a commitment to solidarity and long-term community economy development (Argüelles et al. 2017; Mazzei et al. 2021). Thus, there are remarkable similarities between early community-led enterprises in Scotland and the ways inclusive ownership is being taken forward in CWB today using cooperation and close collaboration with anchor institutions and local authorities.
CWB in Anytown
Describing the process of cultivating community economies through the Community Economy Collective, Gibson-Graham et al. advocate for “starting where were are and building other worlds with what is at hand” (Gibson-Graham et al. 2013, 505). This article has argued that when “starting where we are,” there is value in knowing where we have been. The work of community businesses was frequently more expansive than they have been given credit for, not just single enterprises but working on financing and capacity building to sustain communities over the long term. Beneath the surface of the third way, knowledge and support for a greater transformative ambition remains. The memory of the community-led economies as envisioned in the 1970s and 1980s persists and still guides work today that informs why people working in Scotland’s social economy advocate for their place in doing CWB.
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Gillian Murray is a Senior Research Fellow who joined the Yunus Centre in 2014. Her current research investigates the history of social enterprise in Scotland. To date, this research has traced the development of Scotland’s social economy from the 1970s. From 2014 to 2018 Gillian worked on the CommonHealth research program. From 2018-2021, working closely with the GCU Archive Centre, she has been PI on a Scottish Government funded project to develop the Social Enterprise Collection (Scotland). Connected to this work, she also contributes to a project funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund with Magic Torch Comics. Gillian's project is funded by the Royal Society of Edinburgh and investigates the history of Scotland's social economy from deindustrialization to COVID-19. Gillian is part of the supervision team for two doctoral projects investigating aspects of the history of social enterprise.