The Social Economy as Means for Community Development in Current Society.

The dissertation focuses on the potential of social economy for the community development and strives to answer the question which methods are to be used to monitor and prove impacts of social enterprise. The dissertation discusses social entrepreneurship in a broad theoretical context and it is complemented by the empirical research of social impact in a selected local community. The theoretical part focuses on selected perspectives of communitarian ideas that emphasise communities as the particular entity anchoring its members emotionally, morally and support their practical civic attitudes and political habits. These characteristics clash with the current request for individual accountability and moral choice, typical for modern society. The chapter also analyses relations between global economic processes and local activities and consequently points at vulnerability of local communities. The submitted work indicates new ideas that respond critically to some features of economic globalisation and that provide local solutions to a variety of aspects of social life: economic, social, political and ecological. Social economy finds itself among these alternatives: the dissertation indicates and analyses role, potential and limits of social economy. The empirical research tested the impact of social..