How do economic social movements manage to act in and on the market despite adversity? The case of cooperative renewable energy projects in France and the United Kingdom

The recycling sector, local currencies, organic farming and community supported agricultures organisations are just some of the areas in which social movement activists are using market spaces to achieve political goals. Whereas scholars researching on these movements provide detailed analysis of their internal dynamics at the local level, there is a lack of work on how they operate at the micro, meso and macro levels. This article fills this gap by showing, based on the case of cooperative renewable energy projects in France and the United Kingdom, that economic social movements act at these levels via two forms of economic power. Firstly, they act on the market by influencing the ways in which public policies shape economic activity via a power of orientation. Secondly, they act in the market by creating new models of economic organisation through the power of activation.