Co-operatives

Community Power Co-operatives as Engines of Local Empowerment: Lessons Learned from WindShare Co-operative in Ontario

by Mumtaz Derya Tarhan

Centralized electricity generation from environmentally unsustainable sources and a high demand for electricity have... more Centralized electricity generation from environmentally unsustainable sources and a high demand for electricity have detrimental social, economic and environmental impacts on communities worldwide, and hinder the transition to renewable sources. The proliferation of renewable sources needs to be supported by a reduced reliance on traditional methods of electricity generation, and a change in our electricity consumption patterns. In the light of this need, decentralization of electricity generation and handing the ownership of these projects to communities have the potential to reduce the negative impacts of the current electricity generation and consumption scheme, and to generate triple- bottom-line benefits for communities worldwide. Among community groups, co- operatives have a strong potential and track record in enabling community members to gather their financial and human resources and claim shared ownership of renewable power projects.

This paper will first assess the benefits and challenges of community power and co-operatively owned projects based on experiences across the world. Subsequently, it will reveal the experience of WindShare, the first co-operatively owned community power co-operative in Ontario and the owner of the first urban wind turbine in North America. The goal is to provide communities across the world with WindShare’s best practices and lessons learned from its experience, and thereby raise awareness around the potential benefits, challenges and
replicability issues of such projects. It is concluded that while the direct replicability of a co-operatively owned renewable energy initiative may be hindered by the social, economic and political background of an another community, determined, realistic and communicative approaches and behaviours of project leaders also have a significant impact on a project’s economic, social and environmental outcomes.

Entrepreneurial energy: associative entrepreneurship in the renewable energy sector in Wales

by Molly Scott Cato

International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour and Research, 14/5 (2008): 313-29
Co-authored with Len Arthur, Tom Keenoy and Russell Smith

The central suggestion of this paper is that innovation in the concept of entrepreneurship is overdue and that the... more The central suggestion of this paper is that innovation in the concept of entrepreneurship is overdue and that the concept of entrepreneurship needs to be extended to accommodate its often neglected collective or pluralistic dimension, a concept termed “associative entrepreneurship”. It has also been argued that there may be a natural link between sustainability and the co-operative form. In this paper these themes are drawn together by considering the entrepreneurial potential expressed by the recent creation of mutual businesses in a range of renewable energy sectors in Wales. It is suggested that, at least in the renewable energy sector and perhaps in other sectors too, innovation in the direction of sustainability may require a development of the concept of entrepreneurship in the direction of mutualism.

A Co-operative Path to Food Security in the UK

by Molly Scott Cato

Journal of Co-operative Studies, 43/2 (2010): 4-15
Co-authored with Richard Bickle

The issue of food security is rising rapidly up the political agenda, especially in Europe. The broad parameters of... more The issue of food security is rising rapidly up the political agenda, especially in Europe. The broad parameters of the EU were developed in the immediate post-war years and, consequently, much of its early energy in the area of agriculture was devoted to supporting farmers and maximizing food production. This led to over-production and a lack of attention to environmental standards in agriculture. More recently, a number of ecological and economic issues have combined to threaten supplies of food to some of Europe’s developed nations, particularly the UK. This paper begins by outlining the nature of the problem facing the UK in terms of food supply. It sets the debate within the framework of climate change and resource insecurity, indicating that the UK’s policy of trading financial services in return for food bought on the global market seems increasingly vulnerable. The paper then moves on to consider the role of co-operatives in food production and distribution and identifies the dominance of food in the history and current status of the co-operative movement in the UK. By way of conclusion, the paper questions how the co-operative economic model may be able to make a timely contribution to underpinning food security in the UK.

Green or Red: An Exploration of the Cooperative Environmental Niche in Wales

by Molly Scott Cato

Journal of Cooperative Studies, 39/2 (2006): 29-40
Co-authored with Len Arthur, Tom Keenoy and Russell Smith

This paper proposes the possibility of a link between the commitment to building a sustainable economy and the... more This paper proposes the possibility of a link between the commitment to building a sustainable economy and the cooperative model of organisation. The analysis is based in an analysis of guild socialist and utopian socialist ideas that supported the development of cooperatives and their links with current green political economy. The cooperative is a natural form of productive organization as visualized by both these traditions. The research findings reported in the paper relate to an audit of 81 cooperatives in Wales (Arthur et al., 2004), whose sample included 17 cooperatives operating with a clear commitment to the environment. A brief illustration of the practicalities of bringing together these shared ideas and the activity of environmentally-focused cooperatives in Wales is offered. It is suggested that further research into the existence of an environmental niche in Wales and its relationship to guild socialist, utopian socialist and green ideas may be fruitful.
Issues of accountability and responsibility are seen as key to the possible
sustainability-cooperative link.

Autogestión and the Worker-Recuperated Enterprises in Argentina: The Potential for Reconstituting Work and Recomposing Life

by Marcelo Vieta

Paper presented at the 2008 Anarchist Studies Network conference, "Re-imagining Revolution," in the panel: “‘¡Autogestión ya!’ The promises and challenges of self-management in Argentina’s worker-recuperated enterprises,” Saturday, Sept. 6, 2008.

The Argentine worker-recuperated enterprises (empresas recuperdas por sus trabajadores, or ERT) are direct, diverse,... more The Argentine worker-recuperated enterprises (empresas recuperdas por sus trabajadores, or ERT) are direct, diverse, and mostly non-union aligned responses by roughly 10,000 urban-based workers to recent socio-economic crises. Over ten years since the first workplace occupations and their recoveries as self-managed workers' cooperatives, this latest wave of workers’ struggle in Argentina has shown promising alternatives to capital-labour relations and the neoliberal enclosures of life.

But why were almost 200 failing, closed, or bankrupted small- and medium-sized businesses spanning the entire urban economic base subsequently occupied and reopened as self-managed workplaces by former employees in Argentina since at least 1997? Why do most ERTs decide to reorganize themselves as workers’ cooperatives? Why do many of them also decide to open up the shop floor to the diverse communities surrounding them, symbolically and practically tearing down factory walls by sharing their workplaces with community centres and dining halls, free clinics, popular education programmes, alternative radio and media centres, and art studios? Finally, why Argentina?

To begin to answer these questions, I first explore some of Argentina’s key socio-economic and historical conjunctures motivating workspace occupations and the formation of self-managed workers’ cooperatives. Second, I begin to theorize the concept of autogestión (self-management) as it tends to be practiced by Argentina’s ERTs. Third, I sketch out some of the ERTs’ most common micro-economic and organizational successes and challenges, exploring how the struggle to reconstitute a once capitalist workplace as a self-managed workers’ coop interplays with an ERT’s reconstituted labour processes. I conclude by appraising the future possibilities of ERTs for social transformation in Argentina by mapping out four “social innovations” being spearheaded by the phenomenon.

Worker-Recovered Enterprises as Workers' Cooperatives: The Conjunctures, Challenges, and Innovations of Self-Management in Argentina

by Marcelo Vieta

Co-authored with Andrés Ruggeri. (2007). In Darryl Reed & JJ McMurtry (Eds.), Co-operatives in a Global Economy: The Challenges and Innovations of Co-operation Across Borders (pp. 178-225). Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

This chapter examines this phenomenon of ERTs in Latin American countries, with a special emphasis on the case of... more This chapter examines this phenomenon of ERTs in Latin American countries, with a special emphasis on the case of Argentina. Based on our ongoing quantitative and qualitative political economic and ethnographic work over the past five years with over 70 ERTs across all economic sectors and regions, we highlight two particular characteristics that are often overlooked or downplayed by studies that examine worker-recovered enterprises in Argentina. First, workers’ initial actions involving the seizure of control of their deteriorating or failed companies from former owners, their occupation of them for weeks or months, and eventually their putting them into operation once again under autogestión (self-management), arise out of fear and anger rather than a preconceived predilection for workers’ control or working-class revolt. That is, most ERTs originate as direct responses to their worker-protagonists’ deep worries about becoming structurally unemployed. To begin to understand these two characteristics, we first briefly look to the historical and political conjunctures from which ERTs emerge and in which they find themselves. We then explore some of the distinguishing features of Argentina’s ERTs as workers’ co-operatives. To illustrate how these features play out in practice, we map out some of the innovations impelled by ERT workers’ desire to self-manage that they adopt in order to defend their jobs and workspaces, as well as several of the challenges faced by these experiments in self-management. Lastly, we examine some of the connections with the wider ERT phenomenon in South America. As we emphasize throughout, ERT’s innovations and challenges shape their very organizational structures and co-operative practices and in some ways distinguish them from other workers’ co-operatives in other conjunctures.

The New Cooperativism

by Marcelo Vieta

(2010). Editorial for guest-edited issue of Affinities: A Journal of Radical Theory, Culture, and Action, 4 (1), pp. 1-11.

Cooperative practices and values that challenge the status quo while, at the same time, creating alternative modes of... more Cooperative practices and values that challenge the status quo while, at the same time, creating alternative modes of economic, cultural, social, and political life have emerged with dynamism in recent years. The 15 articles in this issue of _Affinities_--written by activists, coop practitioners, theorists, historians, and researchers--begin to make visible some of the myriad modes of cooperation existing today around the world that both directly respond to new enclosures and crises and show pathways beyond them. Prefiguring other possibilities for organizing life and provisioning for our needs and desires, we call these cooperative experiments "the new cooperativism."

Table of Contents for the Affinities issue on 'The New Cooperativism' (Guest edited by Marcelo Vieta)

Editorial

The New Cooperativism HTML PDF
Marcelo Vieta

Historicizing and Theorizing the New Cooperativism

The Cooperative Movement in Century 21
John Curl

Commons and Cooperatives
Greig de Peuter, Nick Dyer-Witheford

Sisyphus and the Labour of Imagination: Autonomy, Cultural Production, and the Antinomies of Worker Self-Management
Stevphen Shukaitis

A Buzz between Rural Cooperation and the Online Swarm
Andrew Gryf Paterson

The Sangham Strategy: Lessons for a Cooperative Mode of
Production
Sourayan Mookerjea

Practicing the New Cooperativism

Decomposition and Suburban Space
Conor Cash
Justseeds Artists' Cooperative
Dara Greenwald

Solidarity Food Economies?
J Howard

Cooperatives and the 'Bolivarian Revolution' in Venezuela
Tom Malleson

Social Centres and the New Cooperativism of the Common
Andre Pusey

The New University Cooperative: Reclaiming Higher Education: Prioritizing Social Justice and Ecological Sustainability
E. Wilma van der Veen

Researching the New Cooperativism
Recycling Technologies and Cooperativism: Waste-for-Life
Caroline Baillie, Eric Feinblatt

Italian Social Cooperatives and the Development of Civic Capacity: A Case of Cooperative Renewal?
Vanna Gonzales

The Universe of Worker-Recovered Companies in Argentina (2002-2008): Continuity and Changes Inside the Movement
Héctor Palomino, Ivanna Bleynat, Silvia Garro, Carla Giacomuzzi

Praxis, Learning, and New Cooperativism in Venezuela: An Initial Look at Venezuela's Socialist Production Units
Manuel Larrabure

The 'New Cooperativism' in Latin America: Worker-Recuperated Enterprises and Socialist Production Units

by Marcelo Vieta

Co-authored with Manuel Larrabure & Daniel Schugurensky. (2011, Autumn). In a special issue of Studies in the Education of Adults entitled "Social Movement Learning: A Contemporary Re-examination," 43(2), pp. 181-196.

In the first decade of the 21st century, efforts to create alternatives to neoliberalism emerged in many parts of... more In the first decade of the 21st century, efforts to create alternatives to neoliberalism emerged in many parts of Latin America. Social movements across the region took to the streets, occupied abandoned factories, and started to create new democratic spaces, solidarity networks, and social economy initiatives. In one country after another, progressive governments began to take office, promising a break from the past. It was in this context that the new cooperativism emerged in Latin America. In contrast to traditional cooperativism in the region, this new movement emerged as a direct response by workers and communities to the economic and political crisis of the late 1990s, displays stronger horizontal organisation and democratic values, and has deeper connections to surrounding communities. In this paper, we present two case studies that exemplify this new cooperativism: Venezuela's Socialist Production Units and Argentina's Worker-Recuperated Enterprises. Using the framework of social movement learning, we argue that in both these cases participants learn new values and practices, and collectively create prefigurative knowledge that anticipate post-capitalist social relations. This is done through a variety of everyday activities, and in particular, through democratic participation in self-governance. However, this new cooperativism faces important challenges from both the state and market forces, suggesting that their autonomy is subjected to shifting and contested dynamics.