Cooperatives

Civil society, housing and urban governance: The case of urban housing co-operatives in Zimbabwe

by Amin Y. Kamete

Membership Structure and Dividend Payout Policies at Hungarian Cooperative Banks

by Csaba Burger

working paper

Cooperative banks are widely seen as sustainable alternatives to profit-driven banking. However, while most banks... more Cooperative banks are widely seen as sustainable alternatives to profit-driven banking. However, while most banks struggle to meet the stringent capital requirements of regulators, cooperative banks are in particular need of cautious capital-related decisions given their little ability to accommodate investors. In fact, cooperative banks’ single greatest source of capital is their annual surplus.
This paper first highlights that capital protection rules related to Hungarian cooperative banks are more liberal than of other European cooperatives. This step is then followed by an analysis of Hungarian cooperative banks’ decisions on the distribution of annual surplus among their members. In doing so, the annual reports of 99 cooperative banks representing 73 percent of all Hungarian cooperatives are used, complemented with confidential data on the ownership structure of each cooperative.
The study shows that a cooperative with low number of members and high amount of average subscribed capital per member is a lot more probable to distribute high dividends than cooperatives with dispersed ownership and small amounts of contributed capital per member. This result not only sends an alarming message to policy makers, but also contributes to the peculiarities of cooperative corporate governance.

Worker Cooperatives and Revolution: History and Possibilities in the United States

by Chris Wright

Worker cooperatives have a long and tortured history, but recently they have been advancing globally on a more stable... more Worker cooperatives have a long and tortured history, but recently they have been advancing globally on a more stable foundation than before. In this essay I provide a theoretical context for the current growth of cooperatives, drawing on Marxist theory to illuminate their potential. I also consider the sociology and economics of worker cooperatives, in addition to expounding and evaluating their history in the United States. A case-study of a cooperative printing press in Jamaica Plain gives a more intimate portrayal of worker co-ops, and hopefully provides lessons for future cooperators. I interpret society as on the cusp (from a long-term perspective) of a decisive advance of cooperativism; the main purpose of this essay is to explain how and why this advance will occur.

Comportamento ideológico e formas associativas de organização e gestão do trabalho em assentamentos de reforma agrária

by Pedro Christoffoli

“Title I and the Limited-equity Co-op,” “Corlears Hook Title I,” “Fort Greene Title I,” “Pratt Institute Title I,” “Seward Park Title I,” “Park Row Title I,” “Penn Station South Title I,” “Park Row Extension Title I”

by Matthew Lasner

Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Transformation of New York, eds. Hilary Ballon and Kenneth T. Jackson (New York: Norton, 2007)

Cooperatives and nonprofit organizations in Swedish social welfare

by Filip Wijkström

This is a copy of an article published in the journal Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics (67:1, 1996)

ABSTRACT:

The Swedish welfare system was early on developed in an
incremental fashion in close... more ABSTRACT:

The Swedish welfare system was early on developed in an
incremental fashion in close interaction between the state and a range of voluntary social movement organizations. Consequently, Swedish civil society organizations do not quite fit accepted typologies, with regard to underlying normative principles, fields of activity and organizational forms. The absolute size of the Swedish nonprofit sector is comparable with that of other European countries. However, the bulk of its activity is within policy formulation, rather than service provision; concepts of membership and ‘popular movement ’ are central, and charitable organizations are marginal.

In this article, he spread of existing organizational forms is reviewed, with particular reference to the role of cooperatives. New cooperative users’ and producers’ organizations play an important role in the current expansion of third-sector organizations providing welfare services. Three cases of new cooperative forms in the 1990s are appended.

Cooperatives and nonprofit organizations in Swedish social welfare

by Filip Wijkström

This is a copy of an article published in the journal Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics (67:1, 1996)

ABSTRACT:

The Swedish welfare system was early on developed in an
incremental fashion in close... more ABSTRACT:

The Swedish welfare system was early on developed in an
incremental fashion in close interaction between the state and a range of voluntary social movement organizations. Consequently, Swedish civil society organizations do not quite fit accepted typologies, with regard to underlying normative principles, fields of activity and organizational forms. The absolute size of the Swedish nonprofit sector is comparable with that of other European countries. However, the bulk of its activity is within policy formulation, rather than service provision; concepts of membership and ‘popular movement ’ are central, and charitable organizations are marginal.

In this article, he spread of existing organizational forms is reviewed, with particular reference to the role of cooperatives. New cooperative users’ and producers’ organizations play an important role in the current expansion of third-sector organizations providing welfare services. Three cases of new cooperative forms in the 1990s are appended.

Civil Society Generating Innovation: Co-operative and Associative Housing

by Marie J. Bouchard

Cadre conceptuel pour définir la population statistique de l'économie sociale au Québec

by Marie J. Bouchard

Co-authored with Paulo Cruz Filho and Martin St-Denis
A report for the Quebec Statistics Institute
In French

There are no official statistics about social economy in Québec (nor in Canada). Existing data is partial, comprising... more There are no official statistics about social economy in Québec (nor in Canada). Existing data is partial, comprising only one or the other component of social economy (cooperatives, mutuals or non-profit organizations), or covering only one region. This report presents a conceptual framework to guide the data collection and the production of statistics which are coherent and comparable regarding Québec’s social economy. The objective is also to contribute to the development of analytical research on social economy by identifying relevant indicators to quantitatively describe it. The Definition of Social Economy adopted in Québec in 1996, like other definitions used elsewhere in the world, underlines the primacy of social purpose over economic activity. Starting from this definition, the resulting conceptual framework establishes the type of entities, the legal status, sectors of activity and a cluster of qualification criteria of social economy organizations. It also establishes a typology of organizations. The conceptual framework also allows assessing the peripheral components in this field and forecasting its own progress. The conceptual framework must be quite general to establish the fact that the social economy is part of an international movement and at the same time specific enough to properly reflect its Québec originality.

Tagore, Samavaya and Aesthetics

by Anup Dhar

“Behind This Facade: The Generic Condo as a Space of Autonomy”

by Matthew Lasner

tarp: Architecture Manual, Insidious Urbanism issue (Spring 2011): 45-49

Own-your-owns, Co-ops, Town Houses: Hybrid Housing Types and the New Urban Form in Postwar Southern California

by Matthew Lasner

Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 68, no. 3 (Sept. 2009): 378-403

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 Social Innovations of Autogestión in Argentina’s Worker-Recuperated Enterprises: Cooperatively Reorganizing Productive Life in Hard Times

by Marcelo Vieta

(2010, September). Labor Studies Journal, 35(3), pp. 295-321.

Argentina’s worker-recuperated enterprises (empresas recuperadas por sus trabajadores [ERTs]) have shown to be... more Argentina’s worker-recuperated enterprises (empresas recuperadas por sus trabajadores [ERTs]) have shown to be promising grassroots solutions by workers to the sociopolitical and socioeconomic crises that resulted from the country’s collapsing neoliberal model at the turn of the millennium. The author first explores the historical conjuncture in which ERTs emerged. Second, the author theoretically situates ERTs’ practices of autogestión (self-management) and workers’ cooperativism. Third, he sketches out their most common microeconomic and organizational challenges. Last, the author maps out four “social innovations” being spearheaded by ERTs, appraising the social and economic transformations that these innovations prefigure, especially during hard economic times.

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.

Fairtrade or fifty-fifty? The consequences of shifts in African perceptions of Fairtrade for development education practitioners

by Jonathan Penson

In: Policy and Practice: A Development Education Review, Issue 5, pp. 20-30. Centre for Global Education: Belfast. (2007)

Jonathan Penson examines the prized reputation Fairtrade has established among consumers for ethical trading, and... more Jonathan Penson examines the prized reputation Fairtrade has established among consumers for ethical trading, and finds that there is evidence that problems with Fairtrade institutions are encouraging some African coffee producers to exit the Fairtrade system, and that alternatives to Fairtrade are arising. Given that Fairtrade is so often and so successfully used as a synecdoche by development education practitioners for wider issues of advocacy around trade justice, this finding may have important repercussions for them.

Coffee, Fairtrade & Rwanda

by Jonathan Penson

Co-authored with Sara Edstrom and Annie Chamberland

‘Coffee, Fairtrade and Rwanda’ explains how the world coffee system works and how Fairtrade fits in. It looks at how... more ‘Coffee, Fairtrade and Rwanda’ explains how the world coffee system works and how Fairtrade fits in. It looks at how coffee is produced and how the world coffee trading system affects coffee producers. Written by volunteers working in Rwanda with Voluntary Service Overseas, it is aimed to be a complete resource for self-briefing for those interested in global education.

Rural Women Producers and Cooperatives in Conflict Settings in Arab States

by Simel Esim

Written with Mansour Omeira and presented at the FAO-IFAD-ILO Workshop on Gaps, trends and current research in gender dimensions of agricultural and rural employment: differentiated pathways out of poverty, Rome, Italy, March 31-April 2, 2009

Ongoing violent conflicts accentuate the challenges that women and men face in the rural areas of Iraq, Lebanon, and... more Ongoing violent conflicts accentuate the challenges that women and men face in the rural areas of Iraq, Lebanon, and the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The potential of cooperatives for sharing risk, pooling resources, learning together, generating income, and balancing work and family responsibilities, has yet to be actualized. Cooperatives in the three countries remain marginal, and often organizations labelled as cooperatives do not adhere by cooperative principles. Since donor dependency has become pervasive, interventions should focus on skills development for the sustainability of cooperatives. Training needs adaptation to the local context, and gender responsiveness is necessary for the success of interventions.