The Dr. U.S.

Awasthi Initiative in Cooperative Economics

COOPERATIVE ECONOMICS RESEARCH GUIDE

Introduction

Here at the Blum Center, The Dr. U.S. Awasthi Initiative in Cooperative Economics
supports UCSB faculty and student research centered on the principles, practices, and
prospects for cooperative enterprise in California, the U.S., and worldwide.

Cooperative economics exist all around us in the form of food co-ops, credit unions,
housing cooperatives, employee stock ownership plans, mutual aid networks,
community land trusts, electricity cooperatives, and more! Cooperative economics is
present whenever members of a community take action to meet material and social
needs that are unmet by markets. The most common type of this communal action is
the formation of a cooperative enterprise. It is usually a business organization that is
owned and democratically controlled by its workers or members who use its services.
Cooperative enterprises provide affordable goods and services when markets price
them out of reach, or even fail to provide them at all. Cooperative businesses also
facilitate a more equitable distribution of resources or income by prioritizing the
interests and values of their member-owners over the maximization of profits.
Cooperatives, also known as “co-ops” can appear in many forms depending on
ownership structure.1

This research guide is designed to help you understand what cooperative economics is
and why it is incredibly important for providing resources in an economy littered with
market failures and a nation plagued by growing inequality. In addition to guiding you
through various cooperative economics examples and the existing state of the research
literature, this handout contains clear questions and ideas for needed student research

1
As opposed to the US, in the UK and elsewhere abroad, cooperatives are referred to with the spelling
“co-operatives.” As such, both spellings are used interchangeably throughout this guide.

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The Dr. U.S. Awasthi Initiative in Cooperative Economics

projects. We welcome and invite you to explore your own interests through a
cooperative economics lens.

Organization of Sections2

1. Defining Cooperative Economics: provides an outline of the primary ways that

scholars and cooperative groups have defined cooperative activity. Pgs. 2-4
2. Cooperative Economics Categories & Examples: includes prominent examples
of cooperatives operating today that you can investigate further. Pgs. 5-8
3. Potential Research Questions: there are many ways to create a research project
in cooperative economics. This section provides question to help inspire your
own inquiry. Pgs. 8-9
4. Timeline of Important Events in Cooperative History: historical context and past
development of the cooperative movement. Pgs. 9-13
5. Web Resources: contains a range of online resources and websites you can use
to find more information. Pgs. 13-14
6. Academic Sources: a range of beginner and more advanced peer-reviewed
sources you can use to support your research. You will find the beginner sources
highlighted in bold. Pgs. 14-22
7. Annotated Bibliography Section: descriptive overview of key cooperative
economics articles and books that explains the key contributions and
significance of the source. Pgs. 23-32

Defining Cooperative Economics

A cooperative or co-op is an organization and/or business that is owned by

stakeholders who are not investors, a single individual, or a family.3 This means that a
cooperative is owned and democratically operated by its members and/or workers who
use its services or produce its goods.4 Co-op members own their co-op through

2
This guide primarily provides an overview of traditional cooperative organizations, although there are
also useful citations here addressing the broader spectrum of communal activity that also falls under the
cooperative economics umbrella.
3
Jonathan Michie et. al., “Introduction and Overview” in The Oxford Handbook of Mutual, Co-
operative, and Co-Owned Business, eds. Jonathan Michie et. al (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017,)
xxiii.
4
For more expansive definitions see: Jessica Gordon Nembhard, Collective Courage: A History of
African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice (College Station: Penn State University
Press, 2014); Univeristy of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives, “What is a Co-op?”
https://uwcc.wisc.edu/about-co-ops/; International Cooperative Alliance, “Cooperative identity, values,

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The Dr. U.S. Awasthi Initiative in Cooperative Economics

cooperative financing, makes decisions for their co-op using voting rights, and are the
main beneficiaries of the goods their co-op provides or the revenue that it generates.

Cooperative organizations come into being when people organize voluntarily to meet
their common goals and wants through a democratically controlled enterprise.5
Cooperatives are formed by their member-owners to either provide an economic
and/or social need, an affordable quality good or service that the market does not
provide, or to provide that good or service at a more affordable cost. Lastly,
cooperatives create a more equitable distribution of funds and resources. Cooperatives
are ideal for responding to instances of market failure6 when the economy cannot
provide goods and services at an affordable rate for which cooperatives can
compensate.

Since 1844, cooperatives have organized themselves around a shared set of

cooperative principles codified by the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers in
England that serves as a unifying thread for the modern global cooperative movement.
In 1937, the International Cooperative alliance introduced and formalized seven
principles that determine global cooperative principles and values.7 As a whole, the
principles emphasize the values of self-help, self-reliance, responsibility, equality,
equity, and solidarity with other cooperatives.8 There are also different categories that
cooperatives fall under. See below.

The Seven Core Cooperative Principles and Values9:

1. Open and Voluntary Membership
• Membership must be open to all persons interested in accepting the
responsibilities of cooperative membership. Absolutely no discrimination

and principles,” https://www.ica.coop/en/cooperatives/cooperative-identity; Democracy at Work

Institute, “Worker Cooperative Definition,” 2015, https://www.usworker.coop/wp-
content/uploads/2018/02/Worker-Cooperative-Definition-2015.pdf
5
ICA, “Cooperative Identity, Values, and Principles.”
6
Market failure is a concept in economics that refers to situations in which the operation of a given fair
market fails to produce the most efficient allocation of resources.
7
Hagen Henrÿ, “Co-operative Principles and Co-operative Law Across the Globe” in The Oxford
Handbook of Co-operative and Co-Owned Business, eds. Jonathan Michie et. al (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2017, 39). Does the page number go inside of the parenthesis? I’ve always put it
outside, based on the Chicago guide I use:
https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide/citation-guide-1.html
8
California Center for Cooperative Development, “What is a Co-op?”
9
ICA, “Cooperative Identity, Values and Principles.”

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The Dr. U.S. Awasthi Initiative in Cooperative Economics

based on race, gender, religion, economic class and circumstance, or any

other identity category is permitted.

2. Democratic Member Control

• Organized on the principle of one member, one vote. If a board of
directors or representatives make decisions for the membership, those
agents must be elected by and accountable to the membership.

3. Member Economic Participation

• Members contribute to the shared capital of their cooperative in an
equitable manner. Surpluses which would normally be identified as profit
are instead allocated by members for the development of their
cooperative enterprise, the establishment of capital reserves, or for
supporting other agreed upon activities for the cooperative to undertake.
When and where capital is used to benefit members, it is to be done in
proportion to their transactions with the cooperative.

4. Autonomy and Independence

• Cooperatives are independent organizations controlled by their
members. If co-ops enter into agreements with outside parties, it is only
in a way that preservers their autonomy.

5. Education, Training, and Information

• Cooperatives value continuing education for their members to ensure
they participate in and contribute to their cooperatives effectively.
Cooperatives also educate the public to spread awareness of the benefits
of cooperation.

6. Cooperation among Cooperatives

• To best serve their members and strengthen the international cooperative
movement, cooperatives prioritize partnerships with other cooperatives
and cooperative networks.

7. Concern for Community

• Cooperatives pursue sustainable development for the communities of
which they are a part.

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The Dr. U.S. Awasthi Initiative in Cooperative Economics

Primary Cooperative Categories10:

1. Consumer Cooperatives: owned by members to purchase needed goods or

services.

Example: buying clubs, cooperative retail stores, credit unions, etc.

2. Workers’ Cooperatives: any enterprise owned by its workers. The workers make
operation and management decisions for their company and decide how to
allocate capital.

Example: any worker-owned business, cooperative cab companies,

worker-occupied factories, etc.

3. Producer Cooperatives: ownership is shared by members who produce similar

types of goods and services. Producer cooperatives are effective for negotiating
prices and enabling the goods and/or services to access larger markets.

Example: most agricultural cooperatives fall under this distinction.

4. Purchasing or Shared Services Cooperatives: Members are businesses or

organizations, not individual consumers, or workers. Members work together to
combine purchasing power and achieve better pricing, availability, and delivery
of products or services.

Example: often formed by hospitals, independent retail stores, and

educational institutions for cost-effective wholesale purchases.

5. Multi-Stakeholder Cooperatives: formed by collaboration between different

classes of member. Members can be individual consumers, businesses,
investors, workers, or producers and any combination of these groups.

Example: cooperative organizations that are formed to cover an entire

supply chain. A food-oriented multi-stakeholder, for instance, cooperative
might include growers, agricultural supply businesses, distributors, food
processors, workers, and buyers to create a cooperative chain from farm
to table.

10
These categories are borrowed from the classifications used by the University of Wisconsin’s Center
for Cooperatives. See: University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives, “What is a Co-op?”
https://www.ica.coop/en/cooperatives/cooperative-identity

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The Dr. U.S. Awasthi Initiative in Cooperative Economics

Cooperative Economic Examples & Important Cases

EXPLORING
THE COOPERATIVE anniversary
ECONOMY edition REPORT 2021

APPENDIX
NORWAY
COOPERATIVES THAT CONTRIBUTED TO THE RESEARCH
Coop Norge FINLAND
S Group (SOK)

THE NETHERLANDS
Rabobank

THE UNITED
KINGDOM
The Midcounties
Co-operative
COVID-19. THE FOREFRONT OF THE RECOVERY

COVID-19. THE FOREFRONT OF THE RECOVERY

ITALIA
UNITED STATES ITAS Mutua JAPAN
National Cooperative SPAIN Japanese Consumers’
Grocers Association (NCG) Fundación Espriu Co-operative Union (JCCU)
Grupo Cooperativo Cajamar Zen-noh
MONDRAGON S. Coop
COSTA RICA
Conelectricas R.l.
EL SALVADOR Coopeservidores
Fedecaces Coopetarrazú R.l. NIGERIA ETHIOPIA
Odua Cooperative INDIA
Awach SACCOS IFFCO
Conglomerate Limited
(OCC))
PANAMA TANZANIA
KENYA
Cooperativa Profesionales, R. L. Kilimanjaro Co-operative
Co-operative Bank of
Bank AUSTRALIA
Kenya Ltd.
CBH Group
Kenya Police Sacco
Society Ltd MAURITIUS
ARGENTINA
Sancor Seguros Kenya Union of The Mauritius Co-operative
CHILE Savings Agricultural Federation (MACF)
Institución Financiera and Credit Co-
Cooperativa Coopeuch operatives Ltd
(KUSCCO)

NEW ZEALAND
Fonterra Cooperative Group Limited
Foodstuffs North Island

26 COVID-19 Cooperatives at the forefront of the recovery COVID-19 Cooperatives at the forefront of the recovery 27

Figure 1, “2021 World Cooperative Monitor Report,” International Cooperative Alliance,

https://monitor.coop/en

Consumer Co-ops

• Recreational Equipment Inc. (REI), Washington, USA, https://www.rei.com/

• Golden 1 Credit Union, California, USA https://www.golden1.com/

• Adams-Columbia Electric Cooperative, Wisconsin, USA

https://www.acecwi.com/

• Isla Vista Food Cooperative, California, USA

http://islavistafoodcoop.blogspot.com/

• Santa Barbara Student Housing Cooperative, California, USA

https://www.sbcoop.org/

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The Dr. U.S. Awasthi Initiative in Cooperative Economics

• Federación Nacional de Cooperativas de Ahorro y Crédito de Ecuador

(FECOAC), Ecuador, https://fecoac.org/

• Institución Financiera Cooperativa Coopeuch, Chile, https://www.coopeuch.cl/

• Sancor Seguos, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, and Paraguay,

https://www.sancorseguros.com/en

• Awach Saving and Credit Cooperative Society Limited, Ethiopia,

https://www.awachsacco.com/

Worker Co-ops

• Union Cab Co-op, Wisconsin, USA https://www.unioncab.com/

• Isthmus Engineering and Manufacturing, Wisconsin, USA

https://isthmuseng.com/

• Equal Exchange, Massachusetts, USA https://equalexchange.coop/

• Cooperative Care, Wisconsin, USA http://www.cooperativecare.us/

• North Wind Renewable Energy, Wisconsin, USA https://www.northwindre.com/

• Mondragon, Basque Country, Spain https://www.mondragon-

corporation.com/en/about-us/

• Bobs Red Mill, Oregon, USA https://www.bobsredmill.com/employee-owned

Producer Co-ops

• Ocean Spray, Massachusetts, USA https://www.oceanspray.com/

• The Blueberry People, Michigan, USA http://www.blueberries.com/about.php

• Organic Valley, Wisconsin, USA https://www.organicvalley.coop/

• Q Artist Cooperative, Wisconsin, USA https://qartistscooperative.com/

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The Dr. U.S. Awasthi Initiative in Cooperative Economics

• Alanya Fishers, Turkey

Purchasing/Shared Services Cooperatives

• Ace Hardware, Oak Brook, USA https://www.acehardware.com/about-us

• Carpet One, San Diego, USA https://www.carpetone.com/about-carpet-one

• Independent Pharmacy Cooperative, Wisconsin, USAhttps://www.ipcrx.com/

• Educational & Institutional Cooperative Services, New York, USA.

https://www.eandi.org/

Multi-Stakeholder Cooperatives

• Weaver Street Market, North Carolina, USA

https://www.weaverstreetmarket.coop/

• Fifth Season Cooperative, Wisconsin, USA http://www.fifthseasoncoop.com/

• Wisconsin Food Hub Cooperative, Wisconsin, USA https://wifoodhub.com/

• Fedecaces, El Salvador, http://www.fedecaces.com/site/

• Odua Cooperative Conglomerate Limited, Idaban, Nigeria,

https://oduacooperativeconglomerate.coop/

• Co-operative Bank of Kenya, Nairobi, Kenya, www.co-opbank.co.ke

• Cooperation Jackson, Jackson, Mississippi, https://cooperationjackson.org/intro

Agricultural Co-ops

• India Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative (IFFCO), New Delhi, India,

https://www.iffco.in/en/corporate
o Often listed as the biggest co-op in the world

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The Dr. U.S. Awasthi Initiative in Cooperative Economics

• Mauritius Cooperative Agricultural Federation, Port Louis, Mauritius,

https://mcafcoop.com/

• Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance fund, Georgia, USA,

https://www.federation.coop/
o Considered the only extant African American Cooperative in the US11 (17)

Historical African American Mutual Aid Societies

• Major 19th Century Examples12

o Independent Order of Saint Luke (Maryland and Virginia),
o National Ex-Slave Relief, Bounty and Pension Association (Tennessee),
founded by African American Women,
o Free African Society (Pennsylvania)

Potential Research Questions

• Historical tension between the scale and democratic values of a cooperative.

Can cooperatives grow while also remaining democratic and responsive to
member needs?

• What does economic solidarity look like in practice? What are the best methods
for democratic decision making in cooperative groups? How does democracy
work in harmony (or not) with other values like autonomy, consensus, and
building economic power?

• Under what conditions are people most likely to cooperate to meet common
goals? What can be done to foster those conditions?

• What can specific cases of cooperation in action tell us about the wider
cooperative movement? How can looking at one specific community land trust,
credit union, cooperative grocery store, etc.. help to illuminate larger trends in
cooperative economics?

• How does cooperative economics work within an intersectional framework? In

other words, how do overlapping layers of race, gender, class work to foster

11
Nembhard, Collective Courage, 17.
12
Nembhard, Collective Courage, 21.

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The Dr. U.S. Awasthi Initiative in Cooperative Economics

different forms of cooperation in different contexts? What can communal

practices of marginalized communities tell us about the potential of economic
cooperation as a path to empowerment, liberation, and justice?

Timeline of Important Events in Cooperative History13

2012 United Nations International Year of Cooperatives

• Declared in 2012 by the United Nations, the ICA and UN jointly declare the next
ten years to be the international decade of cooperatives.

2005 United Nations International Year of Micro-Credit

2004 US Federation of Worker Cooperatives formed in Minneapolis

2001 Horizontalidad and Autogestión movements grow in Argentina in wake of IMF-

imposed austerity programs

1995 ICA adopts most recent iteration of cooperative identity and principles
statement
• At the 1995 ICA conference, attendees added the seventh principle on
“Concern for Community” to the cooperative identity program.

1993 Cooperativa ARIGOS is formed by three prisoners in Puerto Rico

• In response, the governor amends applicable law to account for prison
cooperatives, allowing for the growth of more prisoner cooperatives in Puerto
Rico.14

1978 National Cooperative Bank established in US through an act of Congress

1967 Federation of Southern Cooperatives Established

1967 Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative (IFFCO) formed as a multi-unit cooperative

society

13
Much of the literature on the history of cooperatives and cooperative economics focuses heavily on
growth of cooperative model out of European experiments. As such, this timeline is somewhat biased
towards the US and Europe.
14
Bobby Sullivan, Revolutionary Threads: Rastafari, Social Justice, and Cooperative Economics (New
York: Akashic Books, 2018,) 150.

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The Dr. U.S. Awasthi Initiative in Cooperative Economics

1964 Kenya National Federation of Cooperatives (KNFC) formed, exists today at the
Cooperative Alliance of Kenya

1956 The Mondragon Cooperative Corporation is founded the Basque Country of

Spain

1946 North American Students of Cooperation (NASCO) formed under the initial
name North American Student Cooperative League

1938 Recreational Equipment, Inc. (REI) formed in Seattle first as the Recreation
Equipment Cooperative

1935 Rural Electrification Commission established by FDR executive order as part of

New Deal

1930s Self-Help Cooperative Movement

• Movement of unemployed workers to set up various barter and labor-exchange
networks, most active in the early pre-New Deal years of the Great Depression.

1930 Young Negroes’ Co-operative League (YNCL)

• Founded in of December 1930 by approximately thirty young black Americans
under leadership from George Schuyler and Ella Baker. The YNCL grew into a
strong presence in five US cities by the early 1930s. Several cooperatives were
developed through the league.15

1923 First International Day of Cooperatives

1922 Japanese cooperative movement swells to 3 million members

• First legislation regulation regulating cooperatives in Japan was passed in 1900,
after 1922 the cooperative movement in Japan would be stifled by authoritarian
governments.16

1916 Cooperative League of the USA (CLUSA) is Formed

15
Nembhard, Collective Courage, 22, 242.
16
Zamagni, “World Historical Perspective on Co-operatives,” 111.

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The Dr. U.S. Awasthi Initiative in Cooperative Economics

• Founded by surgeon James P. Warbasse, with idea that cooperation is a natural

outcome of democracy. The cooperative league exists today as the National
Cooperative Business Association--CLUSA.17

1895 International Cooperative Alliance founded in London, England during first

Cooperative Congress

1880s Formation of Key Groups in Black Populist Movement18

• 1880—Colored Grange of Tennessee established
• 1882—Negro Farmers’ Alliance organized in Arkansas; other African American
farmers’ alliances soon formed in other states including Texas
• 1896—Colored Agricultural Wheels are organized across the South, Colored
Farmers’ National Alliance and Co-operative Union forms in Houston County,
Texas

1872 Spread of farmers’ cooperatives across Denmark

• Following death of cooperative promoter Nicolas Friederich Gründtvigts, co-
operatives grow dramatically first in dairy farming sector. In following
decades, agricultural cooperative societies spread across Scandinavia.19

1849 Formation of first rural mutual bank (or credit union) in Anhausen, Germany

1848 Ateliers Nationaux (national workshops) experiment in France

• Project to form unemployed into workers’ co-ops in France following the 1848
revolution with 225 different workers’ associations in Paris alone.
• The workers’ cooperative model was first developed in France in 1831 with the
formation of a society of carpenters.20

1844 Rochdale Society of Pioneers Founded

• Formed in Rochdale, Lancashire, United Kingdon

17
Nembhard, Collective Courage, 12; National Cooperative Business Association, “NCBA CLUSA
History & Timeline,” https://ncbaclusa.coop/about-us/our-history/
18
Nembhard, Collective Courage, 21, 240.
19
Vera Zamagni, “A Worldwide Historical Perspective on Co-operatives and their Evolution” in The
Oxford Handbook of Mutual, Co-operative, and Co-owned Business eds. Jonathan Michie et. al.
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017,) 103.
20
Ibid, 102.

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The Dr. U.S. Awasthi Initiative in Cooperative Economics

• Considered a foundational moment for the modern cooperative movement21

• Originators of the hugely influential Rochdale Principles

1752 Benjamin Franklin Founds the Mutual Fire Insurance company

• First recognized cooperative business in the US22

Web Resources

• Beyond the Bottom Line, Documentary, http://headlamppictures.com/worker-

coops

• University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives, https://uwcc.wisc.edu/research/

• Canadian Centre for the Study of Cooperatives, https://www.usaskstudies.coop/

• North American Students of Cooperation, https://www.nasco.coop/

• International Cooperative Alliance, https://www.ica.coop/en

• World Cooperative Monitor Report, https://monitor.coop/en

• Democracy Collaborative, https://democracycollaborative.org/

• The Next System Project, https://thenextsystem.org/

• The Evergreen Cooperative Corporation, http://www.evgoh.com/

• Ted Talks on Cooperatives and Cooperative Economics

o Melanie Shellito, “Why the Cooperative Model is a Revolution,”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrPdRg9kumM
o Benoit Molineaux, “Let’s Create our Own Cooperative Economy,”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9wKDoX2_Q4

Lynn Pittman, “History of Cooperatives in the United States: An Overview” UW Center for
21

Cooperatives, December 2018, 1, https://resources.uwcc.wisc.edu/history_of_cooperatives.pdf

22
Pittman, “History of Cooperatives in the United States: An Overview”, 2,
https://resources.uwcc.wisc.edu/history_of_cooperatives.pdf

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The Dr. U.S. Awasthi Initiative in Cooperative Economics

o Julia Hutchins, “How Cooperative Businesses can Answer Tough Business

Challenges,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzSw6OsEP9Q
o Jim Brown, “How to Stop Poverty: Start a Worker-Owned Cooperative,”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFyl0zz2yqs
o Regan Muir, “The Housing Revolution: How Housing Co-ops Can Provide
a Better Future,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhXirVAstYA
o Michelle Lopez-Dohrn, “Growing Community Through a Food Co-op,”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgGkigiukw8
o Anu Puusa, “The Case for Co-ops, the Invisible Giant of the Economy,”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nCJRrNTlus

Academic Sources
Excellent beginner sources listed in bold

Primary Sources

Asbury, Edith Evans. 1967. “Co-op Store for Harlem; Harlem to Build a Co-op Market.”
New York Times, December 21.

Sinclair, Upton. The Epic Plan For California. Los Angeles: End Poverty League, Inc.,
1934.

Kerr, Clark. “Productive Enterprises of the Unemployed, 1931-1938.” Ph.D.

dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1939.

Sitrin, Marina, ed. Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina. Oakland: AK

Press, 2006.

W.E.B. Du Bois. Economic Cooperation Among Negro American. Atlanta: Atlanta

University Press, 1907.

Secondary Sources

Adams, Frank T., and Gary B. Hansen. 1992. Putting Democracy to Work: A Practical
Guide for Starting and Managing Worker-Owned Businesses. Rev. ed. San Fran-
cisco: Berrett-Koehler.

Adams, Frank T., and Richard Shirey. 1993. The Workers’ Owned Sewing Company:
Making the Eagle Fly Friday; An ICA Group Case Study. Boston: ICA Group.

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The Dr. U.S. Awasthi Initiative in Cooperative Economics

Albert, Michael and Robin Hahnel. The Political Economy of Participatory Economics.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991.

Alperovitz, Gar. America Beyond Capitalism:Reclaiming Our Wealth, Our Liberty, and
Our Democracy. Hoboken, N.J: J. Wiley, 2005.

Battilani, Patrizia., and Harm G. Schro ter. The Cooperative Business Movement, 1950
to the Present. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Bendick, Marc, Jr., and Mary Lou Egan. 1995. “Worker Ownership and Participation
Enhances Economic Development in Low-Opportunity Communities.” Journal of
Community Practice 2 (1): 61–85.

Bennello, C. George. From the Ground Up: Essays on Grassroots and Workplace
Democracy, ed. Len Krimerman et al. Boston: South End Press, 1992.

Bickle, Richard, and Alan Wilkins. 2000. “Co-operative Values, Principles, and Future—
A Values Basis to Building a Successful Co-operative Business.” Journal of Co-
operative Studies 33 (August): 179–205.

Birchall, Johnston. 2003. Rediscovering the Cooperative Advantage: Poverty Reduction

Through Self-Help. Geneva, Switzerland: International Labour Office.

Birchall, Johnston. The International Co-operative Movement. Manchester: Manchester

University Press, 1997.

Birchall, Johnston, and Lou Hammond Ketilson. 2009. Resilience of the Cooperative
Business Model in Times of Crisis. Geneva, Switzerland: International Labour
Office.

Black, Lawrence, and Nicole Robertson. Consumerism and the Co-Operative

Movement in Modern British History: Taking Stock. Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 2009.

Cheney, George. Values at Work: Employee Participation Meets Market Pressure at

Mondragón. Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 1999.

Conover, Nancy, Frieda Molina, and Karin Morris. 1993. Creating Jobs Through

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Cooperative Development. Davis, Calif.: University of California, Davis, Center

for Cooperatives.

Cornwell, Janelle. “Worker Co-operatives and Spaces of Possibility: An Investigation of

Subject Space at Collective Copies.” Antipode Vol. 44 No. 3 (2012): 725-744.

Curl, John. For All the People: Uncovering the Hidden History of Cooperation,
Cooperative Movements, and Communalism in America. Oakland: PM Press,
2009.

Daly, Herman E., John B. Cobb, and Clifford W. Cobb. For the Common Good:
Redirecting the Economy Toward Community, the Environment, and a
Sustainable Future. 2nd ed., updated and expanded. Boston: Beacon Press,
1994.

DeFilippis, James. 2004. Unmaking Goliath: Community Control in the Face of Global
Capital. New York: Routledge.

Deller, Stephen, Ann Hoyt, Brent Hueth, and Reka Sundaram-Stukel. 2009. Research on
the Economic Impact of Cooperatives. Madison: University of Wisconsin Center
for Cooperatives.

Elden, J. Maxwell. 1981. “Political Efficacy at Work: The Connection Between More
Autonomous Forms of Workplace Organization and a More Participatory
Politics.” American Political Science Review 75 (1): 43–58.

Ellerman, David P. 1990. The Democratic Worker-Owned Firm. Boston: Unwin Hyman.

Emelianoff, Ivan V. 1995. Economic Theory of Cooperation: Economic Structure of

Cooperative Organizations. Davis, Calif.: University of California, Davis, Center
for Cooperatives.

Fairbairn, Brett, June Bold, Murray Fulton, Lou Hammond Ketilson, and Daniel Ish.
1991. Cooperatives and Community Development: Economics in Social
Perspective. Saskatoon: University of Saskatchewan, Centre for the Study of Co-
operatives.

Furlough, Ellen. Consumer Cooperation in France: The Politics of Consumption, 1834-

1930. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991.

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Gibson-Graham, J K. The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It): A Feminist Critique of

Political Economy. Malden MA: Blackwell, 1996.

Gibson-Graham, J K. “Enabling ethical economies: Co-operativism and class.” Critical

Sociology, Vol. 29 No.2 (2003):1–39.

Gibson-Graham, J K. A Postcapitalist Politics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota

Press, 2006.

Gibson-Graham, J K. “Diverse economies: Performative practices for “other worlds”.

Progress for Human Geography Vol. 32 No.5 (2008): 613–632.

Glasser, Ruth, and Jeremy Brecher. 2002. We Are the Roots: The Organizational
Culture of a Home Care Cooperative. Davis, Calif.: University of California,
Davis, Center for Cooperatives.

Gray, Thomas W. 2007. “Co-ops Focus Collective Action: Business Structure Helps
Producers Address Power Disparity in the Marketplace.” Rural Cooperatives,
May–June, 33–35.

Greenberg, Edward S. 1986. Workplace Democracy: The Political Effects of

Participation. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Hanna, Thomas M. and Marjorie Kelly. “Community Wealth Building: The Path towards
a Democratic and Reparative Political Economic System.” The Democracy
Collaborative, January 2021.
https://democracycollaborative.org/sites/default/files/2021- 11/Community-
Wealth-Building-Hanna-Kelly_Final.pdf

HILSON, MARY. “Consumer Co-Operation and Economic Crisis: The 1936 Roosevelt
Inquiry on Co-Operative Enterprise and the Emergence of the Nordic ‘Middle
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Inserra, Anne, Maureen Conway, and John Rodat. 2002. Cooperative Home Care
Associates: A Case Study of a Sectoral Employment Development Approach.
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Kasmir, Sharryn. The Myth of Mondragón: Cooperatives, Politics, and Working-Class

Life in a Basque Town. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996.

Kamenov, Nikolay. “Imperial Cooperative Experiments and Global Market Capitalism,

C.1900–c.1960.” Journal of Global History 14, no. 2 (2019): 219–237.

Knapp, Joseph G. The Advance of American Cooperative Enterprise: 1920-1945.

Danville: Interstate Printers and Publishers, 1973.

Knupfer, Anne Meis. Food Co-Ops in America: Communities, Consumption, and

Economic Democracy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013.

Kundu, Amit, Dev Narayan Sarkar, and Arabinda Bhattacharya. “Sustainable Agrarian
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159.

Jackall, Robert and Henry M. Levin. Worker Cooperatives in America. Berkely:

University of California Press, 1984.

Japanese Consumers’ Cooperative Union. 1999. “Women’s Work, Men’s Work: To Live
a Better Life Beyond Gender.” Journal of Co-operative Studies 32 (December):
182–96.

Jennings, James, ed. 1992. Race, Politics, and Economic Development: Community
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Jossa, Bruno. “Marx, Lenin and the Cooperative Movement.” Review of political
economy 26, no. 2 (2014): 282–302.

Landman, Ruth H. 1993. Creating Community in the City: Cooperatives and

Community Gardens in Washington, D.C. Westport, Conn.: Bergin & Garvey.

Lefkowitz, Bonnie. 2007. Community Health Centers: A Movement and the People

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Who Made It Happen. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

Leikin, Steve. The Practical Utopians: American Workers and the Cooperative
Movement in the Gilded Age. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2005.

Lill, J. Lloyd. “Cooperative Ventures in the United States.” Review of Social Economy
Vol 42 No. 3 (1984): 376-387.

Logue, John, and Jacquelyn Yates. 2005. Productivity in Cooperatives and Worker-
Owned Enterprises: Ownership and Participation Make a Difference! Geneva,
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Mackie, Gerry. “Success and Failure in an American Workers’ Cooperative Movement.”

Politics and Society Vol. 22 No. 2 (1994): 215-235.

Megson, Jim, and Janet Van Liere. 2001. “The Role of Worker Cooperatives in Urban
Economic Development.” Journal of Cooperative Development 2 (Spring): 2,
18.

Michie, Jonathan, Joseph R. Blasi, and Carlo Borzaga. The Oxford Handbook of
Mutual, Co-Operative, and Co-Owned Business. Edited by Jonathan Michie,
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Mohanty, Sunil K. 2006. “Comparing Credit Unions with Commercial Banks:

Implications for Public Policy.” Journal of Commercial Banking and Finance 5 (1–
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Moulton, Mo. “Co-Opting the Cooperative Movement? Development, Decolonization,

and the Power of Expertise at the Co-Operative College, 1920s–1960s.” Journal
of global history (2021): 1–20.

Morrison, Roy. 1991. We Build the Road as We Travel: Mondragon, a Cooperative

Social System. Philadelphia: New Society.

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Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice. College Station: Penn State
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Nippierd, Anne-Brit. 1999. “Gender Issues in Co-operatives.” Journal of Co-operative

Studies 32 (December): 175–81.

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Berkshire House, 1993.

Ostrom, Elinor. Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective
Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.

Park, Albert L. “Reclaiming the Rural: Modern Danish Cooperative Living in Colonial
Korea, 1925–37.” Journal of Korean studies (Seattle, Wash. : 1979) 19, no. 1
(2014): 115–151.

Parker, Martin., George. Cheney, Valérie. Fournier, and Chris. Land. The Routledge
Companion to Alternative Organization. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis, 2014.

Patmore, Greg, and Nikola Balnave. A Global History of Co-Operative Business.

Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2018.

Pestoff, Victor. 1999. “The Future of Consumer Co-operatives in Post-Industrial

Societies.” Journal of Co-operative Studies 32 (December): 208–19.

Pittman, Lynn. “History of Cooperatives in the United States: An Overview.” UW

Center For Cooperatives, December 2018.
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Power, Joey. “‘Individualism Is the Antithesis of Indirect Rule’: Cooperative

Development and Indirect Rule in Colonial Malawi.” Journal of southern African
studies 18, no. 2 (1992): 317–347.

Rhodes, Rita. Empire and Co-Operation: How the British Empire Used Co-Operatives in
Its Development Strategies, 1900-1970. Edinburgh, Scotland: John Donald,
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Statistics/.

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Stewart, James B. 1984. “Building a Cooperative Economy: Lessons from the Black
Community Experience.” Review of Social Economy 42 (December): 360–68.

Shirom, Arie. “The Industrial Relations Systems of Industrial Cooperatives in the United
States, 1880-1935,” Labor History 4 (1972): 535.

Staber, Udo. “Worker Cooperatives and the Business Cycle: Are Cooperatives the
Answer to Unemployement?” The American Journal of Economics and
Sociology Vol. 52, No. 2 (1993): 129-143.

Stirin, Maria. Everyday Revolutions: Horizontalism and Autonomy in Argentina. London:

Zed Books, 2012.

Sullivan, Bobby. Revolutionary Threads: Rastafari, Social Justice, and Cooperative

Economics. Brooklyn, New York: Akashic Books, 2018.

Tselos, George. “Self-Help and Sauerkraut: The Organized Unemployed, Inc. of

Minneapolis,” Minnesota History Vol. 45 No. 8 (1977): 306-320.

Varkey, Sheeja, and G. R. Sahu. “A Study of Marketing Process and Implementation of

Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative Limited (With Special Reference to Durg
District of C.G.).” Asian Journal of Management 7, no. 3 (2016): 169.

Warbasse. James Peter. What is Cooperation? A Discussion of the Consumers’

Cooperative Movement, Its Principles, Methods and Accomplishments. New
York: Vanguard Press, 1927.

Ward, Benjamin. “The Firm in Illyria: Market Syndicalism.” The American economic
review 48, no. 4 (1958): 566–589.

Williams, Richard C. The Cooperative Movement: Globalization from Below. Burlington:

Ashgate Publishing, 2007.

Wilson, J. F., Anthony Webster, and Rachael Vorberg-Rugh. Building Co-Operation: a

Business History of the Co-Operative Group, 1863-2013. First edition. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2013.

Wray, L. Randall. Why Minsky Matters: An Introduction to the Work of a Maverick

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Economist. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016.

Young, Crawford, Neal P. Sherman, and Tim H. Rose. Cooperatives & Development:
Agricultural Politics in Ghana and Uganda. Madison, Wis: University of Wisconsin
Press, 1981.

Selected Annotated Bibliography

Primary Sources

W.E.B. Dubois, Economic Cooperation Among Negro Americans (1907)

• Dubois study provides a brief outline of a history of cooperative activity among
Black Americans.

Clark Kerr, “Productive Enterprises of the Unemployed”

• Kerr’s doctoral dissertation (in economics) is a comprehensive account of the
nation-wide “Self-Help” movement of the Depression years, with extensive
quantitative and qualitative data.

Marina Sitrin, Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina

• Horizontalism is an edited volume of interviews conducted by Sitrin of
participants of various peoples’ movements in Argentina in the years following
the December 2001 uprising against IMF-imposed austerity measures. For Sitrin,
Horizontalidad or the approximate translation “horizontalism” is a phrase that
embodies the social arrangements that tie together what she calls a “movement
of movements:” “horizontalidad implies democratic communication on a level
plane and involves—or at least intentionally strives towards—non-hierarchical
and anti-authoritarian creation rather than reaction. It is a break with vertical
ways of organizing and relating.” (2-3) Sitrin talks with members from several
independent movements starting with participants in the mass organized
protests in December of 2001. Sitrin moves to discuss the Unemployed workers’
movements who had undertaken the strategy of collectively blockading streets
to bargain directly with governmental authorities. Sitrin has a chapter dedicated
to the voices of members of neighborhood assemblies which had formed in the
backdrop of economic crisis to meet the material needs of community members.
Lastly, Sitrin talks with those involved with reclaiming workplaces that were other
shut down by owners or were forcibly occupied by the workers. These
workplaces were operated by their employees to facilitate production for use,

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not profit. This book is a rich primary source that demonstrates the many
different manifestations of cooperative economics in action.

Secondary Sources

Ostrom, Governing the Commons

• Ostrom’s work takes as its central problem the question of natural resource
economics. “The issue” with resources held in common, as Ostrom describes,
“is how best to limit the use of natural resources so as to ensure their long-term
economic viability.” Historically speaking, “neither the state nor the market is
uniformly successful in enabling individuals to sustain long term, productive use
of natural resource systems.”
• Ostrom departs from 3 standard models commonly used to describe the
problems posed by “common property resources” (CPRs): (1) the “tragedy of
the commons,” (2) the “prisoners dilemma,” and (3) the “logic of collective
action. According to the Ostrom, the problem with these three models is that
they are often used as “metaphors” instead of models by policymakers. That is,
policy makers take these models at face value too much and come to two main
erroneous conclusions. To overcome the problems that arise in these three
models that policy makers typically advocate for either complete centralization
of authority and management of resources or complete privatization of property
rights governing natural resource use. For Ostrom, both of these options are
problematic because they rely on imposition from outside those who use the
resources and often encounter problems in real world applications. Ostrom
suggests that empirical examples of success in managing common resources
often depend on instead allowing those who use natural resources to govern
themselves and cooperatively manage the use of CPRs.

Jessica Gordon Nembhard, Collective Courage

• Nembhard aims to lay out a narrative of African American cooperation as a
whole from the late 19th century to present day. As Nembhard describes, this is
a “rich history” that has grown out of responses to “market failures and
economic racial discrimination.” (1) As opposed to previous accounts that have
stressed the failures of and difficulties faced by Black cooperative ventures,
Nembhard argues that African Americans and other poor people of color “have
benefited greatly from cooperative ownership and democratic participation
throughout the history of the United States, much like their counterparts around
the world.” (2)

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• Utilizing a thoroughly theorized and conceptual definition of cooperative

economics and theory, Nembhard investigates a historical series of important
instances of African American economic cooperation as well as the economic
ideas of leading Black scholars such as W.E.B. Du Bois. In three separate parts,
Nembhard investigates early instances of Black mutual aid in the Reconstruction
and populist and progressive eras, “deliberative cooperative economic
development” spanning 1917 to 1975, and finally late twentieth and early
twenty-first century examples of Black cooperation which bridge elements from
both of these distinct historical eras.

John Curl, For All the People

• Curl premises his narrative on his observation that while “cooperatives have
been widespread and important in many periods of American history… it might
almost seem as if they don’t exist and never existed in the US.” (7) Curl is
motivated by a supposed need to rescue and add a perceivably lost historical
phenomenon to the historical record. Curl published the second and expanded
edition of his book in 2012, writing first in the wake of the economically
tumultuous 1970’s and then republishing after the 2008 financial crisis, both of
which gave rise to higher levels of cooperative activity.
• Curl’s narrative assembles all types of cooperation and communalism into one
larger movement, capable of achieving the same levels of societal change.
Curl’s argument lends itself to a conception of all forms of cooperative behavior
as a radical alternative to normative forms of organization. Curl’s own
experience living at the commune Drop City from 1966 to 1968, and also as a
member Heartwood Cooperative Woodshop bear heavily on his interpretation
of the cooperative movement.

Joseph Knapp, The Rise of Cooperative Enterprise and The Advance of Cooperative
Enterprise
• Knapp’s expressed purpose is to reveal how “cooperative organizations in the
United States gradually took form in a distinctive way as the nation progressed
from frontier conditions to a strong national economy” and how “cooperatives
took great steps forward under the unique conditions that prevailed in the
United States from 1920 to 1945.” (1) Knapp’s extensive narrative effectively
highlights the consistent presence of economic cooperation in U.S. history. The
author’s primary purpose in writing to add the achievements of cooperatives to
the historical record and demonstrate how their presence is indicative of a
“need for attention to common-felt problems.”

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Richard C. Williams, The Cooperative Movement: Globalization from Below

• Not strictly a historical work, Williams’ monograph includes a large amount of
discussion regarding political economy. As indicated by the title, Williams’s
workplaces Cooperatives within the larger system of globalization. Williams
looks at cooperatives in the developed and developing world, and illustrates
how cooperatives serve different, though in his mind always positive, roles in
both scenarios. Williams writes that “the theoretical foundation of this book is
that cooperation, rather than competition, provides … optimum conditions for a
free and fair marketplace.” (4) This is interesting because Williams sees
cooperatives as entities that could potentially exist within mainstream market
economics, not outside of it.

Steve Leikin, The Practical Utopians

• Steve Leikin’s The Practical Utopians deals with cooperation undertaken by
working people in the Gilded Age. While the Gilded Age was characterized by
dramatic economic growth, Leikin illustrates how workers used cooperation as a
solution to burgeoning issues such as “low wages, job insecurity, threatened
craft skills, and community instability.” (xviii).

L. Randall Wray, Why Minsky Matters

• Not related to cooperative economics explicitly but lays in out clear and
accessible detail key ideas from a hugely influential heterodox economist. As
such, the book provides insights into thinking outside of the paradigm of
mainstream economics, which is crucial to the study of cooperative economics.
Minsky started to garner much more attention from academics in the wake of
the Great Financial Crash of 2008, of which he was one of the few academic
economists to predict. According to Wray, “the fundamental insight that Minsky
left with us,” is that the “internal dynamics of our modern economy are not
equilibrium-seeking.” (15) In essence, Minsky’s most memorable contention is
that stability itself is destabilizing. Stability leads to capital to take greater risk
and chase more questionable returns thereby bringing about future financial
crises. Aside from examining Minsky’s work on finance and banking, the book
also delves into Minsky’s approach to the problem of poverty and employment,
where he also offered heterodox solutions.

Janelle Cromwell, “Worker Cooperatives and Spaces of Possibility: An Investigation of

Subject Space at Collective Copies”
• A work of critical geography, Cromwell’s case study of the Massachusetts
cooperative print shop, Collective Copies, uses the cooperative model to

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challenge and interrogate capitalist notions of space and time. Cromwell draws
from the theoretical model of Marxist geographer David Harvey which
illuminates how space and time are organized “under capitalism” in order to
understand “spatial-temporal organization of noncapitalist growth” which is
exemplified in the case of worker cooperatives. (727) Cromwell’s study is based
on ethnographic research conducted at the Collective Copies co-op which
includes participant observation as well as 20 tape-recorded interviews.
Cromwell concludes that cooperative growth, rather than embodying “an
inherent logic of expansion” like that under capitalist space, “is an outcome of
subjective experiences and desires.” (728)

J. Lloyd Lill, Jr. “Cooperative Ventures in the United States”

• Writing in 1984, Lill comments on the rise of worker owned firms in the US since
1970 as an example of an “alternative form of business enterprise” that is not
based on models of growth, development of new technology, and extraction of
limited resources. (376) Lill puts forward four reasons for this development: First,
the general desire for more democratic workplaces. Second, rising levels of
unemployment and troubles in productivity had created a desire between
employers and employees for alternative models of work. Third, a wave of
Unions and employees buying back their plants from companies against the
backdrop of a wave of plant closures. Fourth, a proliferation of success stories
about worker-owned businesses. Lill continues to evaluate the history of
cooperation in the United States from the 19th century Knights of Labor
experiments up through the contemporary period. Lill then explores reactions to
the proliferation of cooperative from organized labor, management, economists,
the pope, protestant writers, and political philosophers. Lill offers several
conclusions, the most important being that workplace democracy offers a clear
pathway to a more democratic and just society.

Bobby Sullivan, Revolutionary Threads: Rastafari, Social Justice, and Cooperative

Economics (2018)
• Written by a non-academic and veteran of the Washington D.C. punk and
hardcore scene, Revolutionary Threads comes to cooperative economics from a
perspective informed by the critique of capitalism offered by the Rastafari
movement. For Sullivan, cooperative economics is “the way” in that “it is literally
the intersection between democracy and the real economy, and it not so quietly
builds a new world within our dying old one.” (9) The book investigates a wide
sweep of history, from the pre-colonial US through the abolition movement and
civil war and finally ending with several chapters on the global 1970s and

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international resistance to capitalism. Sullivan’s work offers a fresh perspective

on how cooperative economics can appeal to a wide variety of moral
commitments, from Sullivan’s own Rastafari values to broader general
democratic forces. Sullivan does a good job of including non-western
perspectives with sections of Rastarfi co-ops in Jamaica, experiences of
globalization in Nigeria and Cuba, and the practice of Rastafari communal
practices in Africa.

Mo Moulton, “Co-opting the Cooperative Movement? Development, decolonization,

and the power of expertise at the Co-operative College, 1920s-1960s” (2021)
• Moulton’s article places the British cooperative movement in an international
and decolonial context. Moulton departs from the observation that the British
cooperative movement and governmental cooperative departments were
ubiquitous in the 20th century British empire. Not only did cooperative
departments in British colonial possessions assist in running networks of
agricultural and credit cooperatives, but they also pushed cooperatives as
“schools of democracy and incubators of modern citizenship.” (2) As such,
Moulton argues that the cooperative movement across the British empire was a
central feature of the developmental state. While historically, cooperatives had
ties to left wing politics Moulton demonstrates how within the context of empire
cooperatives fit into a much broader range of political dictates and economic
systems. Moulton includes a close study of the Cooperative College, located in
Manchester before moving to Loughborough between 1920 and 1960, in which
they examine how students who attended the college from across the British
Empire formulated resistance to empire in interwar internationalism. Egyptian
students, for example, were able to use lessons from the college to build a
“nationally specific development programme” (9). Lastly, Moulton turns to case
studies of former Cooperative College attendees involved in the decolonization
process in Sierra Leone, Malawi, and Ghana. This work builds on a greater body
of work that points to governmental bureaucracies as key points in building
post-colonial states. Moulton’s article is a very good example of the political
economic complexity of cooperatives and their ability to advance a variety of
goals. Moreover, students interested in economic cooperation in the post-
colonial world and greater global south could make good use of this article.

Bruno Jossa, “Marx, Lenin, and the Cooperative Movement” (2014)

• Jossa article aims to address and ultimately refute the ambivalence around
cooperatives as a mode of economic organization that exists within orthodox
Marxist theory. Through close readings of sections of Capital as well a 1923

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paper written by Lenin on cooperatives, Jossa demonstrates that for these

theorists of socialism and communism held cooperatives in a positive light.
Rather than just letting workers become their own capitalists, Marx and Engels
saw that cooperatives offered a radically different relationship between the
worker and the mode of production that would be very instrumental in the
transition to a non-capitalist society. For Lenin, cooperatives offered a mode of
organization that would both be palatable to the rural proletariat and efficient
and productive. Jossa ultimately argues that even though cooperatives may not
have been present in soviet-style communist countries, it was not because
cooperatives were not compatible with a socialist economy.

Nikolay Kamenov, “Imperial cooperative experiments and global market capitalism,

c.1900-c.1960” (2019)
• Kamenov aims to complicate the prevailing narrative that the global cooperative
movement can be ultimately traced back to the Rochdale model in Great Britain,
which spread across Europe and then finally throughout the rest of the world.
Kamenov counters this story by demonstrating how cooperative knowledge did
just spread from metropole to empire but rather through webs of
communication that included India and West Africa, and also how this
cooperative knowledge originated beyond the reach of empire. Kamenov
additionally points out a “dialectical relation of cooperatives to the broader
economic system.” (220) That is, cooperatives were not just an appendage to
global capitalism, but instead the networks of exchange they created helped to
shape global consumer societies as well as the supply and marketing of
commodities to world markets. Kamenov’s contribution here importantly draws
attention to the significance of the cooperative model in helping shape the
nature of global capitalism as it exists today. Kamenov includes a literature
review and historical sketch of the growth of different cooperative models across
the world, before moving to a case study of the development of the cooperative
movement in India from 1900 to 1950 and then demonstrating how this
movement served as a model for other colonial regions with a particular focus
on West Africa. Kamenov’s article is very useful for students interested in
problematizing the western-centric dialogue surrounding the study of the
cooperative economic model as well as students interested in the role of
cooperatives in capitalism and empire.

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Jonathan Michie et. al. The Oxford Handbook of Mutual, Cooperative, and Co-owned
Business (2017)
• This edited volume is a good resource for anyone looking for a very in-depth
look at different forms of cooperative models as well as examples of case
studies from around the world. The editors of the volume aim to cover the entire
breadth of member-owned business which they define as any type of
organization owned by stakeholders other than investors (as is the case in the
standard corporation.) The volume is divided into forty-two chapters divided
between eight parts. The first part covers different theories of cooperative
enterprise and the wide range of modes such pursuits can take. The second part
is also theoretical, covering different rationale for cooperative enterprise
including how the model serves as a coordination mechanism along with the
political and social dimensions of the cooperative form. The third part provides
the history of member-owned organizations in both a US and global context.
The fourth part tackles how different types of cooperative organizations fit into
the global economy with chapters focused on specific types (worker coops,
agricultural coops, etc.) and how to think about them internationally. The fifth
part discusses the various ways that member owned enterprises are governed.
The sixth part is the largest in the volume, with 12 chapters on different national
case studies of cooperatives in action including Mondragon in Spain and
cooperatives in the Global South. The seventh part discusses corporate and
sector case studies of cooperatives such as how cooperation is challenging and
changing corporate governance worldwide and the role of cooperatives in
development. The eighth and final part covers contains chapters offering
perspectives on the future of cooperation. This source could be greatly helpful
to anyone looking to get a grasp on how wide of a context cooperative
economics can and has been applied in, with a wealth of great case studies and
citations for future research.

Martin Parker, et. al. The Routledge Companion to Alternative Organization (2014)
• This edited volume, along with the Oxford Handbook of Mutual, Co-Operative,
and Co-Owned Business, is a great, comprehensive starting point for students
interested in cooperative economics in all its manifestations. Not focused on
cooperatives per se, the focus this of this edited collective is alternative
organizational forms that depart from the corporate norm of globalized
capitalism. A stated goal of the volume is to counter the prevalence of “the
illusion of TINA, that There is No Alternative.” (xxii) The volume does this by
presenting studies of different organizational forms across three different
sections covering: (1) work and labor, (2) exchange and consumption, and (3)

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resources. Classic cooperatives appear across the sections in studies of worker-

owned firms and credit unions, but so do different forms of communal
organization such as fair trade, family and household reproduction, and open-
source technology. The wide berth of these chapters is especially useful in
understanding cooperative economics in all its forms outside of traditional
cooperatives.

Joey Power, “’Individualism is the Antithesis of Indirect Rule:’ Cooperative

Development in Colonial Malawi” (1992)
• Power’s article provides an interesting counterpoint to the notion that
cooperatives are always and everywhere a path towards economic
empowerment and liberation, especially for marginalized communities. Power
examines the implementation of cooperatives by British colonial officials in
Malawi in the years preceding and following the first World War and reveals that
cooperatives were largely rejected by Malawians. Cooperatives were part and
parcel of the British strategy of indirect rule, whereby authority would be
delegated to tribal chiefs to maintain “traditional” order in the colonial and
prevent wealth accumulation by colonial subjects. In the eyes of the colonial
administration, cooperatives were a means to redirect the energy of the
emerging indigenous petit bourgeoisie in collective pursuits and into “state
monitored commerce.” (319) From Power’s point of view, the development of
an indigenous capitalist class was instrumental in resistance to empire and
colonial control. While Power seems to have prior ideological commitment to
individualism that should be considered when evaluating his argument, the
article nonetheless shows the limits of the cooperative form for collective
empowerment—especially when implemented from above instead of arising
organically from the cooperators themselves. This article is a good resource for
students interested in examples of cooperative economics outside of a western
context and evaluating the role of prevalent cooperatives within the British
empire.

Maria Sitrin, Everyday Revolutions: Horizontalism and Autonomy in Argentina (2012)

• This book is a follow-up to Sitrin’s earlier oral history volume Horizontalism:
Voices of Popular Power in Argentina about the same topic. Like the oral history
volume Everyday Revolutions documents the horizontalidad and autegestión
movement in Argentina following the eruption of popular protest in late 2001
following a years-long debt crisis. Sitirn describes her aim with the volume as
documenting what can happen when a sharp break in history opens the door for
the creation of something new, and in this case specifically, for the creation of

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real bottom-up democracy. In Sitrin’s eyes, the different communalist and

cooperative movements she studies are not just experiments but rather a
dramatic remaking of social relations. The cases of horizontalism in action that
Sitrin examines include the occupation and collective operation of shuttered
factories by the workers, middle-class urbanites setting up neighborhood
councils to meet collective needs, and the unemployed organizing networks of
mutual aid. Sitrin’s study first covers the historical roots of popular movements in
Argentina and their contentious relationship to the state, before discussing the
context of the early 2000s and finally providing several chapters containing case
studies and reflections on different forms of collective power. While Sitrin does
not use the phrase “cooperative” herself, all the cases she discusses would fall
within the Blum center’s definition of cooperative economics. As such, her
accessible study is a good starting point for students interested in examples of
the wide range of relevant cooperative activity as they have been applied in the
context of the Global South and resistance to the state as well as international
capital.

George Cheney, Values at Work: Employee Participation Meets Market Pressure at

Mondragón (1999)
• Cheney’s work explores one of the main questions surrounding the success of
Mondragón (which is also applies to cooperative business as a whole): How does
a cooperative organization successfully exist in a market environment while also
staying true to its communal values which are often in direct opposition to those
of the market? For Cheney this is a matter of “organizational integrity” which
refers to the ability of value-based organization to remain true to its original
commitments while also growing in success, size, centralization, and
bureaucratization. For Mondragón, these values are solidarity, participation, and
equality. In Cheney’s formulation, the answer to this question is complicated.
Cheney argues that as Mondragón has grown while international capitalism has
increasingly become consumer oriented as opposed to producer oriented, that
the nature of worker participation has become increasingly linked to the “real or
perceived demands outside of the organization’s boundaries.” Cheney refers to
this phenomenon as “the marketization of employee participation.” To lay this
argument out Cheney has chapters detailing the history of the organization,
deep analysis of intra-organization communication patterns, lessons offered by
the Mondragón experience, and finally considerations on the future of worker
participation. Values at Work is a great resource for students looking for an
example of nuanced analysis of a singular cooperative that places the
organization in its larger economic context. Cheney’s singular focus on the

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The Dr. U.S. Awasthi Initiative in Cooperative Economics

consumer-oriented economy might feel dated today, as we have moved beyond

the end-of-history, dot-com bubble era of consumer exuberance and into a
post-great recession era of returned labor agitation, reduced purchasing power,
and a more thoroughly financialized economic world. Still, this is a useful study
of one of the most visible examples of cooperation in practice.

Thomas Hanna and Marjorie Kelly, “Community Wealth Building: The Path towards a
Democratic and Reparative Political Economic System” (2021)
• Hanna and Kelly introduce and explain the “Community Wealth Building”
strategy or CWB. CWB was developed by the Democracy Collaborative in the
mid-2000s to describe ongoing trends of economic reorganization around the
world. The main thrust of CWB is the development of a network of institutions
that help organize land, labor, and capital under community control and to
utilize these resources for common benefit instead of profit. While cooperatives
fall under this model, so do community land trusts, public enterprises, and a
wealth of other non-profit organizations. The key to CWB is to coordinate
among a network of these organizations to most benefit local communities. Kelly
and Hanna describe the history of CWB, which they see as stretching back to the
crisis political economic and civil rights in the post war era. For them, CWB is a
way to rectify both civil rights and economic empowerment at the same time.
CWB, in their formulation, provides a model for rebuilding economies—not just
specific enterprises—in a democratic, people-centered mode.

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