Cooperatives And Community Development

In celebration of cooperatives’ contributions to community development processes and outcomes worldwide, the United Nations designated 2012 as the Year of the Cooperative. Today, as in the past, cooperatives have proved effective in bringing people and organizations together to accomplish a broad array of goals related to fostering social and economic innovation, protecting communities against poor living and working conditions, and promoting a better quality of life. Analytically, as both a movement and as a business model, cooperatives hold much potential for generating the types of synergies, collaboration, and productive and social processes that enable community development to thrive in a variety of local, regional and global contexts. This collection of articles chronicles new developments in the ways in which cooperatives are used in a diverse array of community contexts. They offer insight as to what these changes mean, both empirically and theoretically, for community development in the decades to come. This book is a compilation of articles published in the journal Community Development.

Cooperative rule -- Pedagogies of community development -- Anti-empire, development, and emergency rule -- Uganda's anticolonial cooperative movement -- Cooperatives and decolonization in postwar Britain.

"Provides a cross-country comparison of smallholder agricultural cooperatives in Paraguay, Brazil and Colombia, revealing immense opportunities and challenges for community development, empowerment, and social change"--Provided by publisher.

Indigenous peoples in Canada are striving for greater economic prosperity and political self-determination. Investigating specific legal, economic, and political practices, and including research from interviews with Indigenous political and business leaders, this collection seeks to provide insights grounded in lived experience. Covering such critical topics as economic justice and self-determination, and the barriers faced in pursuing each, Wise Practices sets out to understand the issues not in terms of sweeping empirical findings but through particular experiences of individuals and communities. The choice to focus on specific practices of law and governance is a conscious rejection of idealized theorizing about law and governance and represents an important step beyond the existing scholarship. This volume offers readers a broad scope of perspectives, incorporating contemporary thought on Indigenous law and legal orders, the impact of state law on Indigenous peoples, theories and practices of economic development, and grounded practices of governances. While the authors address a range of topics, each does so in a way that sheds light on how Indigenous practices of law and governance support the social and economic development of Indigenous peoples.

A shift in US bank policy. A demonstration in Greece. A tsunami in Japan. In recent times, these kinds of events have had profound effects on the economic well-being of Canadians. In such a heavily globalized environment, it may seem that only large corporations with access to transnational resources can operate successfully, but Co-operative Canada demonstrates that this is not the case. Despite economic pressures following the 2008 recession, co-operatives in Canada are thriving. In fact, there are approximately nine thousand co-ops across the nation with a combined membership of about 18 million members – more than half the population of Canada. Drawing on the results of a large research project that examined co-operatives in communities from coast to coast to coast, Co-operative Canada reveals how Canadians are using the co-operative model to collectively respond to the forces of globalization through local, community-owned enterprises. It does this through specific examples that vividly describe the pragmatic realities of the communities these co-ops serve.

Hungry for change? Put the power of food co-ops on your plate and grow your local food economy. Food has become ground-zero in our efforts to increase awareness of how our choices impact the world. Yet while we have begun to transform our communities and dinner plates, the most authoritative strand of the food web has received surprisingly little attention: the grocery store—the epicenter of our food-gathering ritual. Through penetrating analysis and inspiring stories and examples of American and Canadian food co-ops, Grocery Story makes a compelling case for the transformation of the grocery store aisles as the emerging frontier in the local and good food movements. Author Jon Steinman: Deconstructs the food retail sector and the shadows cast by corporate giants Makes the case for food co-ops as an alternative Shows how co-ops spur the creation of local food-based economies and enhance low-income food access. Grocery Story is for everyone who eats. Whether you strive to eat more local and sustainable food, or are in support of community economic development, Grocery Story will leave you hungry to join the food co-op movement in your own community.

In Collective Courage, Jessica Gordon Nembhard chronicles African American cooperative business ownership and its place in the movements for Black civil rights and economic equality. Not since W. E. B. Du Bois’s 1907 Economic Co-operation Among Negro Americans has there been a full-length, nationwide study of African American cooperatives. Collective Courage extends that story into the twenty-first century. Many of the players are well known in the history of the African American experience: Du Bois, A. Philip Randolph and the Ladies' Auxiliary to the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, Nannie Helen Burroughs, Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Jo Baker, George Schuyler and the Young Negroes’ Co-operative League, the Nation of Islam, and the Black Panther Party. Adding the cooperative movement to Black history results in a retelling of the African American experience, with an increased understanding of African American collective economic agency and grassroots economic organizing. To tell the story, Gordon Nembhard uses a variety of newspapers, period magazines, and journals; co-ops’ articles of incorporation, minutes from annual meetings, newsletters, budgets, and income statements; and scholarly books, memoirs, and biographies. These sources reveal the achievements and challenges of Black co-ops, collective economic action, and social entrepreneurship. Gordon Nembhard finds that African Americans, as well as other people of color and low-income people, have benefitted greatly from cooperative ownership and democratic economic participation throughout the nation’s history.