The "failure" of cooperatives in Kyrgyzstan: A postcapitalist critique of a biased narrative

Ottavia Cima

This paper questions a widespread narrative that presents cooperative initiatives as mainly unsuccessful in postsocialist contexts. Taking the example of cooperative promotion in Kyrgyzstan after its independence from the Soviet Union, it highlights how this narrative is part of a broader hegemonic discourse on development and on the economy. The paper advances an alternative, postcapitalist, reading of cooperatives and cooperation in Kyrgyzstan and postsocialist contexts more in general. 

Rethinking agricultural cooperatives in Kyrgyzstan. Towards a postcapitalist approach to cooperation in postsocialism

Ottavia Cima

My doctoral thesis investigates cooperation practices within and beyond agricultural cooperatives. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a village in Kyrgyzstan, it unravels local and international discourses of nostalgia, contempt and pride linked to cooperation practices in socialist and postsocialist times, and reflect on the subjectivities entangled with these discourses. It thereby proposes a postcapitalist reading of postsocialism as a concept and space. 

The place of common bond: Can credit unions make place for solidarity economy?

Marianna Pavlovskaya
Craig Borowiak
Maliha Safri
Stephen Healy
Robert Eletto
Geography of credit unions with different type of common bond (community) in New York City

About 6,000 financial cooperatives, called credit unions, with more than 103 million members manage over $1 trillion in collective assets in the United States but are largely invisible and seen as inferior to private banks. In contrast to banks that generate profit for outside investors and do not give voice to customers, these not-for-profit institutions have a democratic governance structure and a mission to provide good services to their members.

Articulating value in cooperative housing: International and methodological review

Louise Crabtree, Sidsel Grimstad, Joanne McNeill, Neil Perry & Emma Power

This research report was commissioned by the Australian Cooperative Housing Network, comprising Common Equity NSW, Common Equity Housing Ltd, the Federation of Housing Collectives, and Common Equity Housing South Australia. The report details the evidence for identified benefits of cooperative housing, the variables of business models in operation, and core enabling factors. On that basis, the report then presents a framework for a research methodology to capture primary data on the generation of value by rental cooperatives in Australia.

Enabling Ethical Economies: Cooperativism and Class

J.K. Gibson-Graham

Situates contemporary evaluations of the success of Spain's Mondragon cooperative complex within a tradition of debate about the politics of economic transformation and argues for the development of an economics of surplus that can guide ethical decisions in community economies.