When a business isn’t a business: law and the political in the history of the United Kingdom’s co-operative movement
Contemporary efforts to develop and promote co-operatives and the social economy confront a tension in the competing and often conflicting aims to achieve commercial sustainability in a capitalist market while also promoting social transformation. Through a review of the historical experience of ins...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2012
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| In: |
Oñati Socio-Legal Series
Year: 2012, Volume: 2, Issue: 2, Pages: 36-56 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (doi) Volltext (kostenfrei) Volltext (kostenfrei) Volltext (kostenfrei) |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Keywords: |
| Summary: | Contemporary efforts to develop and promote co-operatives and the social economy confront a tension in the competing and often conflicting aims to achieve commercial sustainability in a capitalist market while also promoting social transformation. Through a review of the historical experience of institutionalization in the Co-operative Movement in the United Kingdom, this article attempts to generate insights into these tensions. Despite being seen as unpolitical, co-operatives can be understood as political at the level of re-shaping sociality through co-operative practice. Although the similarity between co-operatives and joint-stock companies produces ambiguities within the movement, this does not in itself detract from the co-operative project. It is argued that the codification of co-operatives in law as bodies corporate constitutes the closure of the political aspect of co-operation and reinforces and gives consequence to the misconception of co-operatives as primarily commercial entities |
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| ISSN: | 2079-5971 |
| DOI: | 10.15496/publikation-39547/ |
