The curious case of cooperatives

Lilith Mahmud

Chapter 2 in Elgar Encyclopedia of Economic Anthropology, 2025, pp 57-61 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Cooperatives are solidaristic economic organizations that since the late twentieth century have risen in unprecedented numbers in Italy in response to ongoing crises in both market-driven capitalism and the welfare state. Thanks to their constitutional protection as mutual aid societies, coops enjoy tax benefits that make them competitive in the free market and account for significant portions of Italian GDP, GNI, and national employment rates. Although they espouse cooperation and mutuality as alternatives to neoliberalism, coops have nonetheless contributed to the privatization of the state, and they have reinscribed workers into a profit-driven market of precarious labor. Exploring both historical and present-day contradictions in the everyday workings of Italian coops, this chapter asks what models of political resistance and solidarity coops can offer against global capital.

Keywords: Cooperatives; Italy; Labor; Precarity; Solidarity; Migration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035312566
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