Practicing Cooperation

Description

A powerful new understanding of cooperation as an antidote to alienation

and inequality From the crises of racial inequity and capitalism that

inspired the Black Lives Matter movement and the Green New Deal to the

coronavirus pandemic, stories of mutual aid have shown that, though

cooperation is variegated and ever changing, it is also a form of economic

solidarity that can help weather contemporary social and economic crises.

Addressing this theme, Practicing Cooperation delivers a trenchant and

timely argument that the way to a more just and equitable society lies in

the widespread adoption of cooperative practices. But what renders

cooperation ethical, effective, and sustainable? Providing a new conceptual

framework for cooperation as a form of social practice, Practicing

Cooperation describes and critiques three U.S.-based cooperatives: a pair

of co-op grocers in Philadelphia, each adjusting to recent growth and

renewal; a federation of two hundred low-cost community acupuncture clinics

throughout the United States, banded together as a cooperative of

practitioners and patients; and a collectively managed Philadelphia

experimental dance company, founded in the early 1990s and still going

strong. Through these case studies, Andrew Zitcer illuminates the range of

activities that make contemporary cooperatives successful: dedicated

practitioners, a commitment to inclusion, and ongoing critical reflection.

In so doing he asserts that economic and social cooperation must be

examined, critiqued, and implemented on multiple scales if it is to combat

the pervasiveness of competitive individualism. Practicing Cooperation is

grounded in the voices of practitioners and the result is a clear-eyed look

at the lived experience of cooperators from different parts of the economy

and a guidebook for people on the potential of this way of life for the

pursuit of justice and fairness.