Collective Courage

Collective Courage
Author: Jessica Gordon Nembhard
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 325
Release: 2015-06-13
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0271064269

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.

Cooperatives in the Global Economy

Cooperatives in the Global Economy
Author: Tapas R. Dash
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 293
Release: 2021-05-19
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1498555233

Cooperatives in the Global Economy presents a unique collection of research-based chapters contributed by leading social and economic thinkers that provide critical insights into how the cooperative business model meets the challenges of the complex global problems in today’s competitive economy. Apart from theoretical arguments in favor of the value-based cooperative business model, this book presents the performance indicators of various forms of cooperatives, their potentialities, and challenges they face across borders. The contributors reexamine how cooperatives empower the marginalized population of the world by bringing them into the mainstream of socio-economic activities through creating employment opportunities, working towards alleviation of poverty, ensuring for more equitable distribution of scarce resources, and providing the basis for a sustainable economy and its meaningful growth. Today, in the global competitive economy, the challenges for cooperatives are enormous due to their particular value commitments, forms of incorporation, and organizational structures. In spite of the presence of several challenges, cooperatives promote economic growth and social justice. In this context, this book also presents the critical roles of cooperatives in balancing economic, social, and environmental concerns to build a better, equitable, and sustainable world.

Humanizing the Economy

Humanizing the Economy
Author: John Restakis
Publisher: New Society Publishers
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2010-11-02
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 086571651X

How the largest social movement in history is making the world a better place.

Cooperatives, Economic Democratization and Rural Development

Cooperatives, Economic Democratization and Rural Development
Author: Jos Bijman
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2016-01-29
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1784719382

Agricultural cooperatives and producer organizations are institutional innovations which have the potential to reduce poverty and improve food security. This book presents a raft of international case studies, from developing and transition countries, to analyse the internal and external challenges that these complex organizations face and the solutions that they have developed. The contributors provide an increased understanding of the transformation of traditional community organizations into modern farmer-owned businesses. They cover issues including: the impact on rural development and inclusiveness, the role of social capital, formal versus informal organizations, democratic participation and member relations, and their role in value chains. Students and scholars will find the book’s multidisciplinary approach useful in their research. It will also be of interest to policy-makers seeking to understand the wide diversity of organizational forms and functions. NGOs, donors and governments seeking to support rural developments will benefit from the discussions raised in this book.

Artisans and Cooperatives

Artisans and Cooperatives
Author: Kimberly M. Grimes
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2000
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780816520510

With new markets opening up for goods produced by artisans from all parts of the world, craft commercialization and craft industries have become key components of local economies. Now with the emergence of the Fair Trade movement and public opposition to sweatshop labor, many people are demanding that artisans in third world countries not be exploited for their labor. Bringing together case studies from the Americas and Asia, this timely collection of articles addresses the interplay among subsistence activities, craft production, and the global market. It contributes to current debates on economic inequality by offering practical examples of the political, economic, and cultural issues surrounding artisan production as an expressive vehicle of ethnic and gender identity. Striking a balance between economic and ethnographic analyses, the contributors observe what has worked and what hasn't in a range of craft cooperatives and show how some artisans have expanded their entrepreneurial role by marketing crafts in addition to producing them. Among the topics discussed are the accommodation of craft traditions in the global market, fair trade issues, and the emerging role of the anthropologist as a proactive agent for artisan groups. As the gap between rich and poor widens, the fate of subsistence economies seems more and more uncertain. The artisans in this book show that people can and do employ innovative opportunities to develop their talents, and in the process strengthen their ethnic identities. Contents Introduction: Facing the Challenges of Artisan Production in the Global Market / Kimberly M. Grimes and B. Lynne Milgram Democratizing International Production and Trade: North American Alternative Trading Organizations / Kimberly M. Grimes Building on Local Strengths: Nepalese Fair Trade Textiles / Rachel MacHenry "That They Be in the Middle, Lord": Women, Weaving, and Cultural Survival in Highland Chiapas, Mexico / Christine E. Eber The International Craft Market: A Double-Edged Sword for Guatemalan Maya Women / Martha Lynd Of Women, Hope, and Angels: Fair Trade and Artisan Production in a Squatter Settlement in Guatemala City / Brenda Rosenbaum Reorganizing Textile Production for the Global Market: WomenÕs Craft Cooperatives in Ifugao, Upland Philippines / B. Lynne Milgram Textile Production in Rural Oaxaca, Mexico, and the Complexities of the Global Market for Handmade Crafts / Jeffrey H. Cohen "Part-Time for Pin Money": The Legacy of Navajo WomenÕs Craft Production / Kathy MÕCloskey The Hard Sell: Anthropologists as Brokers of Crafts in the Global Marketplace / Andrew Causey Postscript: To Market, To Market / June Nash

The Economics of Financial Cooperatives

The Economics of Financial Cooperatives
Author: Amr Khafagy
Publisher: Banking, Money and International Finance
Total Pages: 180
Release: 2021-04
Genre: Banks and banking, Cooperative
ISBN: 9780367777517

Building on theories of finance and distribution, and the political economy of finance, this book explains the influence of financial cooperatives on wealth and income distribution, and institutional factors that determine the development of financial cooperatives. The book discusses the dynamics of income and wealth distribution with and without financial cooperatives, and defines the economic objective for financial cooperatives. Through explaining the influence of political institutions and regulations on the development of financial cooperatives, this book examines why financial cooperatives grew in some emerging economies and not in other similar ones. The book is of interest to scholars interested in financial economics, political economy of finance, alternative banking and development finance, and banking regulation. The book also gives valuable output to central bankers and financial and monetary policy makers in underdeveloped economies. In addition, it will be of particular interest to practitioners in international development institutions, especially those engaged in development finance and rural finance.

The Growth of Italian Cooperatives

The Growth of Italian Cooperatives
Author: Piero Ammirato
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2018-04-27
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1351657607

The Italian Cooperative Sector is amongst the largest in the world comprising over 60,000 cooperatives from all sectors of the economy directly employing 1.3 million people. Cooperatives created close to 30 percent of new jobs in Italy between 2001 and 2011 demonstrating that democratic cooperative enterprises can successfully operate in a market economy combining economic success and social responsibility. These offer a viable alternative to profit maximising enterprises and an opportunity to create a more pluralist and democratic market economy. The Growth of Italian Cooperatives: Innovation, Resilience and Social Responsibility comprehensively explains how the Italian cooperative sector has managed to compete successfully in the global economy and to grow during the global financial crisis. This book will comprehensively explain how the Italian cooperative movement has managed to grow into a large successful network of cooperatives. It will examine the legislative framework and their unique business model that allows it to compete in the market as part of a network that includes central cooperative associations, financial and economic consortia, and financial companies. It will explore cooperative entrepreneurship through a discussion of the formation of cooperative groups, start-ups, worker-buyouts and the promotion of entirely new sectors such as the social services sector. Finally, The Growth of Italian Cooperatives examines how cooperatives have managed the GFC and how their behavior differs from private enterprises. It will also analyze the extent to which cooperatives compete while still uphold the key cooperative principles and fulfil their social responsibility. This book is an interdisciplinary study of cooperative development and is designed to inform members of the academic community, government, public policy makers and cooperative managers that are primarily interested in economic democracy, economics of the cooperative enterprise, cooperative networks and economic development, cooperative legislation, democratic governance, job creation programs, politics of inclusion and how wealth can be more equitably distributed.

Cooperatives Confront Capitalism

Cooperatives Confront Capitalism
Author: Peter Ranis
Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.
Total Pages: 141
Release: 2016-08-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1783606525

Cooperatives the world over are successfully developing alternative models of decision-making, employment and operation without the existence of managers, executives and hierarchies. Through case studies spanning the US, Latin America and Europe, including valuable new work on the previously neglected cooperative movement in Cuba, Peter Ranis explores how cooperatives have evolved in response to the economic crisis. Going further yet, Ranis makes the novel argument that the constitutionally enshrined principle of 'eminent domain' can in fact be harnessed to create and defend worker cooperatives. Combining the work of key radical theorists, including Marx, Gramsci and Luxemburg, with that of contemporary political economists, such as Block, Piketty and Stiglitz, Cooperatives Confront Capitalism provides what is perhaps the most far-reaching analysis yet of the ideas, achievements and wider historical context of the cooperative movement.

Cooperative Strategy : Economic, Business, and Organizational Issues

Cooperative Strategy : Economic, Business, and Organizational Issues
Author: David Faulkner
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 418
Release: 2000-05-18
Genre: Business networks
ISBN: 0191583383

This book brings together some of the latest thinking and research on cooperative strategy. Work in this area has grown rapidly over the last decade, but no single thematic approach has dominated and become the ascendant theoryDSresource dependency, transaction cost analysis, market power, and game theory have all made significant contributions to the growing literature on strategic cooperation. This book presents chapters from many of these theoretical perspectives and some of the key issues through a number of different lenses.