Within and Beyond the Market System: Organic Food Cooperatives in Catalonia

“It’s a Co-op in Spirit, That’s What It Is”: Fostering Collaboration, Collectivity, and Egalitarianism in Food Cooperatives

“…Nonetheless, both sets of values privileged the notions of collectivity, collaboration, and community that were successfully fostered within the co-op. These clearly had transformative potential in terms of how people worked together and valued themselves and others (within the food co-op and its provisioning network) (Homs and Narotzky 2019). In sum, they created the sense of a cooperative spirit that Jenny hoped for, but not necessarily the ownership that comes with cooperative ideology.…”

“…This, in turn, is thought to have led to individualised, lifestyle-focused forms of action, which reconfigure the relationship between the individual and society (Sörbom and Wennerhag 2013: 454). Although environmentalism and ethical forms of consumption had always been a part of the food coop's remit, a more lifestyle-focused approach without the emphasis on collaboration risked changing the balance between collectivity and individualism, as well as weaker or stronger sustainable consumption, therefore reinforcing tensions around whether cooperativism and collective provisioning can be used to foster a new economic system or simply interact more ethically with the current one (Hinton 2015;Homs and Narotzky 2019).…”

Cooperatives

“…While co-ops thereby often stand in opposition to market logics, this is not always the case. European food cooperatives, for example, both need markets and scale back from them, focusing on self-sufficiency during times of austerity (Homs & Narotzky 2019). While coops are most often aiming to reinvest locally only (indeed, they are at times legally obliged to do so), they can also be active proponents of global capitalism, investing in companies that are located offshore (Kasmir 2016).…”

Les expériences du « local ». Variations et tensions autour de l’alimentation locale dans la région marseillaise

“…Des systèmes proches sont présents dans d'autres pays sous des noms différents : CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) dans le monde anglosaxon, les GAC ou GAS -Gruppi di Acquisto Collettivo ou Solidale en Italie(Grasseni, 2013), ou les « coopératives » de producteurs et de consommateurs en Catalogne, notamment(Homs et Narotzky, 2019).J.-N.Consalès et al : Nat. Sci.…”