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Co-operative Studies in Australia and Beyond

Ian MacPherson

Labour and working class journals, like virtually all parts of the academic world, have almost totally ignored co-operatives, co-operative thought, and the field of Co-operative Studies generally. This commentary, building on the essays in this issue, makes the case for encouraging such interests. It argues that, while 'conventional' history is useful for an understanding of co-operative organisations and the 'co-operative experience' generally, a satisfying approach must include insights and methodologies drawn from a wide range of disciplines as well as an engagement with people actively involved in co-operatives. It must also be international in perspective, employing comparative analysis in order to more fully appreciate the varieties and possibilities of co-operative activities in sustaining communities and expanding accountability. Australian researchers in the field can play an especially important role in this because of the special insights they have developed in some areas, notably central/local relationships and the process of demutualisation.

 1
A common problem with many existing studies of co-operatives is that their focus seems unclear, particularly to outsiders; they tend to be too preoccupied with excessive detail, and too many subplots; and they are limited because they tend to follow stereotypical chronologies. They tend to be 'internalist' documents. That does not mean they aren't useful: they are usually fully comprehensible and appreciated by people within the movement. They are employed for a wide range of purposes away from the halls of the academy, including institution building, professional training, and recognition of co-operative leaders. 2
      The essays in this volume escape such common limitations and are welcome additions to the field of Co-operative Studies. They are examples of how co-operative themes can be explored in ways that will have broader appeal, especially in academic circles. They are admirably clear in their purposes and in their findings; they employ lenses that produce interesting insights into the co-operative experience, insights that engage a wider literature. They hopefully will stimulate interest within, but also outside, the usual co-operative research circles. 3
      As the introduction to this issue points out, they are presented within what is essentially a vacuum: like other journals in the field of working class studies, Labour History has paid scant attention to the field of Co-operative Studies over the years. This is remarkable because co-operative organisations, along with many other similar endeavours in the social economy and civil society, were, and to some extent still are, an important component of working class life. Moreover, the research that has been done on Australian co-operatives, including Gary Lewis's remarkable achievements, has been largely ignored by others, particularly people in the academy. It is as if the movement, despite its statistics, capacity to reflect socio/economic change, and remarkable range of activities, has never existed, and has somehow disappeared: rather a surprising assumption given its 200 years of history and extensive numerical impact (today, there are over 800,000,000 members in the global movement, making it the world's largest social movement). Such distain, however, is not unique to Australia; it is the norm in national historiographies and within academic enquiry in virtually all other countries as well. Even in such countries as the United Kingdom, France and Italy, where the movement has played powerful and historic roles, co-operatives are seldom discussed in mainstream histories or featured in academic programmes. And, in those rare occasions when they are mentioned, usually in passing, the information provided is typically fragmentary and often incorrect. 4
      Also rather typically, and to point to another example of common neglect, in Canada, where the co-operative movement has played and continues to play, significant economic and social roles,1 less than two per cent of the students attending universities have the opportunity to enroll in courses that seriously examine the co-operative experience.2 This may, in fact, be better than in many other countries, in which there is no serious consideration at all, even if the respective co-operative movement has reached impressive dimensions. This lack of teaching emphasis, of course, is directly related to the challenges confronting those who would prepare the kind of research necessary for effective teaching. Nearly everywhere around the world, co-operatives specialists struggle to find their place in the academy, and they have to assert themselves vigorously to avoid being patronised, a common fate, while promising beginnings in the field disappear when a specialist leaves or retires at a university. Moreover, they typically have to earn their place by 'doing other things' to satisfy the needs of tenure and promotion. While that situation is slowly changing in some jurisdictions, it is still far too often the norm, to the loss of the co-operative world, the academy and society at large. For these reasons articles and issues of journals like this one are particularly welcome. 5
      The articles in the volume suggest some of the possibilities of the field. They describe three different expressions of the co-operative impulse in Australia: the Starr-Bowkett societies (a uniquely Australian initiative), the history of a local consumer co-operative, and long term patterns and struggles over identity within the Australian credit union movement. They demonstrate some of the dimensions that can make the study of the co-operative experience worthwhile and important...in fact, for those who become deeply involved in it, something of 'a terminal condition'. They are based on considerations of how long-term social and economic changes shape co-operative developments and how people involved in co-operatives can sometimes respond to those changes to further their own economic and social interests and those of the community (however defined) to which they belong. They address issues of identity — organisational and communal — a constant in the field of Co-operative Studies and a challenging, perpetual feature of all co-operative enterprises. They delve into changes in managerial practice and organisational structures, fundamental to the internal life of all co-operative institutions. They cast light into shifts in government policies, examining how they knowingly or unknowingly shape co-operative practice and development. They suggest the broad range of co-operative subjects that could attract attention and situate them within wider social and economic transformations. They capture some of the kinds of debates that characterise co-operative organisations. They examine the relationship between local co-operatives and the central institutions to which they belong and theoretically control, a particularly important issue to be discussed further below. 6
      In short, the authors of the papers take the co-operative experiences they describe seriously and on their own terms; they do not discount them arbitrarily because of an a priori assumption about marginality derived from unsympathetic ideological perspectives or narrow theory. In doing so, they open up many new avenues for research in Australia and for fruitful comparisons with work in other countries, not least with nearby Asian countries as well as with the more obvious ones in the North Atlantic world. 7
      The articles also demonstrate that usual historical approaches need to be supplemented by a range of methodologies and insights drawn from other disciplines. History, as traditionally conceived and applied over the years to co-operative themes, while having its uses, is just not adequate for the work that needs to be done. The papers show the value of utilising approaches that are typically more commonly associated with sociological, anthropological, and economic enquiries as well as with organisational theory and business studies. They delve, for example, into the politics of consumption, a theoretical analysis of the roles of localism, an examination of how co-operative structures function on the margins of the social economy, and a search for a more careful understanding of the motivation of leadership groups through the use of discourse analysis. In doing so, they help to open up new ways of thinking about the co-operative experience in Australia and elsewhere. They help by emphasising the importance of contextual dimensions to a fuller understanding of the co-operative experience. 8
      They also suggest the importance of institutional forms and structural formulations. The tightest distinctly co-operative form in Australia, as in many other countries, was the consumer co-operative referred to as the 'Rochdale co-operative' by Australians, reflecting the significance of understandings of the British model for the 'pioneers' of that country's movement. Australians, however, did not slavishly follow the British precedence. Nor was the Australian approach the same as that followed in other countries on the European continent, in the colonies during the heyday of the 'Age of Imperialism', and in the nations that gained their independence in the last third of the twentieth century. Within the Australian experience, one of the most obvious differences was the debate over the relative power and roles of local co-ops and the central organisations they created. It is an important issue for all kinds of co-operatives — how do they mobilise local resources to create a strong central entity that can provide efficiencies of scale, mobilise resources efficiently, and present common views effectively to governments and within public discourse? The article in this issue, along with the work of Gary Lewis, indicates that it requires deep enquiries into the institutional culture of local co-operatives, the nature of local societies, and indeed the broader culture of Australia. It requires careful analysis of organisational decision making as well as the responses to the changes that co-operative leaders make and that seriously affect a given co-op's capacity to survive. 9
      The issue of local versus central leadership has bedeviled co-operative development throughout the movement's history and partly helps to explain its comparatively low visibility. Perhaps it will be possible in the not-too-distant future, to facilitate an international dialogue on the strengths and frailties of co-operative federalism, an important subject if the full promise of the co-operative movement is ever to be achieved. It is a project that the Australian co-operative specialists are particularly well situated to lead. 10
      Two of the articles explore different dimensions of co-operative finance. This is a field with a very diverse heritage, one with a long history of experimentation and characterised by intense debates over what is possible and how change should be carried out. It offers interesting vantage points from which to analyze socio-economic change as well as institutional transformation within a context of defined but evolving sets of values and principles. It is a field that begs for serious comparative analysis of institutions within countries and across regions around the world. While not immune from the forces typically associated with globalisation, such community-based co-operatives offer an alternative to main stream global financial integration: they offer forms of accountability and local responsiveness that can provide greater assurance of community sustainability. Without careful analysis and serious reflection, however, this potentially effective avenue for alternative development could easily be lost amid the fashionable (and for some, very lucrative) demutualisation of different kinds of co-operative financial institutions. 11
      One of the regretful consequences of the ways in which the academy has ignored co-operatives is that the theoretical base to sustain mutually-owned, community-based enterprises is deplorably weak, especially in an age of concentration of media attention, the 'dumbing down' of much public discourse, and the widespread celebration of indulgent individualism. Again, this is a topic that the Australian specialists might assume responsibility for stimulating further international discussion, not least because the Australian credit union movement has undergone remarkable and controversial change as a consequence of the patterns of change discussed in the article in this issue. 12
      In varying ways, the three papers delve into questions of identity, a fundamental and ubiquitous dimension of the co-operative experience and a necessary consideration in virtually all enquiries in the field of Co-operative Studies. There is, of course, a kind of identity that flows from the values and principles on which co-operatives are based: they provide guidelines for legislation and bylaws, and they help differentiate co-ops from other kinds of enterprise. But, as these papers suggest, largely indirectly, identity is also a matter of local expectations, cultural contexts, leadership ambitions, and institutional dynamics. There is a global dimension that flows from this understanding, and there is a need for considering its impact, both within the co-operative movement and by people who reflect on the co-operative experience. Too often, co-operatives are understood and described in terms of reflections of the European experience, from my perspective an unthinking, lingering imperial perspective. This tendency underestimates the significance of local and national cultural understandings and local determination for agency. It underscores the importance of variety, the possibilities of diverse and different co-operative experiments, and the potential value of enhanced understandings of those options in co-operative circles around the world. 13
      Finally, the articles, as much by implication as by overt advocacy, are also typical of the best writings in Co-operative Studies because they invite (one might even say require) action. They are useful in the seminar room, but they also provide thoughtful reflections on the state of co-operative endeavours. The article on co-operative stores should serve as a good background document for co-operative leaders and members trying to envision successful strategies in a difficult competitive world, strategies on local, regional national and even international levels. The article on Starr-Bowkett should open up discussion on the variety of co-operative forms that can be useful and the need to think creatively through co-operative, community-based strategies to address social and economic issues. All of them bring up questions of public policy that have profoundly shaped the limits and nature of co-operative endeavours in Australia, as elsewhere. They invite validation by acteurs as well as by other researchers, an essential dimension of Co-operative Studies, properly practiced. They call out for further similar work and enhanced, serious consideration of the relationships between theory and practice, a fundamental tenet in the field of co-operative studies and a prerequisite for the further sound development of the international movement. 14


Ian MacPherson is the Director of the British Columbia Institute for Co-operative Studies at the University of Victoria in Canada and has written and spoken extensively on co-operatives around the world. He was instrumental in the International Co-operative Alliance's adoption of an identity statement for the twenty-first century. Currently, he is co-director of the National Hub for a $15,000,000 research program on the possibilities of the Social Economy in Canada. Further information on this and other projects can be found at <http//web.uvic.ca/bcics>.
<Cluny1@uvic.ca>


Endnotes

1. According to the Co-operatives Secretariat in the federal government and caisses populaires/credit union statistics, Canadian co-operatives have some 16.000.000 members and in excess of $300 billions in assets.

2. Based on Cheryl Lans, University Teaching of Co-operative Business Management and Philosophy in Canadian Universities, British Columbia Institute for Co-operative Studies, Victoria, 2005). Available at <http://web.uvic.ca/bcics>

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