The end of the cooperative model (as we knew it): Commoning and co-becoming in two Nicaraguan cooperatives

Abstract

Cooperatives produce commons, but how they do so—and what kinds of commons they produce—cannot be known in advance. Two cooperatives in Ciudad Sandino, Nicaragua illustrate how distinct cooperative assemblages actually take shape through particular patterns of commoning. First, members of a women’s sewing cooperative called the Fair Trade Zone refuse open-membership. Claiming kinship as the logic of their membership, they describe the cooperative as “like their child”. Second, members of Ciudad Sandino’s Recycling Cooperative defy cooperative principles for rules-in-use, maintain a flexible and fluid membership, and refer to their collective organization as their “ant-hill” (hormiguero), reflecting its adaptability to changing conditions. These two case studies highlight the diverse subjects, practices, socioecological relations, political-ethical reasonings, and other resources from which cooperatives and commons are assembled. They also illustrate the multiplicity of organizational forms that communing can produce. Ultimately, the two case studies show that cooperative models are not recipes but historically generated and immanent projects that shape particular cooperativisms. Institutional approaches to commons and cooperatives fail when they impose a single form. We do not know what commoning and cooperating will become. In order to develop a language for expressing diverse modes of cooperating, then, we must start not with the recipe but with the concerns that particular cooperators find relevant.