Democratizing Rural Economy: Institutional Friction, Sustainable Struggle and the Cooperative Movement

Rural Sociological Society, 104 Gentry Hall, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211-7040. Tel: 573-882-9065; Fax: 573-882-1473; e-mail: [email protected].

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22

Cooperation; Rural Economics; Sustainable Development; Economic Factors; Rural Areas; Democracy; Political Influences; Social Influences

0036-0112

Sustainable development demands institutions manage the conflicts and struggles that inevitably arise over material and ideal interests. While current cooperative theory privileges the economic element, a political economy of cooperation emphasizes cooperatives' tentative bridging of economic and political spheres with a democratic ethos. The cooperatives' democratic political structure exists in tension with a capitalist economic structure and other sites of friction. These contradictions are: in the realm of social relations, between production and consumption; in the realm of spatial relations, between the local and the global; and in the realm of collective action, between cooperatives as both traditional as well as new social movements. Where neo-classical economic models seek to eliminate or reduce these tensions, political economy views these tensions as functional to sustainability by creating an "institutional friction" that facilitates innovation, flexibility and long-term adaptability. This political economy of cooperation is intended as a step toward the development of a multidimensional sociology of cooperation.

Author

2005

EJ684080