Derya Nizam, Yeni Nesil Kooperatifler: Topluluk, Aidiyet ve Yer-Temellilik, Istanbul: Oğlak Yayınları, 2021, 208 pp. ISBN: 978-625-413-004-5.
Derya Nizam’s Yeni Nesil Kooperatifler: Topluluk, Aidiyet ve Yer-Temellilik is a sociological study that examines emerging forms of cooperativism across different parts of the world through the lenses of community, belonging, participation, and place-basedness. Bringing together recent research on the revival of cooperatives, Nizam approaches “new generation cooperatives” not as a particular organizational form or field of activity, but as parts of a grassroots movement that develops innovative solutions to existing social, economic, and environmental problems. In this approach, a cooperative is not merely an enterprise that provides economic benefits to its members, but also a form of social organization through which relations of community and belonging are built.
The book examines different forms of new cooperativism through community cooperatives, multi-stakeholder cooperatives, environmental cooperatives, social cooperatives, women’s cooperatives, and food cooperatives. Drawing on research from different regions of the world, these chapters discuss how cooperatives respond to a range of issues, from poverty and rural development to social services, gender inequalities, environmental governance, and alternative food systems. New generation cooperativism is thus considered not merely as a model for organizing the economic interests of members, but as a form of social organization that can enable local communities to develop collective solutions to their own needs.
One of the major axes of the study is the relationship between democracy, participation, solidarity, autonomy, self-management, and cooperativism. Multi-stakeholder cooperatives in particular are examined as structures that bring together producers, consumers, workers, experts, volunteers, and different institutions around shared objectives, while emphasizing the importance of values such as the right to organize, cooperation, mutual aid, solidarity, autonomy, and self-management in the development of these organizations. In community and environmental cooperatives, meanwhile, the participation of local communities in decision-making processes and their ability to have a say over their own living environments become important for the development of local and participatory forms of governance as alternatives to top-down models of administration.
At the same time, Nizam shows that the cooperative form does not automatically produce an organization that is democratic, egalitarian, or situated outside capitalist relations. Studies of women’s cooperatives indicate that gender, class, and other inequalities can be reproduced within cooperatives; examples concerning food cooperatives point to the limits of participation and social inclusion; and studies of agricultural cooperatives demonstrate how neoliberal policies, financialization, and commercialization can transform cooperative structures. Rather than treating cooperatives as a homogeneous alternative opposed to corporations, the book therefore examines them as organizations in which the relationships and tensions between economic interests and social values are played out.
The final sections of the book extend this discussion to the determining role of social values in cooperativism. Belonging, trust, and solidarity emerge as fundamental ties that prevent members from acting solely in pursuit of economic benefit and help sustain the cooperative community. The different cases also demonstrate how cooperative values can change through encounters with the market, the state, and neoliberal transformation. In Nizam’s approach, the distinctive potential of new generation cooperatives lies not only in their creation of new economic activities, but in their capacity to open up spaces for the formation of alternative social relations and values while developing collective responses to social and environmental problems.
From this perspective, Yeni Nesil Kooperatifler is an important resource for thinking about cooperativism within broader debates on democratic collective organization and social self-management. Although the book does not focus directly on workers’ control or workers’ self-management, it has strong points of contact with these debates through its emphasis on communities organizing around their own needs, participating in decision-making processes, developing collective capacities over local resources and social life, and foregrounding the principles of autonomy and self-management. Its non-idealized approach to cooperatives is also particularly important in demonstrating that cooperative ownership alone does not amount to democratic control; the character of cooperatives must be assessed through participation, power relations, social values, and decision-making practices.