A New Overview of the History of Co-operation

Summary

How have external forces – from market crashes to new countercultures – shaped the movement?

This valuable new history of the global co-operative movement charts its rise and its evolution – and crucially outlines the way it has been shaped by wider influences.

For instance, new forms of co-operation were born from the hardships of industrialisation in the 19th century, with the rise of the first retail co-ops; the ideals of the counterculture of the 1970s led to a proliferation of worker co-ops; and now a new movement, platform co-operativism, has arrived to meet the needs of those left adrift by the financial crash of 2018 and the growth of insecure work in the digital gig economy.