Cooperatives and Community Development

In celebration of cooperatives’ contributions to community development processes and outcomes worldwide, the United Nations designated 2012 as the Year of the Cooperative. Today, as in the past, cooperatives have proved effective in bringing people and organizations together to accomplish a broad array of goals related to fostering social and economic innovation, protecting communities against poor living and working conditions, and promoting a better quality of life. Analytically, as both a movement and as a business model, cooperatives hold much potential for generating the types of synergies, collaboration, and productive and social processes that enable community development to thrive in a variety of local, regional and global contexts. This collection of articles chronicles new developments in the ways in which cooperatives are used in a diverse array of community contexts. They offer insight as to what these changes mean, both empirically and theoretically, for community development in the decades to come.

This book is a compilation of articles published in the journal Community Development.

Vanna Gonzales (Ph.D. Political Science) is an Assistant Professor of Justice and Social Inquiry in the School of Social Transformation and a faculty affiliate of the Schools of Public Affairs and Transborder Studies at Arizona State University. Her research and teaching interests include social policy and reform, governance and organization theory, and the development of the social economy in Europe and the United States, with a particular focus on economic justice and social and cultural innovation. She is founder and coordinator of Social Economy Arizona and currently directs ASU’s Certificate in Economic Justice.

Rhonda G. Phillips, Ph.D., AICP, CEcD is a professor, a planner and community economic developer focused on fostering innovative development approaches. Her research and service outreach includes assessing community well-being and quality-of-life outcomes, and balanced approaches to planning and development.