%0 Journal Article
%T When a business isn＊t a business: law and the political in the history of the United Kingdom＊s co-operative movement
%A Tara Mulqueen
%J Oˋati Socio-Legal Series
%D 2012
%I 
%X Contemporary efforts to develop and promote co-operatives and the social economy confront a tension in the competing and often conflicting aims to achieve commercial sustainability in a capitalist market while also promoting social transformation. Through a review of the historical experience of institutionalization in the Co-operative Movement in the United Kingdom, this article attempts to generate insights into these tensions. Despite being seen as unpolitical, co-operatives can be understood as political at the level of re-shaping sociality through co-operative practice. Although the similarity between co-operatives and joint-stock companies produces ambiguities within the movement, this does not in itself detract from the co-operative project. It is argued that the codification of co-operatives in law as bodies corporate constitutes the closure of the political aspect of co-operation and reinforces and gives consequence to the misconception of co-operatives as primarily commercial entities. Los esfuerzos por desarrollar y promover las cooperativas y la econom赤a social se enfrentan a un conflicto entre los objetivos contrapuestos de lograr la sostenibilidad comercial en un mercado capitalista, a la vez que se promueve una transformaci車n de la sociedad. Realizando una revisi車n de la experiencia hist車rica de la institucionalizaci車n del movimiento cooperativista en el Reino Unido, este art赤culo pretende analizar estas tensiones. A pesar de ser apol赤ticas, las cooperativas se pueden entender como un elemento pol赤tico por su intento de reformular la sociedad. Aunque la similitud entre cooperativas y sociedades an車nimas produce ambig邦edades dentro del movimiento cooperativista, esto no va, por s赤 mismo, en detrimento del proyecto de cooperaci車n. Se argumenta que, al contemplar en la legislaci車n a las cooperativas como personas jur赤dicas, se acaba con el aspecto pol赤tico de las cooperativas. A su vez, esto refuerza y termina con la idea err車nea de las cooperativas como entes b芍sicamente comerciales. DOWNLOAD THIS PAPER FROM SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2050353
%K Co-operative Law
%K the Political
%K Politics
%K Social Movements
%K Institutionalization
%K Legislaci車n sobre cooperativas
%K Pol赤tica
%K Movimientos sociales
%K institucionalizaci車n
%U http://ssrn.com/abstract=2050353