Food Co-operatives in Turkey
Food Co-operatives in Turkey

Author: Özlem Öz

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-10-23

Total Pages: 144

ISBN-13: 1003827411

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This book addresses the roles played by food co-operatives in the attempt to build alternative food networks, drawing on an in-depth analysis of case studies in Turkey. While many existing studies focus on food co-operatives and alternative food networks in the Global North, this book provides an important insight into a country from the Global South and, in doing so, not only provides a novel perspective but also challenges the rigid North–South categorization. The book provides a rounded view by examining both a producer and a consumer co-operative: BÜKOOP is a university-based consumer food co-operative, and the Vakıflı co-operative is a food-producing co-operative located in the Hatay province on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey. These two co-operatives, which have been working together for more than ten years, share the dream of establishing a network of co-operatives, in which producers exist in solidarity with consumers, blurring the dichotomy of producer versus consumer as well as rural versus urban. In addition to contributing towards a better understanding of the urban–rural divide, within the framework of alternative food networks, the in-depth analysis of these two cases enables us to explore how food co-operatives develop and how they keep their commitment to their original goals and ideals so as to help build an alternative food system. The lessons we learn from these two working case examples highlight the successes and areas of improvement for food co-operatives. They also provide evidence against the pessimism about alternative food networks by demonstrating that co-operatives can democratize both production and consumption. This book will be of interest to students and scholars studying alternative food networks, food justice, food sovereignty, transformation towards sustainable food systems, social movements, and the urban–rural divide.

Food Politics, Activism and Alternative Consumer Cooperatives
Food Politics, Activism and Alternative Consumer Cooperatives

Author: Beyza Oba

Publisher: Policy Press

Published: 2023-10-30

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 1529220041

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Following the global financial crisis of 2008, there has been significant interest among scholars and activists in alternative forms of organization that operate according to noncapitalist logic, including Alternative Consumer Cooperatives (ACCs). Using the example of Turkey, where neoliberal economics combined with authoritarian politics formed conditions that have profound social and economic consequences, this book investigates ACCs as spaces for prefigurative food politics. Offering a novel perspective on alternative forms of organizing, this book challenges the easy assumptions of what it means to be a scholar working on activism in the global north and shows how, through the foundational values of solidarity, reciprocity and responsibility, it is possible to create new and imaginative forms of politics and activism.

Food Co-ops in America
Food Co-ops in America

Author: Anne Meis Knupfer

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2013-05-10

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 0801467713

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In recent years, American shoppers have become more conscious of their food choices and have increasingly turned to CSAs, farmers' markets, organic foods in supermarkets, and to joining and forming new food co-ops. In fact, food co-ops have been a viable food source, as well as a means of collective and democratic ownership, for nearly 180 years. In Food Co-ops in America, Anne Meis Knupfer examines the economic and democratic ideals of food cooperatives. She shows readers what the histories of food co-ops can tell us about our rights as consumers, how we can practice democracy and community, and how we might do business differently. In the first history of food co-ops in the United States, Knupfer draws on newsletters, correspondence, newspaper coverage, and board meeting minutes, as well as visits to food co-ops around the country, where she listened to managers, board members, workers, and members. What possibilities for change-be they economic, political, environmental or social-might food co-ops offer to their members, communities, and the globalized world? Food co-ops have long advocated for consumer legislation, accurate product labeling, and environmental protection. Food co-ops have many constituents-members, workers, board members, local and even global producers-making the process of collective decision-making complex and often difficult. Even so, food co-ops offer us a viable alternative to corporate capitalism. In recent years, committed co-ops have expanded their social vision to improve access to healthy food for all by helping to establish food co-ops in poorer communities.

Collective Courage
Collective Courage

Author: Jessica Gordon Nembhard

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 2015-06-13

Total Pages: 325

ISBN-13: 0271064269

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In Collective Courage, Jessica Gordon Nembhard chronicles African American cooperative business ownership and its place in the movements for Black civil rights and economic equality. Not since W. E. B. Du Bois’s 1907 Economic Co-operation Among Negro Americans has there been a full-length, nationwide study of African American cooperatives. Collective Courage extends that story into the twenty-first century. Many of the players are well known in the history of the African American experience: Du Bois, A. Philip Randolph and the Ladies' Auxiliary to the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, Nannie Helen Burroughs, Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Jo Baker, George Schuyler and the Young Negroes’ Co-operative League, the Nation of Islam, and the Black Panther Party. Adding the cooperative movement to Black history results in a retelling of the African American experience, with an increased understanding of African American collective economic agency and grassroots economic organizing. To tell the story, Gordon Nembhard uses a variety of newspapers, period magazines, and journals; co-ops’ articles of incorporation, minutes from annual meetings, newsletters, budgets, and income statements; and scholarly books, memoirs, and biographies. These sources reveal the achievements and challenges of Black co-ops, collective economic action, and social entrepreneurship. Gordon Nembhard finds that African Americans, as well as other people of color and low-income people, have benefitted greatly from cooperative ownership and democratic economic participation throughout the nation’s history.