Co-ops in Times of Crisis

Based on a long-term study that Prof. Marcelo Vieta has been engaged in with worker-recuperated enterprises in Argentina, and other models for converting businesses to co-operatives in Italy (  see here & here) and Canada, in this webinar we will ask the following: What can the co-operative and social and solidarity economy learn from the Argentine economic crisis of 2001 and the worker-recuperated enterprise movement? What new discourses, lessons, and practices of ‘autogestión’ (self-management) can we adopt now in response to this crisis, and for imagining and prefiguring a different socio-economic reality for today and tomorrow?

Bio: Dr. Marcelo Vieta is Assistant Professor in the Program in Adult Education and Community Development (Department of Leadership, Higher and Adult Education) at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto (OISE/UT). He also teaches online for the International Centre for Co-operative Management (Saint Mary’s University). Dr. Vieta researches and teaches on the social and solidarity economy, worker co-operatives, workplace and organizational learning and change, the sociology of labour and social movements, and critical theory. He is the author of Workers’ Self-Management in Argentina: Contesting Neo-liberalism by Occupying Companies, Creating Cooperatives, and Recuperating Autogestión (Brill/Haymarket, 2020 www.vieta.ca/newbook) and has published in numerous peer-reviewed venues and critical magazines in English, Spanish and Italian. More at vieta.ca.

This webinar is part of the 2020 special topics series, hosted by the International Centre for Co-operative Management at Saint Mary's University. It was hosted live May 20, 2020.