Cooperativism, public policies and social organizations: Conflicts in cooperatives promoted by the State in Argentina

Abstract

During the first decade of the 21st century in Argentina, cooperatives took an unusual boost, mainly due to the development of public policies which promoted the social and solidarity economy. The Argentina Works Program, which ran from 2009 to 2018, created more than 5,000 cooperatives. In its implementation, it gave centrality to municipal governments and social organizations with territorial anchorage. The objective of the article is to investigate the conflicts that these cooperatives gave rise to, especially the contentious interactions between cooperatives, organizations and the State. Thus, the article contributes to the analysis of the potentialities of state incubation of cooperatives. The methodology is qualitative: a case study was carried out mainly through semi-structured interviews and observations. The article describes two conflicts; firstly, around the definition of the productive activity, and secondly, about the production purpose. While in the first conflict the local State constitutes itself as the main adversary, in the second, the insertion of the cooperative in a social organization generates oppositions among the workers regarding the purpose of production.