Euricse celebrates its 10th anniversary with a new book

“Rediscovering cooperatives”, a decade of studies in ten chapters, released to celebrate the milestone

Ten years have passed since the birth of Euricse, the ICA’s partner in producing the World Cooperative Monitor. Since 2008, the European Research Institute on Cooperative and Social Enterprises has grown; it has actively participated in the dissemination of knowledge about the social and solidarity economy; it has refined the tools available; it has gained authoritative space in the public and scientific debate – local, national, international – and has built a team of researchers who, day after day, have contributed to the achievement of every single result.

To celebrate this important milestone, and at the same time lay the foundations for a new decade of work, Euricse has summarized some of the main contributions made in these years. Data, research, reflections, analyses: contributions written by Euricse researchers, together in a volume edited by the president, Carlo Borzaga. “Rediscovering Cooperatives. Ten theses that go against the grain” (Donzelli) can now be found in bookstores throughout Italy. A volume representing both a reminder of the research conducted and a contribution to the popular discourse. The intention is (also) to discredit easy clichés that often weigh on the shoulders of the cooperative movement.

Are cooperatives really small and marginal? Do they thrive only thanks to an advantageous tax regime compared to other forms of enterprise? And in the most intense years of the crisis did they suffer the same consequences as shareholder corporations? In the era of the sharing economy, of the immediate and unavoidable digitalization, is talking about cooperation simply anachronistic? The answers, woven throughout the book and supported by empirical evidence, are the result of research that readers can consult, examine, rediscover.

The first presentation of the volume will be on Saturday, December 1, as part of the Biennale of Cooperation, in Bologna, where Gianluca Salvatori, secretary general of Euricse, will talk with the journalist Fabio Lazzari about the issues raised by the book.

Further presentations will follow, along with excerpts of the book in English, in the coming months.