Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2025

Meso Analysis of French Cooperatives: Rearticulating Labor and Capital for Alternatives

Résumé

The proposal follows a collective seminar conducted over several years (Regulation Theory and Cooperatives) that led to the introduction of the concept of critical meso arena (Bodet,Lamarche 2020), and subsequently to a special issue of the Regulation review (Lamarche, Richez-Battesti, 2023) supporting the role of political regulations at work in cooperatives, while highlighting the mesoeconomic stakes for cooperatives and the institutional fabric surrounding them. Our analysis is based on various qualitative studies conducted on cooperatives in France and on reflective practices developed within a research-action cooperative to which we contribute (La manufacture coopérative), and we articulate these with institutionalist concepts, particularly regulationist ones (Richez-Battesti, 2023). This proposal aims to question the role of work in the meso regulations that characterize cooperatives. The purpose of mesoeconomics is not so much to fill the gap (the no bridge) between micro and macro, but to describ the regularities of such a social arenas capable of a relative autonomy within overall dynamics (Lamarche et al., 2021). The meso, in its regulationist version, gives us some argument about the articulations between different arenas, gives a place to alternative regulations, and seeks to capture emerging regulations (Bastien, Lamarche, 2025). The proposal presents a meso analytical framework for cooperatives, between political dynamics and productive dynamics (Lamarche & Richez-Battesti, 2023), questioning how these cooperatives "play" with neoliberal political norms and a highly competitive economic regime to attempt to produce alternatives. We show how, in the productive dynamics of cooperatives, three processes nourish the institutional framework and thus the political project of cooperatives: work, capital accumulation, and territorialization. This political project itself supports and specifies productive dynamics. This instituting process is stretched on one side between the production of new benchmarks marked by the importance of solidarity and cooperation, and the necessity to integrate into concrete productive arenas of the surrounding capitalist economy, marked more by competition and responsibility than by solidarity. The process institutes new practices while being constrained by deep normative or structural forces that hinder initial ambitions. We thus show that these three processes have an instituting character through the debates they generate and the institutional engines they lead to (Diagram 2). We particularly point out a relative compromise regarding social justice in relation to work, which is historically foundational for production cooperatives (notably SCOPs -workers coop-, but also CAEs - Business and Employment Cooperatives- and SCICs -General interest cooperatives). Finally, we question the necessary conditions for these frameworks to be instituting and to display transformative power: on one side, we show the issue of closing off competition (by public actors, through inter-cooperation...) that would alleviate market constraints, and on the other side, we question a closure through work by mobilizing the work of Ballon et al. (2023) on the cooperative social relationship of activities (CSRA) marked by the principles of dual quality (employee and member). This CSRA is characterized by four main components: 1) futurity; 2) governance; 3) organization of work; 4) income and mutualizations. We emphasize that forms of protection and wage security within the company assert themselves in an original way as soon as democratic governance effectively operates, illustrating its central role in the capital-labor articulation. Cooperation is, in this sense, a living, complex, and tense process. Putting people to work differently, in a more humane, more equal, and less violent way is an objective that constantly confronts the conditions of insertion into capital accumulation. What is organized and identified at the meso level can help actors to build common arenas and shared knowledge to support this ancient process that is constantly renewing itself.

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Dates et versions

hal-05027881 , version 1 (09-04-2025)

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  • HAL Id : hal-05027881 , version 1

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Nadine Richez-Battesti, Thomas Lamarche. Meso Analysis of French Cooperatives: Rearticulating Labor and Capital for Alternatives. Meso-level perspectives on paid work in contemporary society, Politics and Society, Workshop Serie 2025, Jan 2025, Marseille, France. ⟨hal-05027881⟩
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