Previous page | New search |
The free AfricaBib App for Android is available here
Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Cooperation and Consciousness: Democracy and Authority in Southern African Producer Cooperatives |
Author: | Adato, Michelle |
Year: | 1994 |
Periodical: | Transformation: Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa |
Issue: | 23 |
Pages: | 23-43 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | South Africa |
Subjects: | democracy cooperatives management Politics and Government Agriculture, Natural Resources and the Environment Development and Technology Economics and Trade |
External link: | https://d.lib.msu.edu/tran/226/OBJ/download |
Abstract: | Trade unions have sponsored cooperatives in recent years in South Africa. Through a study of 'democratic management' in cooperatives started by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) in Transkei and Lesotho (the first NUM coop started production in 1988 after the 1987 mineworkers' strike), this article examines how consciousness facilitates and constrains workplace democracy. The concept of 'democratic management' in cooperatives assumes that both parts of this term - democracy and managerial authority - are necessary for reproduction of the organization. However, both parts present particular tensions rooted in the society in which they operate. The article attempts to unpack these tensions and understand their bases and implications. More specifically, it considers layers of consciousness that facilitate, constrain, and shape forms of democracy and authority in the cooperatives. Historical and contemporary experience in the mines, trade unions and communities, and rural relationships of traditional and tribal authority shape competing conceptions of democracy and authority and modify in a variety of ways the ideal-typical cooperative organization introduced by the trade union. Bibliogr., notes, ref. |