C_03 Cooperative Reconfigurations of Infrastructure as a Societal and Legal Development

Sections:: Halle
Disciplines:: Sociology , Law
Belongs to:: Self-organization of social cohesion (C: Infrastructures and Public Goods)

Abstract

How do citizens contribute to changing or sustaining local provision structures through the self-organization of infrastructures? What role does social cohesion play in this process? This work package examines the social and legal conditions for the civic provision of infrastructures in the form of infrastructure cooperatives.

This work package investigates social cohesion in the context of the self-organization of infrastructures. We are particularly interested in citizens’ willingness to participate actively in the improvement or provision of infrastructures. Our empirical focus lies on the fields of housing and energy.

With reference to the core research questions of RISC, we examine how cooperatives draw on social cohesion as a resource. At the same time, we analyze how cohesion is generated through cooperative practice—or potentially undermined through processes of exclusion.

The work package adopts a multimethod and transdisciplinary design, combining legal and sociological approaches. We employ different survey formats and contrast their findings with analyses of the legal framework.

Transfer Activities

Our practice-oriented activities are directed in particular at the municipalities under study and at local civil society actors. An annual workshop provides a platform for exchange among researchers, practice partners, representatives from politics and public administration, and interested members of civil society.

Against the backdrop of the infrastructural challenges identified in Research Area C, this work package (WP), situated within Research Focus 2, examines practices of infrastructure self-organization (voice) and investigates citizens’ willingness to participate in the improvement or even provision of infrastructures. Using the example of infrastructure cooperatives—particularly in the fields of housing and energy—we analyze how cooperative reconfigurations of infrastructures are shaped and how they generate offers of cohesion at the local level. In doing so, the WP contributes to the focus-specific questions of who provides public goods and infrastructures, in what forms, and with what effects, as well as to the question of how civil society initiatives relate to the provision of public goods.

The focus on cooperatives, which gained increased attention as “children of necessity” during periods of transformative upheaval in the course of industrialization, is justified by their specific position between state, market, and civil society. On the one hand, cooperatives are regarded as particularly resilient forms of cooperation, especially in times of crisis. On the other hand, their principle of equal voting rights provides a foundation for alternative modes of infrastructure design in democratic societies. From the perspective of transformative infrastructural development, cooperatives located within the third sector are of particular interest. What these cooperatives share is that their support purpose is not limited to their own members but extends beyond them to provide a local contribution to public provision for the community. We refer to cooperatives dedicated to such “permanent institutions” (Kluth 2018: 242; our translation), which “form the basis for citizens’ exercise of freedom” (ibid.), as infrastructure cooperatives (also referred to as social, citizen, or community-oriented cooperatives).

The literature attributes significant potential to infrastructure cooperatives in the transformation of local infrastructures and points to their stabilizing and cohesion-enhancing effects. Through their principle of equal voting rights and their statutory capacity to promote social and cultural purposes pursuant to Section 1(1) of the Cooperative Societies Act (GenG), cooperatives provide a valuable opportunity to observe both the emergence and use of cohesion—alongside a considerable potential for exclusion, as nonmembers are necessarily left outside.

This field is further complicated by the ambivalence between “voluntary work” and the risk of contributing to the legitimation of a “politics of omission” (van Dyk and Haubner 2019: 269; our translation), which may render the state’s withdrawal from public provision more acceptable (Klemisch and Vogt 2012; Thürling and Hanisch 2021).