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Cooperatives as a Community Development Strategy: Linking Theory and Practice

The evolution of community development theory has not yet generated a parallel advancement in implementation strategies. In this paper we introduce a strategy—cooperative development—that compliments contemporary community development paradigms (self-help, asset-based, and self-development theories); thus providing communities and practitioners with an effective (and perhaps unfamiliar) vehicle for development. Although cooperative leaders, cooperative developers, and cooperative scholars consider cooperatives an important vehicle for community development, most have stopped short of prescribing how cooperatives can be incorporated into community development paradigms. Our objective is to motivate community development scholars and practitioners to start thinking about cooperatives in new ways, as part of their theory and strategies.