Cooperative practices: survival strategies, "alternative" movements or capitalism re-embedding?

Abstract

Cooperative practices are the backbone of social reproduction in human society. Notwithstanding neoclassical discourse - accompanying the propagation of capitalist market economy - has overshadowed the importance of these practices. The enthronement of the ‘homo economicus’ disguises the existence of other kinds of logics, practices and subjectivities which challenge the very axioms of this scientific paradigm: maximization of profit, individual choice and competition for scarce resources. Nevertheless, human history is full of examples where reciprocity, cooperation and/or solidarity are at the core of economic practices aimed at ensuring the livelihood of the people and, in more abstract terms, the reproduction of life. Economic anthropology has deeply analysed this topic, questioning the reification of the “rational man” and underlining the existence of other logics of exchange and circulation different from “competition” in the so-called “free market”.