Cooperativism in Indigenous Culture and the Idea of Community Economy: Rethinking the Economic Space

Introduction

The capitalist system of production and the associated relations have dominated not only the actual space of the economy but also the discourse of what constitutes that space. The assumed centrality and dominance of this system or the hegemony of the capitalist discourses, as well as the progressive forces associated with it, render the particularities and peculiarities of economic practices—the local sites of the economy—redundant. The calculative profit-maximising relations subvert all humane social relations. ‘Capitalocentric discourse condenses economic difference, fusing the variety of noncapitalist economic activities into a unity in which meaning is anchored to capitalist identity’ (Graham, 2006, p. 56). The projected universality and inevitability of capitalism eliminates the possibility and even the probability of different forms of economic existences. The term ‘hegemony’ has been used in this paper not simply as a cursor to the superstructural aspects of the society but to underline the capitalocentrism of both academic discourses and socio-economic practices that preclude the existence of anything outside this system. Such a dominance of a supposedly unified, all-encompassing perspective creates a ‘hegemony’ of thought and practice, including the very production process and relations, which leaves no agency for the marginalised. This paper attempts to go beyond this universality and hegemony of the ‘capitalist economy’ and to engage with a more constitutive and open space where diversities exist, not as ‘alternatives’ or ‘others’, but as multiple forms of existence.

A cooperative economy is one such form. Cooperatives exist in different forms, but they together put forward the spirit of the collective. ‘The value of cooperatives, therefore, lies in the nature of their everyday practice, in the social relations of production established among their members: those of associated workers and not wage workers’ (Harnecker, 2013, p. 5). The cooperative spirit predates 20th-century socialism and is rooted in the community (Bennett, 2014, p. 63). Cooperatives do precisely what a counter-hegemonic language of economics is supposed to do:

It creates a new discourse of production by constituting relations that provide more egalitarian and inclusive engagements within the economic space. Since a cooperative emphasises people over profit, the most successful ones are those that have emerged from within the customary practices of various societies and communities. This paper further argues that cooperatives growing from within the traditional collective/community economies are more likely to establish a successful counter-hegemonic discourse of the economy.

Amidst the labyrinth of different economic aggressions, one primary act of colonial administrations around the world was to comprehend the diverse existences through anthropological, sociological, historical, political and economic studies. These academic endeavours inhered conscious and deliberate attempts to reconfigure indigenous socio-economic practices to fit them into the capitalist framework. ‘The construction of historical capitalism has involved, as we all know, this steady diminution, even total elimination, of the small community structures’ (Wallerstein, 1983, p. 101). ‘Capitalism’s dominance overshadows other possible, existing forms of production that are always already present, thus pushing the heterogeneity that inheres in the economy to the background’ (Sanyal, 2007, p. 4). ‘Diverse subject positions are reduced to manifestations of a single position; the plurality of differences is either reduced or rejected as contingent; the sense of the present is revealed through its location in an a priori succession of stages’ (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985, p. 21). Neeladri Bhattacharya’s (2018) The Great Agrarian Conquest is a comprehensive and nuanced study of such developments in Punjab.

Therefore, this paper argues that a counter-hegemonic language of economic diversity must begin by reclaiming the distinctiveness of such indigenous, cultural, customary diverse economic practices. This paper is divided into three sections. The first section deals with the space of community economy as a form of socio-economic existence different from that of capitalism. The second section presents a discussion on cooperatives as a viable form of community economy and refers to some successful cooperative experiments worldwide to substantiate that collective and community economies provide meaningful ways to resist capitalist appropriation. As such, it cites Mondragon, Mararikulam, South Korean, Danish, Nicaraguan and Brazilian experiments as cursory references. The third section presents a case study of the Rabhas, an indigenous community of Assam, and their customary practices based on the author’s fieldwork with the community.

Community and Diverse Economies: Challenging Capitalocentrism

Economy, in both Marxist and Liberal paradigms, has been portrayed as an independent fundamental sphere whose sanctity is considered to be a theoretical given. Theoretical arguments of this paper are based on the literature produced in the past couple of decades that goes beyond both traditional Liberal and Marxist readings. Some of them are Gibson-Graham (1996, 2006), Sanyal (2007), Nigam (2010), Laclau and Mouffe (1985), Mitchell (2000, 2005), in some way Althusser and Balibar (1970), Balibar and Wallerstein (1991), Goody (2004), Kaviraj (2005), to name a few. This paper iterates that even as capitalism’s grasp reaches the nooks and corners of the world, political economic institutions, practices and social relations that function outside the capitalocentric logic do exist. These humane, social, collective forms not only give us an outside to capitalocentrism but reconstitute the economic space as a heterogeneous and diverse realm.

Challenging capitalist hegemony begins with constituting a new economic space with socialised, collectivised, non-essentialised forms of relations that are specific to their contexts. Gibson-Graham called this the ‘discourse of community economy’ (2006), ‘the language of diverse economy’ (1996), where collective and social ties of interdependence and mutual coexistence replace atomistic, self-interested relations. Ideas/practices such as community economy or diverse economy provide inroads into opening up the economic space for numerous indigenous cultures and their customary, traditional, cooperative, collective practices that have otherwise been dismissed as ‘non-economic’ or outside economy. For instance, the aggression of the colonial discourse is reflected, among other things, in the near-disappearance of the idea and practice of ‘commons’ from socio-economic spheres.

Any attempt at going beyond the fixed perceptions of what constitutes the economy needs an open and diverse space. Such endeavours should be articulated around three necessary aspects. The first aspect concerns the constitutive nature of such spaces, which must be essentially heterogeneous. To move beyond the capitalist logic of singularity, this reconstituted space must be a realm of unfixity and openness. It must be a space that recognises and includes a multitude of economic practices and realities.

The second aspect is the inherently contextual nature of the new discursive economy. Challenges to a hegemonic capitalist discourse cannot be in other forms of uniform universal ideas or practices. A diverse community economy centred around people and their well-being is built from the inherent differences in customary and indigenous practices. Hence, a reframed economy calls for a multitude of answers and a multitude of practices, arrangements, endeavours and relations. Any inclusive economic space must recognise the embedded nature of these practices. The genesis of a social, collective, inclusive economy lies in this very discursive and distinctive economic space.

The third and corollary aspect argues that in defying capitalocentrism, these experiments must categorically steer clear from assimilation into the larger capitalist discourse of ‘incubator capitalism’ (Gibson-Graham, 2006) and thereby becoming the ‘other’ or ‘non’ of the real economy. Gibson-Graham argued that by explicitly highlighting the local, small, experimental nature of the new community economies, these discourses often translate the resistances into a marginal ‘other’ within the very economic space and discourse that they were meant to challenge.

Therefore, community economy endeavours must constantly reiterate their diversity as opposed to commonality; solidarity/sociality/collectivity as opposed to competition/atomism/individualism; and resistance/challenge as opposed to marginalisation/assimilation.

The next section presents an engagement with cooperatives as a form of collective economic space.

Cooperatives: One Form of Community Economy

This section deals with cooperative forces as a major challenge to capitalocentrism. The primary argument is that building cooperatives embedded in local and indigenous practices provides a strong ground to reframe the economy around ethics of care, interdependence, solidarity and collectivity and thereby to build an immediate, grounded challenge to the hegemonic capitalist discourses. It begins with a general discussion on cooperatives, followed by an engagement with the collective customary practices of the Rabhas of Assam.

Indigenous communities have housed cooperative socio-economic practices for a long time. However, the first modern cooperatives emerged in the late-18th-century England in the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution when its costs were begun to be borne by common people. ‘The earliest cooperatives were first formed as cultural, educational and journalistic institutions that attempted to instruct workers and ease the burden of misery imposed on them by a capitalist society’ (Reyes & Harnecker, 2013, p. 30). It was only in February 1819 that a major development took place when English tobacco workers on strike decided to organise production themselves. ‘For the first time, workers consciously took over their factories and began to produce without bosses’ (Lorenzo, 2013, p. 68). In 1824, Robert Owen’s ‘New Harmony’ project gave a vigorous boost to the cooperative movement. Although the project was abandoned by 1827, his efforts took the cooperative movement to great heights. Lorenzo (2013) mentioned that cooperatives in England grew from three to five hundred between 1830 and 1832. In 1844, the first successful cooperative officially came into existence when ‘28 weavers from a cotton-thread factory in the working-class district of Rochdale, Manchester’ (Reyes & Harnecker, 2013, p. 31) came together to form the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers or the Rochdale Pioneers.

This first generation of cooperatives led to many cooperative endeavours in the subsequent years. However, a new surge of collective/community/diverse economic experiments in the past few decades has begun to emerge with new vigour in different parts of the world, especially around indigenous practices. Almost one billion people are now affiliated with cooperatives worldwide, as estimated by the International Cooperative Alliance (ICA) (Satgar, 2007). A discussion on cooperatives as a form of the community economy is presented below.

The Rabhas and their Experiments with Cooperatives

The north-eastern Indian state of Assam is a land of many indigenous communities, and the Rabhas are one among them. Aboriginal to the region, they are known to be an Indo-Mongoloid ethnic group, who have largely been part of the larger Bodo tribe and have come from the Tibetan Himalayan region. They migrated into the region some few thousand years before the Aryans first reached India (Rabha, 2006). They preserve history mostly through collective narratives and stories. Rajen Rabha mentioned that the Rabhas inhabit in the greatest strength in the undivided Goalpara, Kamrup, Darrang districts of Assam and the Garo Hills district of Meghalaya. ‘The Rabhas are also found scattered in Nagaon, Sivasagar, Karbi Anglong, Dibrugarh, North Lakhimpur and Cachar districts of Assam, Khasi district in Meghalaya, as well as the districts of Purulia, West Dinajpur and 24-Paraganas in West Bengal’ (Rabha, 2002, p. 2). Today, the Rabhas are concentrated primarily in the Goalpara and Kamrup districts. For over two years, the author’s study of the Rabhas was also conducted from here. According to the 1991 census reports, the Rabhas constituted 12.08% of the total population of Goalpara and 3.8% of the total population of Kamrup, with their total population being 80,694 and 74,954, respectively. The 2001 census reports estimated that the population of Rabhas in Goalpara was 56,255, which constituted 6.8% of the total population of the district and 0.5% of that of Assam. In Kamrup, the number was 22,492, constituting 0.9% of the total population of the district. In 2011, the total population of the Rabhas in Goalpara and Kamrup was 1,03,757 and 91,034, respectively.

The ascendancy of the Ahoms to political supremacy in Assam in the 13th century did not fundamentally alter the social fabric of the region. Most of the indigenous communities were co-opted as autonomous kingdoms under Ahom suzerainty. It was only after the entry of the British that Assam, for the first time, became an integral part of mainland India. Assam consisted largely of two valleys: Brahmaputra and Barak, and the adjacent hill areas. The Schedule District Act of 1874 underscored this fundamental difference and administratively separated the hilly and remote areas of the north-east to secure a special status for the hill tribes. However, the plain areas of the valleys came under the General Acts and Regulation. After independence, the Sixth Schedule incorporated the hill tribes, leaving the indigenous communities of the plains, such as the Rabhas, without any substantial constitutional safeguard. To address this, the Assam Land and Revenue Regulation of 1886 was amended in 1947, at the initiative of Gopinath Bordoloi, and a 10th chapter was added. Eleven (now 33) Tribal Belts and Blocks were created. However, their administrative implementation in the later regimes is questionable. Also, s and Xaxa (2014) wrote extensively how the general understanding of the new government regarding the indigenous communities and their backwardness in terms of their distance from the mainstream communities have impacted much of the policymaking process.

The colonial administration instituted two major changes in Assam’s otherwise autonomous and decentralised economy. First, the British introduced a full-fledged money economy, thereby bringing the first major challenge to the traditional economic practices of Assam. Second, and corollary to it, the introduction of a capital-intensive economy brought about a major influx of people from neighbouring areas, which would, in a matter of few decades, entirely alter the demography of the region and as a result challenge the traditional command of the indigenous people over their land and resources.

The political economy of the Rabhas has not been much researched. As a closely bound group, the community has been their important pillar. Land and forests have traditionally been owned and managed communally. Although the Rabha life surrounds individual households, their primary mode of functioning is based on collective responsibility and in close association with nature. With colonial intrusion, integration with the formal economy dimmed this community economy. The introduction of the market economy and new agricultural practices revolving around commodity production disturbed the otherwise holistic economic existence of the community. As a self-sustaining economy, when confronted with these new institutions, it quickly went to backfoot. As external migration into the hinterlands grew, causing massive demographic changes, natives were further pushed back. Now, the Rabhas are struggling to preserve their customary community economy. In the author’s field study, two important attempts were observed at adapting their traditional community economic practices into two modern cooperative institutions, which are discussed below. The first is the public granaries (rajohua bhoral) found across all Rabha villages, and the second is their experiments with rubber cultivation.

Conclusion

Capitalism, in the 21st century, has obtained a truly global characteristic in its attempt to reach the remotest corners of the world. As it encounters the myriad of economic realities, it inevitably and desperately attempts to transform the differences into its own intelligible language of commodification and profit-making. But this capitalocentrism has now increasingly come under scrutiny. Capitalism is expanding but also failing. Every act of assertion of identity by various communities—of reclaiming their traditional lands, of their conscious defence of customary practices and of their celebration of community economic ties—acts as a mark of defiance.

As the capitalist discourse overwrites people, their cultures, histories and practices, the most promising resistance to this homogenising discourse lie in reclaiming the centre stage for people and their communities. Community economies provide a way for people to reclaim the economy for themselves. Cooperatives provide a viable means to institute community economies. They provide people with means to institute independent production processes and relations. Importantly, they also provide meaningful ways to incorporate the customary political economic practices of indigenous communities into institutionalised economic practices. Community economies not just provide a way of instituting the economy as an alternative to the capitalist system but open up the very discourse as well as practice economy and open the space for diversity. We have to locate the collective practices of indigenous communities such as the Rabhas in this broader context. There is no one way of forming community economies or cooperatives, no single blueprint, no one paradigm. In their diversities and their collective nature lies the challenge to the uniformity and hegemony of the capitalist discourse and its institutions. As long as people’s lives and contexts continue to be heterogeneous and a substantial portion of that population continues to live in the perpetual inequality, poverty and hardship that the hegemonic capitalist system creates, these heterogeneous entries into the economic sphere would continue to exist.