The "Social" as Metaphor and the Case of Cooperatives
A Critique of Economic Individualism

Drawing on critical interpretations of Polanyi, the authors offer a critique of the language and categories of thought that dominate the intellectual and political landscape.

Drawing on critical interpretations of Polanyi, Austin and Lacan; Marie Pellegrin-Rescia and Yair Levi offer a powerful critique of the language and categories of thought that dominate the contemporary intellectual and political landscape. The general tendency to dichotomize concepts such as left and right, social and economic, globalization and anti-globalization, is, they argue, a consequence of our subservience to the primacy of the rational economic agent. The authors offer a case-study of co-operatives, which are shown to be paradoxical entities in a worldview in which the social exists only as a metaphor for a space concerned with the damage caused by the economic. Through an analysis of experiences in achieving civil accord in South Africa and in establishing a new town in the mountains of Sicily, they offer a new political orientation in a world of uncertainty. In doing so they attempt an answer to one of the most intriguing questions of our time: should we accept as a fait accompli the way our society is conceived and shaped, or can we have a say in the matter and assume the ethical responsibility involved?

Foreword
Preface: dis-anchoring and disembeddedness: the two avatars of modernity, Marie L. Pellegrin-Rescia. The 'Social' as Metaphor, Marie L. Pellegrin-Rescia: Introduction: theoretical approach and historical overview: The thinking-talking human being and his categories of thought
The speaking-acting subject and the symbolic register
The speaking-acting individual and the imaginary of the 'Social' discourse
Interdependence and places of wandering
Symbolic delimitation vs imaginary bonds
Anthropological debt vs imaginary work places
Readiness to lose vs imaginary places of production
Conclusion
Cooperatives as Examples and their Paradoxes, Yair Levi. Introduction: cooperatives, categories of thought, embeddedness/disembeddedness
Images, myths and stereotypes
Origins and constituent elements
Tensions and inconsistencies
Interpreting the socio-economic duality
The paradoxes of cooperatives: case studies
What have we learned from cooperatives?
Summary and conclusions. Epilogue: Beyond The 'Social' as Metaphor, Marie L. Pellegrin-Rescia
Introduction: enunciating 'doing things with words'
Thinking 'nestedness' as a system of constituent rules
Thinking the political with the categories of the symbolic: the case of South Africa
Thinking the virtual more real than reality: The Citta Aperta, Sicily
Conclusions, Marie L. Pellegrin-Rescia and Yair Levi
References
Index.