Journal of Co-operative Studies 53(1), 5-18

Abstract

This paper challenges functionalist notions of Canadian co-operation as a static, ahistorical, monolithic or unitary system, instead focusing on its inherent tensions. Drawing together literature on European and Canadian movement history, diffusion of innovations theory is used to first examine the model’s trans-Atlantic and cross-continental spread. European invention dates are compared to Canadian first-adoption dates, across a range of co-operative models. This situates the Canadian co-operative experience in a comparative, historical, and world-system context. It also illustrates the scope, timescale, and significance of the lag in mutualism’s trans-Atlantic diffusion. The analysis spotlights how its parent movements’ often conflicting traditions gave rise to internal contradictions, such as mutualism’s language-based, bi-national structure. Similarly, Canadian regionalism resulted in a three- wave expansion: across Eastern and Central Canada, in the foundation stage; across the Western frontier as the railway opened the West to settlement; and, most recently, across the North. Finally, the paper addresses settler co-operation’s colonial legacy and the challenge of reconciling with Indigenous communities. Canadian mutualism’s dependent, delayed, divided, and uneven development is thus placed in comparative and critical context.

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