Co-operative histories by Gary Lewis:
A Middle Way Rochdale Co-operatives in New South Wales 1859-1986, Australian Association of Co-operatives Ltd, 1992
An Illustrated History of the Riverina Rice Industry, Ricegrowers' Co-operative Limited, 1994
People Before Profit: The Credit Union Movement in Australia, Wakefield Press, 1996
Gary has also written three reports for ACCORD:
Laughing All the Way to the Credit Union - The CreditCare Experience in 'No Bank' Towns, November 2001
Successful Co-operatives - The Valencia Experience, August 2000
Co-operatives in Rural Renewal: The case of Arranmore, Ireland, August 2000
Click the logo below to access these reports:
Australian
co-operative historian Gary Lewis is working on a book about the history of agricultural
and rural co-ops in twentieth century
He says:
"This is a huge undertaking; particularly
so as it is entirely self-funded; but an important story which
needs to be told of a great struggle by rural
Australians to realize the ideal of economic democracy in a capitalist
political
economy characterized until quite recently by a strong element
of state socialism.
Perhaps
you might wish to refer to this important work in progress on your
site and invite
any of your readers who have an opinion on events in the recent
history of (particularly agricultural and rural) co-operatives to
contact me at yeslewis@bigpond.com
I
am particularly interested in the institutional and market-economy
environments
in
which co-operatives have been functioning in the last ten or so years
and how these have interacted. All helpful commentary will be
acknowledged in the forthcoming book.
Perhaps
also there is someone out there who might be interested in helping to publish
the book or would consider publishing it outright. I estimate
it will occupy about 250-300 pages and am confident that it will
make a major contribution to the understanding of co-operatives and
co-operation, not only in
This could be an opportunity
for some organisation or consortium of organisations to be seen to
be really doing something tangible about co-operative education, an not simply talking about it.
Gary
Lewis