Culture, Conflict and Cooperation: Irish Dairying before the Great War

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It has been claimed that a key factor for cooperation to succeed is the culture. In other words those aspects related to the background and identity or common values that a group of individuals shared when they participate in the market producing or distributing agrarian goods or services.

According to this point of view, religion, language or ethnics are important factors to establish an environment of trust and therefore social cohesion. It also has been shown that a group formation or the degree of participation in society is inversed to the grade of heterogeneity of its members (Alesina and La Ferrara, 1999). Evidence about the link of religion, conflict and cooperation has been provided O’Rourke’s (2007) for the creamers in Ireland in the XVIII Century.

Culture and cooperativism: the evidence.

According O’Rourke’s (2007) the creamery cooperative system failed in the south of Ireland because the weakness of social cohesion originated by the differences in the religion and the conflict derivate. While the Catholic region had more presence of private creameries, the Prostestant region characterized by cooperative system. The religion from this point of view had an important consequence not only in the formation of social capital but also in the appearance of conflict and therefore the propensity to cooperate.
McLaughlin and Sharp (2012) review the context under the cooperation in Ireland is establish by O’Rourke as well as the data and the results of the model. According to this author’s the link between cooperation and religion cannot be establish in the region because the regional variables, the historical aspects of the area and the path dependence before the establishment of the cooperativism system was established de...

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... that competitive prices but not necessarily the lowest ones eventought individuals behavior as economic agents, cooperatives in Canada have a strong sense of social cohesion based on local pride, local identity are important.

Members invest capital, time, and loyalty in their relationship with a cooperative? They trust that doing so will be in their own interest, as well as the interest of other members. Members support co-ops because co-ops are dedicated to making members better off. This dedication is reinforced by other aspects of the co-operative relationship, including shared values and member identification with the co-operative’s purposes. It seems each country has its own specific characteristics taking into account different conditions and circumstances in developing and developed countries and that global factors influence all the countries and regions.

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