Spatializing Solidarity: Agricultural Cooperatives as Solidarity Transformers in Cuba*.

Scholars and social movements have long studied how cooperative values of solidarity and democracy can spill over to the rest of the society. However, such studies have failed to develop a sociospatial theory of solidarity. Focusing on two types of agricultural cooperatives in Cuba, this paper draws on recent geography literature on solidarity to explore the sociospatial dimensions of cooperative solidarity. We find that cooperatives represent a crucial nexus between grassroots, lived community‐based solidarity practices and top‐down, multiscalar, organized solidarities and act as transformers between mechanical and organic solidarity. Cooperatives may lose their capacity for catalyzing solidarity if market pressure disturbs the sociospatial entanglement of grassroots and top‐down efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]