The Icelandic Cooperative Movement: Constitutive Practices and Localized Influences

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Governance and Globalization in the North Atlantic", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

In the late 19th century, farmers in Þíngeyjarsýsla, Northern Iceland collectively organized in order to claim greater sovereignty over their interactions with international capitalist markets in an economic scene dominated by Danish merchants. This Kaupfélag movement soon became an island-wide phenomenon. This paper reconstructs the localized economic practices particular to the cooperative movement context including land use, production, and exchange. At this time, Iceland was in the midst of a broader shift away from a regulated colonial economy and toward free market capitalism. Did the Kaupfélag accelerate this shift or create an institutional buffer? This paper also examines communal forms of resource use alongside extractive modalities. What were the tensions between, on one hand, communal, redistributive practices versus forms of privatization and limited access which were preconditions of engagement with markets under capitalism? How does the archaeological record illuminate these issues?

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Governance and Globalization in the North Atlantic   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow