This doctoral dissertation enhancement project is for John Baldridge, a PhD student at University of Arizona, working under the direction of his advisor, Dr. Marvin Waterstone. His dissertation will examine the aftermath of the Argentine 2001 economic crisis and the neo-liberal policies of the 1990s that resulted in workers recovering bankrupted businesses from their former employees and establishing worker led cooperatives. The research will be conducted in collaboration with the Argentine Ministry of Labor, the National Movement of Recovered Businesses (MNER), and Drs. Federico Schuster, Liliano de Riz, and Hector Palomino from the Faculty of Social Sciences at University of Buenos Aires. The new institutional arrangements that resulted from these recovered businesses will be investigated along with how these cooperative institutions are formed, sustained, perceived, and impact the identity of the workers involved. The project utilizes mixed methodology including archival work, interviews, oral histories, and participant observations. The student has already visited the site, completed preliminary work, and developed strong collaborations with the Argentine institutions to carry out the proposed research.
The study aims to develop a new theory of the industrial commons to explain the unique development of these worker owned businesses in Argentina and thereby create a potentially transformative framework that may be applied to other parts of the Americas. The research would have much relevance to the policy and planning communities in the Americas and provide a new perspective on common property regimes as they exist in urban settings. This proposal will support international dissertation research for one graduate student.
