The year 2008 marks 150 years since the death of Robert Owen, and to commemorate this anniversary the Society has published a collection of essay’s on Owen’s contribution to innovation in the 21st century.
Robert Owen was one of the most significant thinkers and social innovators of the Nineteenth Century. He is widely recognised as the 'Father of Co-operation', and an exemplary industrialist and educational reformer for his pioneering work while managing the New Lanark Mills in Scotland. What is less well-known is his work on the development of time-based currencies, trades unionism and experiments in community living.
150 years after Owen's death, all these ideas have a remarkable contemporary resonance, whether it be in the development of LETS schemes, Eco-villages and 'Fairtrade', or the emergence of New Social Movements challenging and offering alternatives to a political and economic system built on global capitalism. This book explores these connections through a series of chapters written by leading current practitioners in each of the fields of endeavour that Owen was concerned with and tries to draw lessons from his exprience for social innovators of the future.
In an era when the social and environmental consequences of our capitalist economic system are looking increasingly perilous, and when the financial system no longer inspires confidence, Robert Owen’s creative contribution can help to inspire an alternative economic paradigm.
The book is published by Scottish Left Review press and more details are available on the their website It is also available from:
Richard Bickle (Secretary), UK Society for Co-operative Studies
Holyoake House, Hanover Street, Manchester, M60 0AS.
The Society held it 2008 conference at New Lanark with a focus on research papers about Robert Owen. You can find a fuller report here.
You can find out more about our conference in 2007 on this page and about the previous year's international conference in Cardiff here.
