During the last several months, various researchers have started to explore some new areas of research interest and to develop information for our web site. Tyler Desroches, a graduate student in Economics at UVic has prepared a paper on some aspects of the theoretical issues concerning co-operatives within the discipline of Economics, a vitally important but under studied field of enquiry. Andre Vallillee, a fourth year student in Environmental Studies (and soon to be a BC Legislative intern) has helped develop our web pages on co-operative
land use, forestry co-ops and energy co-ops.

Grace Campbell, a second year History student, has prepared information for our web site on community kitchens, a form of the social economy often organized on a co-operative basis. Commuity kitchens go back far in human history: among Sikhs, for example, they can be dated back to the 15^th century and to the work of Guru Nank, the founder of Sikhism. He helped start pangats or langars, public kitchens for the “poor and destitute” as well as for holy men.

In the northern hemispheres, community kitchens were common attributes of many intentional communities influenced by various religious groups, such as the Hutterites, and with some secular communities, notably those associated with the Owenite tradition. They were also promoted by some feminist movements in industrial cities, including the International Co-operative Women’s Guild, during the nineteenth century as a way to ease the burdens on women, to secure food at cheaper prices, and to provide better nutrition. (Picture: A community kitchen in Vancouver)

During the later twentieth century, community kitchens have become increasingly common. One of the most dynamic community kitchen movements has been in Peru, where they are called comedores populares. During the 1960s and 1970s, Peru experienced rapid rural depopulation and extensive squatter communities appeared around its major urban centres. In response to inflation surges and economic hardships wrought by “structural adjustments ”,unemployment crises resulting from factory closures, and health issues such as rises in malnutrition-based tuberculosis rates, rural migrant women and disadvantaged urban residents united to improve their living conditions by purchasing food in bulk and preparing it together through comedores populares. By 2003 there were over 10,000 centres in Peru providing food to over 3 million people. In addition to what they do to help meet the nutritional needs of Peruvians, the comedores also provide valuable training in management and financial skills for their leaders and many of their members.

The Peruvian movement has helped to rekindle interest in community kitchens although the reasons why they are becoming more common ultimately stem from need in local communities. Today, for example, there are more than 600 community kitchens in Québec where they owe much to the organizing genius of Diane Norman. Rather surprisingly, perhaps, there are a reputed 500 in British Columbia, where, like so much of the provincial social economy, they exist quietly and with little fanfare or public recognition. It is a development BCICS has started to monitor, an example of formal and informal co-operative behaviour of some signicance.