O n a gray winter afternoon in late 2001, Erik, Frode and six other builders gathered in a basement in Copenhagen and took the final steps toward launching a byggekooperativ (craft co-op). All eight were either working in construction or had previously done so—some for a few years, others for more than a decade. Disappointed by earlier experiences with conventional construction work, they were ready—and eager—to launch a business that they could run on their own terms. From the outset, the eight builders agreed that the co-op’s core operation should be construction work. However, they wanted to avoid the toxic chemicals they had often encountered in construction and were thus keen to identify and develop environmentally friendly building techniques and materials. Moreover, they were tired of working for others and did not want others to work for them. No boss. No stakeholders. Yet, at their core, the builders’ ambitions were modest: they simply wanted the opportunity to do work that they found gratifying. As such, they had yet to fathom that, over the next twenty-five years, the enterprise they were about to launch would grow into a well-known institution within the Danish construction industry and beyond. Indeed, many have come to consider them a vanguard within a growing movement of activists, advocates, and academics seeking to resurrect cooperativism in Denmark.
The launch of the craft co-op coincided with a general election in Denmark on November 20, 2001. This election later came to be considered a “watershed in Danish electoral politics” (Skidmore-Hess 2003: 89). The Social Democrats, who had been the largest party in terms of both share of the popular vote and number of parliamentary seats in every national election between 1924 and 1998, suffered a historic defeat.1 Instead, the largest party was the center-right Denmark’s Liberal Party, forming a minority coalition government with another center-right party, the Conservative People’s party. Both parties are among the traditional “old parties” within Danish politics; however, the coalition was dependent on the newly established nationalist and right-wing populist Danish People’s Party. To the surprise of many, they and their anti-immigrant “Denmark for Danes” agenda gained considerable support, becoming the third largest party (behind the Liberals and Social Democrats) (Petersen, Petersen and Christiansen 2014). The two governing parties and the Danish People’s Party were united by a key message: a systemskifte (a system change) was required in Denmark. Historians and public intellectuals have continued to debate the underlying motivations driving this push for political change in 2001.2 Yet most agree that the election revealed that the political winds were blowing in a new direction in Denmark in the early 2000s. While right-leaning parties had held power on a number of occasions, for the first time, they were not dependent on support from centrist or left-leaning parties. The newly elected center-right government kept their majority until 2011 and returned to power in a new constellation in 2015.
Throughout the co-op’s existence, its members have appeared in national media outlets, on the streets of Copenhagen and in courtrooms protesting political initiatives launched by center-right parties often related to labor market, migrant, and broader economic issues. Reporters have often depicted the builders’ critical interventions in political and public debates through vivid portrayals of their committed efforts to rethink craftsmanship, reinvigorate cooperativism and develop eco-friendly building techniques in notable news stories with headlines such as “Meet this year’s sustainable frontrunner” or “Running a business without bosses.” The builders’ ongoing presence in the media and public sphere has garnered the craft co-op a certain reputation, and interest in the organization has continued to grow, including among those applying to join the co-op. The list of craftspeople and apprentices applying for jobs and training placements at the co-op is often seemingly never-ending.
The numerous applicants have come to the skilled trades from wide-ranging backgrounds. Apart from the founding members who, for the most part, still work at the co-op, the workforce comprises a wide range of unskilled workers, individuals with a migrant background, university graduates, creatives, and people for whom vocational training was the only opportunity for post-secondary education. Despite their diverse credentials, these workers—like the co-op’s founding members—are dedicated to craftwork as a livelihood. Many of them are representative of a cohort of Danish skilled workers who seek to harness craft practices to tackle challenging social, political, and environmental issues. Rather than words and intellectual refinement, the builders believe that real change only emerges through acts of doing. Erik, who has functioned as the co-op’s daily manager for years, often repeats this message as he skillfully steers journalists who are keen to tell the story of these apparently remarkable builders. He encourages others, particularly the younger builders, to also speak up in public debates. When asked specifically about the success of their co-op, Erik often quips: “It’s not a revolution. It’s just common sense.” For Henning, a shy but humorous builder who joined the co-op in its early years, one of their greatest achievements is the co-op’s strong position in the public sphere. “We have managed to build up some economic heft through hard and persistent work, and that provides us with something of a power base, right?” he said with a sly smile one morning as we drank coffee in the sun outside the co-op’s main office. In his own furtive way, Henning also referred to the fact that the builders had spent the co-op’s occasional financial surplus on supporting a range of initiatives in the neighborhood where the organization is located and in the wider Copenhagen areas. The builders often termed this support and other related activities aktivisme (activism).
The builders were thus united by a strong belief in using their own hands to take action. Many of the newcomers had applied for jobs at this particular craft co-op as they wanted to learn the basics of Godt håndværk (good craftwork)—something the co-op had become renowned for since its inception. Apprentices were especially eager to learn how to move their bodies and hands with precision to navigate the multifaceted nature of construction sites; these dynamic and bustling areas where novel creations take form amid the organized chaos, one beam and bolt at a time.
Figure 0.1. A roof restoration in Copenhagen, Denmark. Photo by Brian Berg.
While craftwork at construction sites might seem pristine, newcomers, particularly apprentices, soon realize that this is far from the case; rather, it is messy, dirty, and entails a good deal of hardship. From the early hours of the morning to late afternoon, builders spend their time on strenuous yet stimulating work. During my fieldwork at the co-op in 2019, unsurprisingly, I soon realized that, for its current members, the notable stories about the co-op in the media were not entirely aligned with the realities of everyday work life, which was largely organized around the intricacies and practicalities of craftwork. As I observed these workers build shelters from repurposed or biodegradable materials, customize wooden kitchens, retrofit housing, and restore windows, I also realized that their attitudes toward and discussions of current politics often emerged from such practicalities. During these discussions, many builders expressed a critical stance toward local developments in Denmark—a stance they also extended to broader global issues related to environmental destruction, excessive industrial production, and growing social inequality. While they may not have proposed concrete solutions to these complex global issues, many had turned to craftwork and cooperativism in hope of bringing about some form of positive change.
Such discussions showed how the builders’ engagement with craftwork and cooperativism was not simply about making a living. During one of my final conversations with Erik, he touched upon this when I asked him what was missing from the numerous accounts of the co-op and its activities by reporters. He responded that many of these accounts focused on what others considered their accomplishments; yet few had explored the day-to-day organizational life of the co-op. “To us, the important story is about freedom,” he earnestly declared.
* * *
In this book, I explore how a group of builders’ efforts to muddle through the daily challenges and contradictions of craftwork and cooperativism during a period of political transition in Denmark can be understood as “a story of freedom.” To do so, I trace the historical emergence and current trajectory of the co-op presented above. I have named this co-op KLAR and refer to the members—that is, everyone working in the organization, including both founding members and newcomers—as builders.3 By analyzing the aspirations of this socially diverse group of builders, their daily work at construction sites, discussions at internal assemblies, and efforts to rethink building practices and projects, I theorize their transformative actions and the underlying conceptions of agency and subjectivity. In doing so, I bring questions of diversity, creativity, and freedom to bear on anthropological studies of cooperativism and political action more broadly.
By homing in on the creative and (as Erik hinted) perhaps even emancipatory dimensions of cooperativism and craftwork, this book reveals something crucial about co-ops and similar associations that, I argue, is often overlooked in anthropological studies. Rather than questioning the autonomy of co-ops and similar associations, or simply denouncing them altogether as some studies do by revealing how power asymmetries and forms of exploitation are reproduced in these seemingly egalitarian organizations,4 this book explores what novel forms of life such organizations enable. These include forms of social and material practice, as well as political action, that are not captured by notions of negation or submission to existing hegemonic orders.
As my understanding of KLAR matured during my fieldwork, I realized it would be difficult to grasp the drive and creative efforts that characterized the members’ practices and projects if I focused solely on their attempts to implement and reproduce cooperativism as a distinct and ostensibly fixed organizational form. Accordingly, I began to approach the builders’ practices and projects by examining their continual enactment and negotiation within specific contexts. As I searched for, mapped, and traced the agile actions that emerged from these negotiations, I was drawn to the activities and projects that the builders pursued in daily craftwork. Through this work, they aimed to reinvigorate “good craftwork,”” make construction “more sustainable” and redefine “social responsibility” in Denmark. These three aims have remained KLAR’s core aspirations, and substantial parts of the ensuing chapters will be devoted to exploring what they mean in practice and how they are negotiated and contested in the co-op’s everyday doings and dealings.
Thus, I came to realize that to comprehend the builders’ self-defined transformative actions, I needed to ethnographically and analytically zoom in on their engagement with craftwork. To analyze the mutual constitution of the builders’ transformative actions and craftwork—and thus how their daily engagement with craftwork and cooperativism informed or interfered with each other—this book brings studies of cooperativism and the broader field of research on political action in dialogue with existing anthropological scholarship on craftwork.5 Drawing on these studies enables us to understand how craftwork becomes a source of creativity, novelty, and experimentation, and how the builders’ work shaped them as subjects. Through this work, they did more than construct buildings; they also cultivated virtues of making and in doing so quite literally took politics into their own hands. In other words, the builders’ transformative actions were characterized not by extraordinary events or political confrontation, but by a mundane yet meticulous attention to craft. I term this mode of action tinkering together to capture how it was guided by an aspiration to continually experiment with various projects and interventions, rather than to imagine radically alternative ways of working and living.
Overall, this book presents an ethnography of a community of builders who saw themselves as capable of inciting societal change through continuous processes of material, political, and social tinkering, both covert and overt. However, I believe that tracing the transformative actions that emerged from the builders’ engagement with craftwork and cooperativism also reveals more general concerns about the contemporary political landscape in Denmark and beyond. More precisely, the book expands understandings of what qualifies as political action in the present day, thereby contributing to broader discussions about the nature of critical politics.6 Based on my detailed ethnography of the builders working at KLAR, whose self-defined transformative actions departed from conventional notions of politics, I will argue for a concept of critical politics that moves beyond the usual association with public protest, campaigning and the interventionist techniques of contemporary social movements by showing how critical politics emerge from the contradictions and challenges of everyday life.7 I propose that, by carefully documenting the emergence of such politics—including the coalition building, associations, disagreements, and differences they produce—we can demonstrate “how new world-making projects come into being, what their aims are, and what tensions and contradictions they bring with them” (Postero and Elinoff 2019: 15). By zeroing in on the emergent cultural and social forms produced through the builders’ engagement with craftwork and cooperativism, this book sheds light on various life- and world-making projects in the midst or on the verge of becoming. To unfold these projects, we must begin by exploring the context in which they evolved: the contemporary Danish welfare state. Indeed, to understand how critical politics and practices of critique emerge, such as those expressed and enacted by the builders at KLAR, it is always necessary to explore their reciprocal links to specific formations of power (Li 2019).
The notion of freedom was in vogue in Denmark around the turn of the twenty-first century. As such, the KLAR builders were not the only ones presenting narratives of freedom during this period. In his New Year’s speech to the country, the newly elected prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, leader of the center-right government, proclaimed that Danes “should have greater freedom to shape their own lives,” adding that the new government “wants to break away from rigid systems, disempowerment, and uniformity. We believe that people are best at choosing for themselves” (Fogh Rasmussen 2002). Fogh Rasmussen later elaborated on these remarks, stressing that the twenty-first century would be the “century of freedom,” with cooperation, peace and respect for the individual as guiding tenets, in contrast to the twentieth century, which, in Fogh Rasmussen’s view, had been marked by class struggle, repression, world wars and totalitarian ideologies (Køber 2022). While the aspirations of the builders at KLAR might have been sparked by a similar hope for a “century of freedom,” the meanings they ascribed to the notion of freedom were, as I will show in subsequent chapters, very different from the freedom pursued by Denmark’s new prime minister and government.
As in the examples above, the newly elected government often used the notion of freedom to stress the need for greater focus on the rights, needs and duties of individual citizens, arguing that individual autonomy had increasingly been suppressed in Denmark by the impact of years of social democratic rule in shaping the Danish welfare state. Representatives from the government often repeated that this legacy had resulted in the gradual suppression of a “free and open public debate” by a cultural elite consisting of what some termed smagsdommere (arbiters of taste), or a “tyranny of experts,” as the prime minister referred to them (Fogh Rasmussen 2002). A key message in political programs promoted by the center-right government was that if people were freed from this so-called cultural elite and from “systems” more generally, it would lead to greater individual freedom and possibilities. In their initial reform program from 2002 entitled Velfærd og Valgfrighed (Welfare and Freedom of Choice), the government underlined that they wanted to “strengthen respect for individuals,” further elaborating, “With freedom of choice, individuals gain greater influence over their lives” (Køber 2022: 43). In the new government’s view, the general election in 2001 thus marked the beginning of a new political era in Denmark, where individual citizens should be granted greater freedom to determine their own lives.
As such, the new government’s initial rhetoric called for extensive and drastic change. In practice, however, the reforms pursued by the government largely followed a path that could be traced back to the 1980s when Denmark, like many Western European countries and North American Countries, witnessed the rise of neoliberalism (see Petersen, Petersen and Christiansen 2014; Køber 2022). Meanwhile, it was evident from the start that the development of neoliberalism followed a slightly different trajectory in Denmark than in many other countries; rather than austerity in the form of cuts to and reductions of the state apparatus, neoliberalization in Denmark has in many cases worked through the established welfare state institutions (Bruun, Krøjer and Rytter 2015; Bruun 2018).8 In Denmark, neoliberal policies were thus focused on applying market principles to the state (Petersen et al. 2014) and on breaking down the boundaries between state and market (Køber 2022). These also became guiding tenets for the newly elected government. From 2001 onward, they introduced several market-oriented reforms of various branches of the public sector, ranging from the health care sector to housing and labor market policies (ibid.). Despite the government’s promise to reform the Danish state, they did so through the continuation, albeit also slight intensification, of an existing process of neoliberalization.
The intensification of neoliberalism was partly guided by economic considerations, partly by a desire to change the general conversation about the trajectory of the Danish welfare state and a goal of redefining the core idea of velfærd (welfare) in Denmark. As ethnographies from Scandinavia have continuously underlined, welfare, or more specifically the welfare state, is not only a bureaucratic project but also an ideological construct.9 As such, it is also “a building site of social relations and values,” such as egalitarianism and community (Jöncke 2011: 49). It was values such as these that were the focus of discussions during the campaign leading up to the general election in 2001 and in the years that followed (ibid.). Representatives from the nationalist and right-wing populist Danish People’s Party became frontrunners in this struggle over values. Launched in 1995, the Danish People’s Party quickly doubled their number of seats in parliament during the first elections they took part in, becoming the third largest party at the 2001 election. Already in the late 1990s, the party’s members became known for their xenophobic rhetoric, placing them at the forefront of a political struggle against immigration (Køber 2022). For many Danes, particularly academics, the emergence of an anti-immigrant discourse came as a surprise—especially because migration became a hot topic in Danish politics at a time when the economy was performing well and unemployment was low, as was the rate of immigration compared to Denmark’s neighboring countries (Skidmore-Hess 2003). Nonetheless, the “Muslim question”—the question of whether or not Scandinavia, and thus also Denmark, had been too welcoming to Muslim immigrants—received increasing public attention from 2001 onward in Denmark as in many other countries (Henkel 2012). During this period, anti-immigration discourse became mainstream and routine across nearly the entire political spectrum in Denmark, turning the positive image of Denmark as a country shaped by anti-authoritarianism and inclusive social interaction into a more negative perception of a country known for rampant xenophobia and Islamophobia (Hervik 2011).10 When freedom was evoked in these discussions, particularly by representatives from the Danish People’s Party, it focused on (Danish) people’s right to reject immigration policies that, in their view, had come to challenge core cultural values in Denmark (Køber 2022).
Although the center-right government was only formally in power until 2011 (before returning to government in a new formation in 2015–19), their policies have had a lasting impact on the Danish welfare state (ibid.). It was against the backdrop of this changing political landscape, initially set in motion by the election of a new government in 2001, that the builders at KLAR launched and ran their craft co-op. During this period, the craft co-op increasingly became a platform upon which the builders sought to navigate the seemingly contradictory spaces and subject positions shaped by the growing neoliberalization and intensifying anti-immigrant discourse that came to shape Danish society from 2001 onward. It was thus the changing formations of power produced by these economic and discursive changes that created “a sense of unease, or separation” (Li 2019: 37) among the builders at KLAR. I explore this sense of unease further throughout this book as I examine how the builders at KLAR used cooperative craftwork to understand, intervene in, and position themselves in relation to the shifting economic and political formations in Denmark since 2001. Cooperative craftwork in this regard became the builders’ toolkit for social critique and transformative action as they sought to change societal orders and, moreover, to realize their idea of a craft co-op as a “story of freedom.”
The builders’ critique was not only targeted at issues related to craftwork or cooperativism, but also leveled at housing and labor market policies and the anti-immigration discourse introduced by the center-right government; nonetheless, this critique always emerged from the contradictions, ambiguities, and inequities that the builders faced as part of their daily engagement with craftwork.
Every morning from Monday to Friday at around 6 a.m., lights and computers are turned on at KLAR and the large coffee pots brew their first batch. Henning and Erik are always first to arrive. Shortly after, other builders emerge from the silence of the city. Most travel by bike, a few by car. First things first: coffee. Many prefer it black, while some add a splash of dairy or oat milk. After having gulped down a cup or two, the builders pack screwdrivers, ladders, and apprentices into company cars, ready to depart for construction sites around the city of Copenhagen.
While retrofitting Copenhagen’s housing stock was a primary task in the early days of KLAR, the builders’ workload during 2019 comprised a wide range of projects. Many of these projects were unique, such as the construction of wooden saunas (see Figure 0.2) or the creation of acoustic panels from refurbished materials, which required a great deal of intricate woodwork. Other projects were more standardized, including the replacement of windows in an entire residential building or loft conversions. In this book, I refer to these diverse projects as construction projects; however, I refer to the builders’ work as craftwork and not construction work in acknowledgment of the great value that the builders ascribed to the unique, handcrafted projects they often worked on.11
Figure 0.2. Wooden sauna. Photo by Brian Berg.
The members of KLAR have a mutual commitment to the co-op’s various projects and share a dedication to craftwork as a livelihood. One apprentice, Liv, was particularly outspoken on this matter. Liv had initially chosen a different educational path, but after struggling to find a job upon finishing her studies, she reconsidered her educational choices. “I was quite sure that I had to do something else. I had to figure out what it was, but it didn’t take long to find out,” she explained during an interview. “I knew that I had to do something with craft, something with wood, because it comes naturally to me.” Liv had thus decided to embark on an apprenticeship in the skilled trades. She had soon come to value her daily engagement with craftwork immensely; in her own words, this work had given her a strong belief in herself as “a creator.” She had been particularly inspired by what she described as the “curiosity of craftwork”: “I think that’s important, that curiosity, the willingness to try new things, and the courage to say, ‘Of course we can do it.’ Because that’s what we need to do, and that’s how I feel too.” Like Liv, many of the other builders considered this ability to experiment key to craftwork. During my fieldwork, I realized that they sought to nurture this ability through the material engagements and practical logics of craftwork as they learned the skills of carefully repairing, refining, recalibrating, remodeling, or simply renewing. In their view, society no longer valued such skills, and craftwork in general suffered from misrecognition. A common goal among the builders was to reverse this development.
A spate of recent studies has revealed that craftwork is currently undergoing a renaissance across European and North American contexts, underscoring that this revitalization has been underway since the 1990s (Marchand 2021) as craft practices have since emerged as sources of new cultural and social value (Paxson 2013). This was also the case among the builders at KLAR, who, like other modern craftspeople, had seemingly come to consider craftwork as not only a practice, but also a social ideology (Marchand 2021). Ideology in the sense that the builders’ material and bodily engagement with craftwork, and the contradictions, ambiguities and inequities they faced as part of this work, provided an entry point for ordering their individual and collective conceptions of the world and the large-scale power structures that encompass these conceptions (Haugbolle 2018).
Why had the people working at KLAR decided to dedicate their professional lives to craftwork? And how did they come to associate craftwork with certain virtues and politics? These were some of the questions that emerged during my fieldwork as I tried to understand why the KLAR builders had turned specifically to craftwork and the meanings they had come to associate with this work. Throughout the book, I answer these questions as I unfold my interlocutors’ dedication to craftwork and their aspirations of redefining the significance of this work in contemporary Denmark. To gain a more comprehensive understanding of these answers, I draw on existing scholarship on craftwork.12 This work allows me to zero in on the particularities of craft practices, and more precisely, on the builders’ efforts to learn how to experiment practically with different solutions, invoking “the curiosity of craftwork” that seemingly guided these efforts. In this book, I refer to this ability as tinkering.13
The notion of tinkering has a somewhat composite scholarly trajectory.14 It has rarely been associated with craft, as it is typically understood as an unskilled attempt “to meddle” in an unhelpful manner—which is not necessarily equivalent to craftwork.15 Meanwhile, in recent years, the notion has increasingly been used in studies from the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS), particularly in research focusing on technological advancements.16 As tinkering has turned into a scholarly concept, its meaning has been refined. Tinkering has thus generally come to be perceived as a form of focused and purposeful “attentive experimentation” in the field of STS.17 Overall, I draw on this understanding of tinkering to grasp the builders’ engagement with a form of focused and purposeful “attentive experimentation” under contingent circumstances.18 The notion thereby allows me to capture how the builders were guided by an aspiration of collectively and practically experimenting with various projects and interventions rather than imagining radically alternative ways of working and living.
With their strong belief in the benefits of tinkering, the builders prided themselves on being highly adept at a type of agile action that bore a striking resemblance to what has previously been referred to as the ability to “muddle through” (Scott 1998), “débrouillardise” (Reed-Danahay 1993) and, above all, the notion of “bricolage” (Lévi-Strauss 1978).19 Like tinkering, these notions share an interest in the skill of using whatever is at hand to create something new. Yet, importantly, they also stress that such acts of “making do” can be applied as a kind of “social manipulation” and as “modes for the creation of new cultural meaning.”20 The aim of creating new cultural meaning was reflected in the builders’ aspiration to tinker. They were generally guided by a strong “willingness to try new things,” as Liv stated, and by a belief that experimentation always yields something new in a material, political, and social sense. When I use the term tinkering in this book, I integrate attention to craftwork’s material and bodily engagements with this focus on social and political manipulation. I do so to ensure that tinkering is not reduced to a material or technical operation; rather, tinkering emerges as simultaneously a material, social, and political activity, as I also refer to with the notion of tinkering together. By homing in on this translatability of tinkering throughout the book, I underscore its capacity to intervene in and thus transform material, social, and political contexts.
Overall, the concepts outlined above emphasize that social manipulation or new cultural meaning might arise from agile actions such as tinkering. Meanwhile, they do not necessarily focus on how such modes of action might also comprise a form of self-transformation.21 However, as scholars working with craft argue, people engaged with transforming the material world also transform themselves in the process, making work and subjectivity mutually constitutive (Kondo 1990; Paxson 2013). Much can be gained from studying the “self-crafting that accompanies artisanal production,” as described by Michael Herzfeld (2004) in his ethnography of apprenticeship in Cretan artisans’ workshops (Herzfeld 2004: 25). By attending to the politics of the body in craftwork, Herzfeld shows how bodies and selves are shaped in workshops, revealing the “encompassing hierarchies of cultural value that [apprentice and master] reproduce through the practices of apprenticeship” (ibid.: 207). In Chapter 2, I return to the question of how this “self-crafting” unfolds among the builders at KLAR as I show that, while busy tinkering with their material and political surroundings at construction sites, the builders were also engaged in more reflexive processes of tinkering with themselves.
Hence, while tinkering among the builders was an ability that inherently sprang from their material and bodily engagement with craftwork, my goal with this book is to show how the builders subsequently transposed this ability to other domains and practices as they sought to turn tinkering into a collective mode of action in their attempt to spark change within Danish society. The kinds of political agency and agentive strategies adopted by the builders were thus elaborations and translations of their shared engagement with craft practices.22 In other words, craftwork and the associated ability of tinkering became the means through which the builders collectively attempted to carve out space to realize their occasionally divergent perceptions of freedom within the context of society’s shifting economic and political formations. In this regard, the book also moves beyond a focus on how global politics shape contemporary craft practices—a concern often raised in scholarship on craft (see Herzfeld 2004; Jones 2011; Marchand 2021)—to also explore how new forms of local politics might emerge from the persistent curiosity and search for novelty that characterizes the craftwork pursued by people like the builders working at KLAR. It was also this specific form of local politics that had shaped the builders’ efforts to fulfill their aspirations toward cooperative action and thus their participation in reinventing cooperativism in Denmark.
Builders and apprentices applying for jobs at KLAR were typically looking for an opportunity to take part in the numerous creative projects that the co-op had taken on. Yet all newcomers were also aware that KLAR was organized as a cooperative. For some of the builders, this organizational form was just as important as the co-op’s persistent focus on “good craftwork” and environmentally friendly ways of building. Several of the younger builders were outspoken about their interest in cooperativism and more broadly in finding new ways of working and living. This was particularly the case for Astrid, who had joined the co-op as an apprentice in the mid-2010s. During her twenties, she had traveled extensively to different parts of the world. During her travels, she visited co-ops and similar associations, talking to people who, for various reasons, had decided to pursue a professional life within these organizations. These conversations had stoked her interest in cooperativism.
The builders working at KLAR were not alone in their belief in and commitment to the cooperative business model. By the time I began my fieldwork in 2019, the idea of cooperativism was flourishing in Denmark.23 That is not to say that it had ever completely vanished, but it seemed to be receiving renewed attention and significance. In conference rooms and halls across Denmark, various private and public actors congregated to share practical experiences regarding how to launch a co-op. Representatives from Kooperationen (The Danish Cooperative Employers’ Organization) and similar organizations traveled the country holding assemblies that provided information on contemporary cooperative activities and organized courses encouraging people to launch new or reorganize existing enterprises as co-ops. A think tank called Demokratisk Erhverv (The Danish Research Institute for Democratic Businesses) was established by a group of professional advocates for cooperativism. National and local government advisory boards were launched. And people working in cooperatives, including Erik and the other builders at KLAR, organized events for people interested in cooperativism.
One of these events took place one afternoon in the early summer of 2019. After a long day working at various construction sites, the builders from KLAR were among those gathered in a recently retrofitted factory hall for the launch of a new Copenhagen-based network of co-ops. When I arrived at the launch, many of the builders, still dressed in workwear and thus proudly showcasing the company logo on their backs, were already enjoying a draft beer or a glass of cava provided by a Spanish co-op to quench their thirst after a long day of work. The doors of the hall were open, and attendees had gathered outside in smaller groups, basking in the sun. Inside, the walls were decorated with green posters and banners displaying the name of the new network. The aim of the network was to bring together people with an interest in cooperativism to share experiences and knowledge and thereby support the ongoing growth of co-ops in the Copenhagen area. The network’s vision was expressed more clearly on green postcards that were strewn around the hall, stating that the new network was founded on “sharing practices and ideas opposed to the competitive mentality of capitalism.”
Almost one hundred people had gathered in the old factory hall and the space was buzzing with conversation. However, the room fell silent when a representative from the network clinked two glass bottles together and announced that they had invited a few people to speak at the event. The first speaker was the president of Kooperationen. She began her speech by saluting the network’s founders, underlining that this new initiative filled her with both hope and pride. “Cooperative organization is the answer to many of the challenges we have to confront nowadays,” she stated, adding that “It’s been a good solution for a long time, but now our time has come, especially with the climate crisis and growing inequality.” Her speech was met with a wave of applause that rippled through the audience. Next up was one of the founders of a long-established co-op in Copenhagen. He humorously recounted the haphazard events and decisions that had resulted in the launch of this particular co-op. While he was supportive of the newly established network, he also warned the participants: “It’s not the first time we try this out. There were numerous co-ops in the city back when I grew up. So, what went wrong?” He continued by explaining, “It’s a special history and tradition that we must remember now as we seek to revive this corporate form.”
As in this case, the historical trajectory of cooperativism was often emphasized during the various briefings, networking events, and workshops on cooperativism that I attended during my fieldwork. This trajectory was also frequently repeated in books and reports published during this period by public intellectuals and cooperative practitioners, who, like the president of Kooperationen, were busy promoting cooperativism as a solution to a wide range of societal challenges.24 These historical accounts often emphasize the “special history and tradition” of cooperativism in Denmark, as the second speaker at the event put it, by recounting how it all started. They typically begin by describing the emergence of the first Danish co-op—a consumers’ food co-op (brugsforening)—which was launched in 1866 in Thisted, a small town on the North Jutlandic Island. This co-op was founded by Hans Christian Sonne (1817–80), a pastor who had moved to Thisted only a few years earlier. During a visit to Copenhagen, he had heard about the British cooperative movement, which he thought could provide a potential solution to poor living conditions among the emerging Danish working class (Jensen 2016). The rise of cooperativism in Denmark is therefore often associated with the formulation of the cooperative principles developed by the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers in Rochdale, close to Manchester, England in 1844.25 Subsequently, popular historical accounts often go on to describe how cooperativism spread across Denmark in the latter part of the nineteenth century as it gained traction among farmers, who in 1882 joined forces and established the first dairy co-ops around Hjedding, a small village on the west coast of the Jutland peninsula. The peasants translated the cooperative principles into the now widely known mantra hoveder over høveder (heads not hooves), indicating that each cooperative member, regardless of production size (number of cattle), had one vote at general meetings. From the 1880s, dairy co-ops spread across Denmark at unprecedented speed. Thirty years later, they numbered approximately thirteen thousand. One cooperative practitioner described the development during these years as follows: “A wave has risen by the North Sea and it will not stop but flood the whole country” (Niels Petersen in Mordhorst 2005: 60).
Contemporary accounts tracing the history of cooperativism in Denmark often primarily focus on this golden age of cooperativism, as this brief overview demonstrates. In these accounts, the rise of co-ops at the end of the nineteenth century is often presented as the epitome of “a distinct Danish economic-democratic tradition” that also paved the way for the formation of modern Denmark, invoking the idea of Denmark as a “nation of cooperators” (Claus 2020). Similarly, policy reports present cooperativism as a “unique Danish innovation” or a “Danish tradition,” which, if mobilized, could enable the Danish nation to surmount pressing challenges in the global economy.26 Cooperativism, it seems, is not only portrayed as a treasured historical past, but also promoted as a stable cultural resource and tradition inherent to Danish national identity. In this sense, the builders and other contemporary cooperative practitioners in Denmark, such as those attending the event described above, seemingly position themselves as “bearers” of the Danish cooperative tradition.
The notion of tradition is debated in scholarship on both craft and cooperativism, although it has occupied a more prominent role in recent studies of craft practices.27 As noted here, traditions are inherently deceptive (Jones 2011). Far from fixed, they are “dynamic and always situated at the confluence of continuity and change” (Marchand 2009: 25). Meanwhile, stressing the dynamic construction of traditions and the fact that they are always “invented” (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983) also raises the question of “who does the inventing” (Ulin 1995: 520). In this regard, traditions can serve as means of exclusion in certain contexts, with those considered “bearers of tradition” sometimes associated with an incurable “backwardness” (Herzfeld 2004). In other contexts, however, those identified as “bearers of tradition” might also be the ones constructing the historical trajectory of a so-called tradition (Terrio 2000). Interestingly, the builders at KLAR seemed to adeptly navigate these two seemingly contradictory positions, occasionally taking advantage of the role and authenticity ascribed to them as “bearers of the cooperative tradition,” while, in other situations, selectively reconstructing this tradition. I explore this duality in Chapter 1, where I describe how the founding members’ personal and political trajectories shaped KLAR from the beginning.
Taking into account the invented and thus selective nature of traditions further begs the question of how selectivity plays out in popular accounts of cooperativism’s historical trajectory in Denmark and the grand narratives of Denmark as a nation of cooperators that are recounted above. Indeed, these accounts leave out some important details regarding the history of cooperativism in Denmark. First, they do not disclose that the historical rise of cooperativism in Denmark in many ways resembles the trajectory in other European countries, such as the UK, Germany, and France, which allows them to portray Denmark as the “home country of cooperativism.”28 Second, they do not emphasize that prominent leaders in the workers’ movement in Denmark were initially rather skeptical about the idea of cooperativism.29 Partly due to internal disagreements within the workers’ movement, the mostly city-based worker co-ops started by workers and the rural producer co-ops started by peasants never really joined forces (Als, Clausen and Oksen 1979), which is a key difference when comparing the historical rise of cooperativism in Denmark to developments in the other European countries mentioned above. Third, the accounts also omit the period that followed the golden age of cooperativism in Denmark and thus the story of the decline that took place during the 1970s and 1980s, as cooperative organizations faced a number of challenges related to increasing industrialization, declining trade union support and a growing expectation that they too should find ways to thrive “on market terms” (Grelle 2012). These challenges had led to the almost complete disappearance of co-ops from the Danish socioeconomic and political landscape by the turn of the twenty-first century. Overall, the omission of these details disguises the ambiguous relations that cooperative organizations and associations have had with other significant institutions in Danish society, such as the workers’ movement and the state. It also prevents us from recognizing the different configurations of and shifting meanings ascribed to cooperativism throughout history.
With this changing significance in mind, I was initially interested in exploring the meaning ascribed to cooperativism in Denmark by the people who are currently trying to reinvigorate this historical phenomenon. Surveying the contemporary landscape of co-ops in Denmark, KLAR, which was often highlighted as something of a vanguard by members of other co-ops, seemed like an apt site for an ethnographic investigation of this question and, moreover, for understanding the extent to which the resurgence of cooperativism in Denmark parallels developments in other countries, where cooperative initiatives have similarly re-emerged.
It is not only among the builders at KLAR or elsewhere in Denmark one finds a growing interest in co-ops and similar associations, with various scholars having shown that this is also the case beyond the Danish context (e.g., Ferry 2002; Stephen 2005; Bryer 2010; Vargas-Cetina 2005, 2011; Rakopoulos 2015b, 2018; Narotzky and Homs 2019; Plender 2021; Snikersproge 2021). These scholars have highlighted that what is commonly defined as the “solidarity economy movement” is experiencing a resurgence as people in different national and continental contexts search for “new frontiers between the economy and politics” in times of capitalist crisis (Laville 2010). Many of the builders working at KLAR took a sympathetic view regarding a diverse range of cooperative projects and programs around the world and had come to consider their own endeavor as part of a global movement. Several had visited the well-established Mondragon co-ops in the Basque region, while others had traveled to places such as Greece and Argentina to seek out cooperative organizations and similar associations, hoping to learn from these emerging initiatives.
Despite my interlocutors’ focus on the similarities between their own co-op and the cooperative endeavors of people in other contexts and countries, important differences should be noted. These differences become evident if we take a quick glance at the historical development of cooperativism in Denmark since the turn of the twenty-first century. Many of the market-oriented reforms introduced by the center-right government from 2001 onward were particularly targeted at the labor market. Overall, these reforms reinforced ideas of flexibility and individual responsibility in the Danish labor market, causing the emergence of various forms of precarity (Hirslund et al. 2020). More precisely, the reforms marked a shift from “welfare” to “workfare,” which, in brief, implied a “work first” strategy, requiring individuals to participate in various job-training activities if they are to receive unemployment benefits (Rasmussen, Hansen and Juul 2020). This shift also came to shape the re-emergence of co-ops and similar associations at the turn of the century, with many of the co-ops founded during these years assuming the task of job creation in one way or another. By engaging with this task, these organizations also implicitly redefined the relationship between cooperativism and the state in Denmark, positioning themselves in closer proximity to the state than had historically been the case.30 During my fieldwork, no one seemed to question this proximity. Indeed, many of the builders working at KLAR or other cooperative practitioners whom I met appeared to consider the Danish state an influential actor supporting their efforts to combat “contemporary forms of capitalism,” as they often put it, for instance stressing the importance of introducing a legal framework for co-ops.31
The proximity between cooperativism and the state is an important vantage point when comparing the former’s current resurgence in Denmark with the emergence of a growing number of co-ops and similar associations in other countries. In Italy, for instance, co-ops are often the result of top-down planning rather than grassroots initiatives or experiences (Rakopoulos 2018). The opposite is true elsewhere, such as the establishment of organic food co-ops in Catalonia, where participants seemingly sought independence from the market and the state (Narotzky and Homs 2019). Neither of these agendas seem to fit the Danish case. Here, the resurgence of cooperativism has been driven by a wide array of local actors, who often directly engage with both state and market. Current co-op initiatives in Denmark thus appear to distinguish themselves from similar activities in other regional contexts insofar as they were neither initiated by the state nor positioned outside or in opposition to the state or the market. Instead, as I suggest in this book, they were shaped by an ambition of finding ways to actively engage with the ongoing transformation of the Danish welfare state and a capitalist market economy. Importantly, however, this did not prevent people engaged with these initiatives, such as the builders at KLAR, from envisioning their cooperative aspirations and actions as an emancipatory endeavor.
To address the ostensibly liberating dimensions of the cooperativism pursued by my interlocutors, I move beyond analytics that question the autonomy of cooperative practices or simply denounce them. These analytics have come to dominate contemporary studies due to their restricted ethnographic focus on first the Global South and East, and subsequently on Southern Europe and South America.32 Through ethnographic studies in these contexts, scholars have primarily sought to unravel how people have turned to cooperativism in order to adapt to the economic and political exigencies of a global political economy, such as the austerity climates that arose in these places in the aftermath of socioeconomic and political crises in the first decade of the twentieth century (e.g., Rakopoulos 2015a; Narotzky and Homs 2019; Plender 2021). Such analytics center on how people struggle to secure a livelihood in the aftermath of crisis; thus, they focus on how various forces (whether external or internal) regulate or constrain social action. Put differently, they have tended to examine actors’ engagement with cooperativism or related activities through an “adaptionist model” of social action (Yanagisako 2002). However, analytics of austerity and adaptation are not necessarily the best way to understand the social lives of agentive subjects, such as Erik, Henning, Liv, Astrid, and the other builders working at KLAR, as well as other contemporary practitioners of and advocates for cooperativism in Denmark, who have come to pursue cooperativism as “a story of freedom.”
To take questions of creativity and ingenuity in social action seriously, we must find ways to grasp how cooperativism is envisioned and enacted as what I term an economy of freedom in Chapter 1. This approach allows me to examine the multifaceted cultural, affective, ethical, and political dispositions that guide the builders at KLAR and other cooperative practitioners and advocates. Rather than try to pigeonhole cooperativism as a specific economic or organizational form, I approach these organizations as life- and world-making projects through which people seek to create a good life for themselves and others.
However, engaging collectively in such world-making projects is not an easy task, as my ongoing conversations with Astrid often reminded me. Although Astrid had become committed to cooperativism over the years, she still harbored some misgivings. “The co-op has such great potentials, and there are so many great things about the way it is organized. But there is also something dangerous about it,” she explained. “People really feel responsible. You get involved personally. You truly begin to care about people. But this also entails what I consider one of the pitfalls of the project: that you might take part in your own exploitation.”
Like Astrid, most of the builders considered their working lives at KLAR to be both fulfilling and disappointing. During more intimate conversations, some would question the extent to which KLAR succeeded in fulfilling the cooperative ethos, or whether they simply “took part in their own exploitation,” as Astrid put it. For builders like Astrid, the political impact of their work was a vital yet dubious issue. This was particularly the case in relation to what Astrid and other builders often described as the current development of “capitalism.” In various conversations at construction sites and assemblies, a builder would evoke capitalism when debating broader global challenges related to environmental destruction, excess industrial production, and growing social inequality. Yet the builders also found it difficult to articulate exactly what they meant by “capitalism.” When I asked them to explain what capitalism meant to them, many responded by asking me for a definition, underlining that, as a researcher, I should be more capable of explaining what capitalism is. In seeking to change political and economic conditions, which the builders often referred to as “capitalism,” they constantly negotiated the complex question of whether and where something “outside” of these political and economic conditions might exist, in Denmark and beyond. As such, many had complicated feelings about their own endeavors and often (some more than others) expressed not only dedication but also confusion, disappointment, and indifference.
Ambiguity is not only a defining element of how the builders at KLAR engaged with cooperativism; it has haunted studies of cooperativism in the social sciences ever since the emergence of the first such organization. Karl Marx was one of the first scholars to stress this ambiguity, arguing that co-ops represent “the first sprouts of the new,” yet are simultaneously bound to reproduce “the shortcomings of the prevailing system” as “workers in association become their own capitalists” (Marx, Capital III, in Bottomore 1991: 112). Marcel Mauss, himself an enthusiastic practitioner of cooperativism, was less skeptical than Marx. He argued that “the union and the cooperative society are the foundations of the future society generated within capitalist structure,” and thus, contrary to Marx, sincerely believed in these organizations as a form of “practical socialism” (Mauss in Nash and Hopkins 1976). The divergent positions espoused by Marx and Mauss have continued to shape ethnographic studies of co-ops and similar associations. While, initially, the majority of such studies subscribed to Mauss’s optimistic belief in co-ops, subsequent studies took a more critical approach as they sought to nuance scholarly representations of co-ops by showing that even though these organizations may present themselves as egalitarian, they may in fact reproduce capitalist exploitation.33 Contemporary ethnographies have sought to challenge both approaches by examining how social relations “outside” the cooperative framework may also threaten the ethos of cooperativism, thus showing how external social forces might also be the source of ambiguity in cooperativism.34
By homing in on the ambiguity of cooperativism, this book likewise moves beyond the binary approach of either celebrating or criticizing cooperative organizations (Rakopoulos 2020). However, rather than suggesting that internal divisions are defined by what happens “outside” the cooperative framework (Rakopoulos 2018), I examine how multiple social formations and bifurcations are continuously initiated and negotiated through the mundane messiness that shapes social life in a co-op, as in any other organization. To shed light on these multiple social formations and bifurcations, I trace the builders’ complex affective investments in cooperativism, as exemplified by Astrid, and the dynamic and contested everyday meanings of cooperativism, craftwork, democracy, power, and value that they engender. I thus describe both the political and social affinities that bring KLAR’s socially heterogeneous workforce together and the frictions that pull it apart as the co-op seeks to build new forms of solidarity. Overall, I argue, this shows that cooperativism must be approached as an elusive project that demands continuous reinvention, rather than an ostensibly fixed organizational form or an all-or-nothing proposition.35 As I will show, tinkering—that is, a form of focused and purposeful “attentive experimentation”—is one way to overcome this elusiveness, which, to some extent, seemed only to intensify as a result of KLAR’s position as a contemporary craft co-op operating in the construction industry.
Running a craft co-op in a volatile construction industry has not always been easy, explained Erik and Frode, another founding member; the first years were arduous. To secure a solid financial foundation for the co-op, the eight founding members worked every waking hour. Gradually, the project steadied as they cultivated a customer base and learned to navigate the delicate collaborations that characterize contemporary construction work. Meanwhile, their growing business soon faced a new challenge: recruitment. In the mid-2000s, finding craftworkers who wanted to work in a co-op based on principles such as equal pay turned out to be a challenge. Through job advertisements in various magazines, they tried to convince prospective applicants of the advantages and possibilities of working in a co-op. With time, this recruitment strategy proved successful: immediately prior to the financial crisis in 2008, the co-op’s workforce had increased to more than fifty people. However, their prospects dried up overnight as the construction industry felt the first shockwaves of the crisis. To avoid downsizing, the builders collectively decided to reduce their wages; nobody should be laid off in these troubled times.
By 2019, KLAR had moved beyond these challenges. While the co-op’s workforce had waxed and waned a few times during the intervening years, it had stabilized at around seventy members in 2019—sixty men and ten women aged between sixteen and sixty; a size that many members considered appropriate for an urban craft co-op. Six members worked as construction supervisors; two were in charge of accounts and human resources; and the rest (including thirteen apprentices) specialized in different trades including carpentry, woodwork, welding, electrical work, and bricklaying.
KLAR’s commitment to equal salaries and the cooperative organizational form set it apart from the rest of the Danish construction industry, which, as in other countries, is generally marked by precarity and vulnerability to the global economy’s cycle of boom and bust. There tends to be a high turnover rate among those working in the industry, as they move between temporary jobs and different contractors for different projects.36 Most builders work in fixed crews or at smaller companies (less than ten employees) and receive piece-rate remuneration according to the number of units (e.g., drywall panels) they install.
Moreover, recent decades have seen a change in working conditions in the Danish construction industry due to an influx of foreign labor, primarily from Eastern European countries that have become members of the EU. Trade unions in Denmark have faced substantial problems in maintaining the principle of equal treatment for domestic and migrant workers and thus upholding labor market standards, with the treatment of some migrant workers falling far below the purported minimum standards (Arnholtz and Eldring 2015). This development is generally referred to as “social dumping” and has posed great challenges to the organization of the Danish labor market, or what is known as Den Danske Model (the Danish Model) or the “flexicurity model.”37 This model is based on collective agreements between employers’ organizations and trade unions that cover not only minimum wage levels but also a range of other additional payments and rights and differs from labor markets in most European countries, which are heavily regulated through national legislation. As few migrant workers belong to a trade union and many do not participate in local bargaining processes, Danish trade unions have generally come to see migrant workers as a threat to the traditional active participation of workers in determining wages and working conditions (Arnholtz and Eldring 2015). Overall, the consequences of the increase in migrant workers have become a central theme in any debate concerning the construction industry in Denmark, also among researchers (Arnholtz, Krause-Jensen and Juul 2015).
At KLAR, a number of builders were employed who faced certain challenges due to a migrant or other form of marginalized background. For instance Yusuf, a young builder who had worked at KLAR for a number of years, had as a teenager come to Denmark from Iraq. When he first arrived in Denmark, Yusuf took part in a series of job-training programs for a few years but continued to struggle with the Danish language. By chance, someone noticed his craft skills and gave Erik a call. Like Yusuf, a number of the builders at KLAR had previously struggled to find permanent full-time employment and had thus experienced life at the margins of the Danish labor market. Some of them had been excluded because of illness, disability, or personal circumstances that had at times hindered their ability to maintain a full-time job. At KLAR, the builders continuously worked to secure jobs for colleagues like Yusuf by accommodating individual needs and offering special terms and flexible hours.
Issues related to migrant workers like Yusuf, as well as broader structural constraints and their impact on working conditions, have also been a key focus in ethnographic studies of the construction industry in various countries. Considering the empirical context of these studies, this might seem unsurprising: ethnographic studies of construction work have tended to focus on large firms with complex organizational structures, on informal employment and the exploitation of migrant workers, or on marginalized workers in the Global South.38 With its strong focus on specialization and strict division of labor between architecture and construction, for instance, construction work (and workers) easily lends itself to analyses of power imbalances and class struggles. Yet, recent ethnographic work suggests we should pay critical attention to such divisions, particularly those between different professional groups (Dharia 2022).
For a sizable number of the builders at KLAR, working with craftwork in the Danish construction industry was a carefully considered decision that in a few cases had meant leaving behind a university education. These builders seemed closer to what Trevor Marchand (2021) refers to as “vocational migrants” in his study of a British Building Crafts College; that is, people who make “a deliberate decision to pursue carpentry as a practice to which they would dedicate their whole person—heart, mind, and body” (Marchand 2021: 16). Throughout my fieldwork, it became increasingly important for me to understand how and why these builders had come to associate the repetition and industriousness of construction work with certain virtues and, furthermore, how they perceived this work as a path to solving social, political, and environmental challenges.
To explore these questions, I had to consider the builders as sources of knowledge and as theorists (and not simply practitioners) in their own right by engaging with them as “coanalysts, cointerpreters, and cotheorists of economy and society, and even as cocritics of capitalism” (Miyazaki 2013: 6). Thus, this book demonstrates that builders or construction workers are also “thinking subjects”; that is, subjects “engaged in dialogue with a variety of broader intellectual debates and projects” (ibid.: 9). Reckoning with my interlocutors’ ways of interpreting, knowing, theorizing, and critiquing piqued my interest in understanding how they—while simultaneously also critiquing their own transformative actions—nonetheless continued to muddle through the daily challenges and contradictions of construction work and their cooperative venture. The builders’ engagement with a form of double movement—that is, their simultaneous engagement with and critique of both cooperativism and construction work—emerged as an important line of inquiry.
Since I was interested in examining forms of contemporary cooperativism that extend beyond discursive representations, the bulk of my research focused on the daily life that unfolds in co-ops—more specifically, craft co-ops. Fortunately, Erik had similar ideas when we first met to discuss the possibility of me conducting fieldwork at KLAR over an extended period. As I walked through the co-op’s front door for this first meeting, I was greeted by Erik—a compactly built man with glasses and stubble. “Grab a cup of coffee if you want one,” he offered, pointing toward a large coffee pot on the table in the shared kitchen area. I joined Erik at a small wooden table in an adjacent meeting room and gave him a brief introduction to my project, underscoring that I was keen to center my research on this particular co-op. I quickly sensed that Erik was impatient. He later told me this was deliberate, a tactical move. He was a firm believer in first impressions and quick decisions. Erik thus interrupted my introduction and said that I could do fieldwork at KLAR on the condition that I participate in the co-op’s daily work. The other builders, he assumed, would refuse to participate in my research if I only conducted interviews and observations. I decided to accept Erik’s offer.39
My first official day of work at KLAR was on Monday February 4, 2019. I left home just after 6 a.m. and biked through a dark and empty urban landscape as silence blanketed the city. It was a routine I followed for eight months, accompanying the builders in their daily work at construction sites four or five days a week. On these days, I arrived at the co-op between 6:30 and 7 a.m., changed into workwear, and either drove to a construction site with a crew of builders or walked to the workshop. I followed the builders’ daily schedule and joined them in the trailer during their morning break between 9 and 9:10 a.m., where we had coffee and ate bread and cheese. Lunch was 12–12:30 p.m., when everyone made their own open-faced sandwiches. After work finished at 3 p.m., I drove back to KLAR’s head office with the builders and changed back into my regular clothes.
Overall, I followed the builders’ work on four major construction projects and various smaller projects. To gain a deeper understanding of these projects, I also interviewed some of the people who collaborated with the builders, including architects, subcontractors, representatives from companies manufacturing building materials and research scientists at Danish technical universities. I also read architectural or technical reports, participated in events, and followed media discussions regarding these projects. As a point of comparison for my analysis, I also spent a month conducting research at a “conventional” construction company. Materials generated through all these activities have informed my understanding of the builders’ specific projects and of construction work more broadly, even if they are not directly referenced in the book’s ethnographic accounts.
On some projects, I spent most of my time observing the work, making coffee during breaks, or chatting with builders. On others, I was assigned regular construction tasks. In these situations, I sometimes became so absorbed in the work, I did not pay much attention to the social interactions taking place. I recognized this challenge from other ethnographies about craftwork, such as Heather Paxson’s (2013) account of artisan cheesemakers in the US. Paxson noted that she was prone “to thinking of labor not only as inherently value-creating, but as a value in and of itself” (Paxson 2013: 44). Overall, my fieldwork was therefore focused on the participatory aspects of participant observation. My participation in the daily craftwork generated detailed insights into how the builders organized, performed, and negotiated the various practicalities and techniques.
Member assemblies, meetings, and similar gatherings play a crucial role in cooperativism. Yet scholars have often excluded such activities from their ethnographic accounts of co-ops and similar associations (an issue I return to in Chapter 4). During my fieldwork, it became clear that the builders’ vivid engagement in the various intellectual discussions during joint activities were key to understanding their ongoing engagement in and negotiation of cooperativism. These activities ranged from a monthly member assembly, meetings in a “discussion group” (which at times resembled a focus group), seminars with external speakers, excursions to completed construction projects, voluntary workdays, informal social gatherings in the workshop, various parties and celebrations, and a yearly four-day company trip to a destination in Southern Europe. During these events, the builders discussed a wide range of topics: from the co-op’s daily operations to matters related to construction, contemporary political issues (e.g., retirement age) and climate change. It was not unusual for someone to reference a Marxist doctrine or another seminal sociological work during such discussions. Astrid occasionally asked for my opinion about books she had come across, wanting to know, for instance, whether I had read Hardt and Negri’s Empire. As such, the ostensible differences between myself, as an anthropologist, and the builders were continuously negotiated. This also had practical implications. For instance, a few of the builders asked if they could listen to recordings of their interviews, as if we in some sense were both researchers. In these situations, it was clear that the contrast between the “we” with which the anthropologist identifies and the “they” of the research subjects is an outcome of, rather than a starting point for, doing anthropology (Candea 2011a).
Furthermore, conducting interviews brought me closer to understanding the builders’ many reflections regarding their engagement with craftwork and cooperativism as I got a chance to talk one-to-one with individual builders. A few months into my fieldwork, I began interviewing some of KLAR’s founding members (Henning, Erik and Frode) before interviewing some of the builders whom I had worked with for extensive periods (Astrid and Liv among many others). I sensed that some of the builders would not feel comfortable participating in interviews, and I thus approached people in a way that allowed them to easily turn down my request, which a few did. The majority of my interviews resembled life story interviews (Atkinson 1998), with a focus on the builders’ educational and professional choices. I interviewed twenty builders individually, conducting two or more interviews with key interlocutors: a total of twenty-six recorded interviews.
Most of these interviews took place at the co-op or at various locations in the city. A couple of the builders invited me home for chats, dinner, or birthday celebrations. However, these visits were rare. In Scandinavian ethnographies, scholars typically note that the home is a restricted place.40 As such, although my study falls within the category of “anthropology at home” (Jackson 1987), domestic matters did not receive a great deal of attention during my fieldwork. At the same time, “the home” figured less prominently in many of the accounts than is generally assumed in Scandinavian ethnography. Many of my interlocutors lived in small apartments or rented rooms in Copenhagen, and many of the younger builders moved home quite frequently as they either struggled to find permanent housing or were unsure of whether they wanted to stay in the city. As such, for many of my interlocutors, KLAR was the locus of their social lives. It was somewhere their children, partners, and roommates would occasionally stop by. In other words, the builders also brought “home” to work.
Although the bulk of my fieldwork was conducted at KLAR, I never considered this site to be a bounded entity—neither conceptually nor methodologically. While my fieldwork centered upon this particular co-op, I also interviewed a handful of representatives from other organizations working with cooperativism in Denmark. I furthermore participated in a number of public events on topics related to cooperative practices and visited some of the other novel co-ops that continuously emerged during my study. In these situations, I often conducted informal interviews with key members or representatives. Finally, I collected documents, reports, and newspaper articles that helped shed light on the discursive formations of cooperativism in contemporary Denmark. This additional material helped to highlight how the KLAR builders’ cooperative project simultaneously shaped and was shaped by discourses of cooperativism in Denmark and beyond.
My urge to understand how these discourses were produced or reinterpreted in a co-op’s everyday doings and dealings brought me back to the diverse community of people connected to KLAR, who became the main interlocutors of my study. While I occasionally joined them during activities outside the co-op, I spent most of my time following life inside the organization. While doing so, I realized that the co-op consisted of a community of people characterized by a strong sense of commitment and interdependence, but also varying degrees of intimacy and professional distance. Some of the builders brought family and friends to staff parties and social gatherings, moved in together, or fell in love. Others left work promptly at 3 p.m. and only stuck around for assemblies or social activities if their colleagues invited them personally. As I began crafting my ethnography of the co-op, I continuously searched for ways to represent this heterogeneity, which I achieved through storytelling and a focus on the perspectives of individual builders.
Several recent scholarly contributions have reminded us that ethnography is itself a craft, stressing the importance of the craft of writing when doing ethnography, with some even offering detailed practical guides to ethnographic writing (e.g., Narayan 2012; Wulff 2016; McGranahan 2020). Writing has attracted attention from anthropologists for quite some time. However, this attention to the tools and craft of writing seems once again to be gaining momentum within the discipline. In anthropological debates about contemporary ethnographic writing, scholars have noted a renewed focus on “storytelling”—that is, on the use of stories “to bring material, data, beliefs, and theories to life” (McGranahan 2020: 76). Yet storytelling, even ethnographic writing more generally, is never simply a descriptive exercise. Stories are analytical, due to their inherent analytical qualities.41 They also always include attempts to transform the inchoate and the imponderable encountered during fieldwork into comprehensible prose (Herzfeld 2013).
While writing this book, I found great inspiration in these contemporary discussions of the craft and storytelling of ethnography. Like the builders at KLAR, who considered craftwork a source of creativity, novelty and experimentation, I use ethnography to craft novel depictions of the builders’ various life-making and world-building projects in the midst or on the verge of becoming. The book’s approach to the craft of ethnography can thus be seen as an attempt to imitate the builders’ efforts to tinker. Many of the ethnographic accounts within are presented as stories of tinkering as, in various experimental ways, they each represent the builders’ ongoing engagement with the elusiveness of cooperativism and with craftwork more broadly. In the following chapters, I first present the stories of and from KLAR’s founding members before turning to those of and from subsequent generations of builders. I also tell the stories of the places, projects, and practical work that constitute construction. In all of these accounts, I strive to convey a sense of the experimental nature of the social life that I observed and participated in during my fieldwork at KLAR.
While such storytelling is an important aspect of ethnography, scholarly writing is also about commitment. This commitment entails “a form of accountability and an ethical practice” (McGranahan 2020: 3). In my case, commitment has also revolved around finding ways to handle my interlocutors’ differing perceptions of my research. The builders at KLAR were often puzzled by the length of my fieldwork and about the results such a project should produce. “Your book is probably going to be written in a smarty-pants language so no one can read it,” Henning remarked teasingly. Like Henning, several of the builders were skeptical about knowledge claims and not fond of academics. Thus, some kept their distance from me and occasionally questioned my intentions. During a drunken celebration, one builder repeatedly declared, “She’s a journalist,” revealing a possible mistrust of my intentions. Throughout my fieldwork and writing process, I did my best to navigate KLAR’s diverse social landscape and accommodate individual builders’ acceptance or refusal of my research.
The remainder of the book takes readers to construction sites and to political assemblies and social activities involving the co-op’s members to explore tensions between the promises and pitfalls of craftwork and cooperativism. Like other works on craft and construction, the ethnographic structure of the book largely mirrors that of a typical building process (e.g., Marchand 2009; Dharia 2022). In addition to this, the chapters trace analytically how the builders cultivate the ability to tinker through their daily engagement with craftwork and how they subsequently transpose this ability to other social domains.
At KLAR, assembling a crew was one of the first tasks undertaken when embarking on a new project.42 Hence, the first part of the book introduces the KLAR crew, both the founding members and recent newcomers, focusing on the promises of cooperativism and craftwork that bring them together. More specifically, in Chapter 1, I outline the professional and political trajectories of the co-op’s founding members, showing how ideas of freedom have always played a key role. I expand on the concept of economies of freedom presented in this introductory chapter to further unfold how the founding members came to envision cooperativism as an emancipatory endeavor. This lays the groundwork for one of the book’s key claims: cooperativism must be approached as an elusive project, that demands continuous reinvention, rather than an ostensibly fixed organizational form or an all-or-nothing proposition.
Chapter 2 turns to the newcomers at KLAR and the daily work at construction sites, exploring in greater detail how and why, like other craft actors in contemporary Euro-American societies, the builders came to perceive craftwork as a liberating, creative form of work. One specific group of workers was particularly instrumental in understanding this question: women builders and apprentices. The chapter traces these builders’ attempts to insert themselves into male-dominated trades and explores how they both conformed to and contested prevailing ideas of “good craftwork.” In doing so, the chapter also shows how the builders sought to nurture the ability to tinker through their engagement with craftwork.
Chapter 3 picks up where the regular workday at construction sites ends, exploring the informal social interactions among crew members at social events taking place at KLAR during afternoons, evenings, and weekends. It homes in on the interactions between the founding members and newcomers, and thus on the role of intergenerational relations in the social organization of co-ops. I show how the entrepreneurial legacy of the co-op is renegotiated through encounters between different generations of builders. This reveals how the builders’ commitment to cooperativism simultaneously united and divided them during disagreements concerning how to practically realize the ideas and ideals behind the co-op. These divergent perspectives show that the meaning of cooperativism is not static but changes over time; moreover, they underscore that persistent tinkering is required to fulfill cooperativism’s elusive promises.
In the remaining three chapters, we move from the composition of the KLAR crew and the co-op’s internal workings to an examination of the challenges the builders faced as they sought to realize the promises of craft and cooperative endeavors. I begin by examining the challenges faced by the builders as they grappled with cooperativism’s idea of democratic control at the co-op’s numerous assemblies in Chapter 4. In the view of many of the builders, these assemblies rarely operated as democratic forums, particularly during deliberation processes, due to the complications that arose from the competing norms associated with craftwork and cooperativism. The chapter details how the builders strove to reconcile these norms in an effort to secure the democratic structure of their organization and thus ensure that their craft co-op did not end up as a conventional construction enterprise. I argue that they did so by continuously tinkering with the practical organization and operation of their assemblies.
In Chapter 5, I move back to the construction sites to show how the builders engaged with cooperative craftwork as a source of critical resistance to hegemonic social and political structures. This chapter highlights the builders’ understanding of craftwork as expressed through the idea of kloge hænder (wise hands). By tinkering with the regulatory frameworks of construction, the builders sought to redefine the value and meaning of craftwork to challenge the misrecognition and devaluation that have come to dominate perceptions of craftwork in modern societies.
Finally, in Chapter 6, I examine the completion of construction projects. Analytically, the chapter returns to a concern outlined in this introduction and asks: Can cooperative practitioners act simultaneously within and beyond a capitalist market system? This chapter highlights the ambiguous nature of cooperativism through an exploration of the builders’ evaluation of three selected building projects. I analyze the value that the builders aspired to produce through these construction projects and argue that the builders aspired to tinker with capitalism by trying to act simultaneously within and beyond a capitalist market system. I propose that exploring this double movement allows us to move beyond a binary approach that either celebrates or criticizes cooperatives by revealing cooperative practitioners’ complicated relationships with capitalist practices—practices that they simultaneously refused, ridiculed, and reproduced.
The conclusion, “Taking Politics into One’s Own Hands,” synthesizes the book’s major findings and arguments. It further discusses the historical effects of tinkering as a transformative action and suggests directions for further scholarly inquiries into craftwork, cooperativism, and critical capitalist practices in contemporary societies.