Catholicisme, Économie Identitaire et Affinités Électives: Les Coopératives Basques Comme Groupements Volontaires Utopiques

Abstract

Basque cooperatives, as examples of utopian voluntary groups, are at the cross-roads between three normative systems: social economy, territorial identity and Christian belonging. Since the 1970s, the founding experience of Mondragón (Guipuzcoa) has spread and developed in the French Basque country in a way that reveals the power of the convergence between a religious reference (first as institutional support, later as a source of values, beliefs and capacities) and an identity-based motivation (helping to cement a nationalist political view and a selective re-reading of customs). More widely, the case of these co-operatives helps to criticize the extreme postulate that Western contemporary societies have undergone an overwhelming process of secularization.