Mesh Cooperativism: Toward Mycorrhizal (Infra)structure for the Cooperative Movement

Cooperative responses to the inequities of the platform economy have primarily focused on the
creation of cooperative platforms and on the promise of a decentralized cooperativism made
possible by emerging technologies. However, the question of what an equitable platform is, or
should be—as both a technical artifact and set of interrelated social processes—is somewhat
murky, and characterizations of decentralization often fail to attend to structuring power
dynamics and the potential to reproduce extractive models of growth and scale. With members of
the cooperative technology community, the authors of this paper explore a model for conceptualizing
cooperative sociotechnologies as mycorrhizal “meshes” or networks of more loosely-affiliated,
interoperable, local-scale systems. We advocate for a technology creation process that attends to
concerns often excluded from platform capitalist design priorities. Such processes should: 1) be
rooted in the demonstrated needs and practices of existing cooperative collectives; 2) aim to
expand collaborative capacity among cooperatives wherever possible, and 3) focus on measures
of scale that prioritize local impact and community development.