Cooperatives in architecture, journalism, legal, financial, and insurance services in Catalonia: Fostering the professions’ social role, the common good, collective moral agency, and viability

As we face pressing social inequalities and ecological degradation, this article furthers the recognition of cooperatives and solidarity economies for the possibilities they open up to achieve more inclusive and sustainable economies and empowerment over decision-making processes and resources. The article draws on interviews with professionals from cooperatives in Barcelona across architecture, journalism, legal, financial, and insurance services. Their projects are advancing legal access to socio-economic justice, ethical and solidarity-based finance, independent public-interest journalism, and non-speculative cooperative housing models. Their experiences suggest that cooperative functioning and ethics, and solidarity economy ecosystems, generate the ownership, governance, and organisational arrangements and wider conditions that in turn foster possibilities for taking business and professional ethics ‘seriously’. Furthermore, I suggest these conditions enable the professionals to ‘remoralise’ and ‘repoliticise’ their professional practices for the common good, cultivate a collective moral agency, and sustain viable enterprises.