Master Course “Co-operation and Co-operative Organizations”
Since 2007, the course is offered for students of the master programs such as Agricultural Economics, Rural Development, and Integrated Natural Resource Management at Humboldt University. In 2016, the lecture was restructured and updated. Due to the Covid-19 Pandemic, the course was adapted to a digital format as of 2020. Since 2024, the course includes fields visits as parts of its active learning strategies.
Im Rahmen der Vorlesung werden Studierende in das genossenschaftliche Geschäftsmodell eingeführt und beschäftigen sich kritisch mit den Fragen, warum und wo Genossenschaften entstehen, inwiefern sie sich von anderen Unternehmensformen unterscheiden und inwiefern sich das genossenschaftliche Modell zur Lösung sozialer, ökologischer und wirtschaftlicher Herausforderungen eignet.
Der Kurs baut auf verschiedene theoretische Stränge aus verschiedenen Wissenschaftsbereichen auf, wie z.B. dem kollektiven Handeln, der Verhaltens- oder Entwicklungsökonomie oder Innovation. Er analysiert auch Genossenschaften als Strategien zur Armutsbekämpfung und der ländlichen Entwicklung in Ländern des Globalen Südens.
Examples of Content and Guest Lecturers (See below for a detailed overview):
Cooperation as a Pattern of (Human) Behaviour
Das kooperative Modell
Governance in the Cooperative
Die Genossenschaft und der Markt
Die Genossenschaft aus der Perspektive der Wertschöpfungskette
Cooperatives and the agroecological transition
Politische Maßnahmen und Rahmenbedingungen für die Entwicklung von Genossenschaften
Cooperatives as (rural) catalysts for change?
Bauernorganisationen in Schwellen- und Entwicklungsländern
Dozent-innen: Prof. Dr. Markus Hanisch, Prof. Dr. Marcel Robischon, Dr. Agustina Malvido and Dr. Katrin Martens
Gastdozent*innen:
Prof. Dr. Jos Bijman
Benjamin Dannemann
Dr. Véronique De Herde
Prof. Dr. Seungkwon Jang
Dr. Margitta Minah
Aicha Mechri
Methode: Lectures and seminars, exercises, group works, literature analysis, field visits, research proposal writing, oral presentation, scientific paper writing.
Course structure and development in 2026
In 2026, the course interlinked different conceptual topics with field visits. Moreover, during the semester, students went through a research cycle: they wrote a research proposal, exchanged peer feedback, and delivered an oral presentation.
Course structure and syllabus 2026
In 2026, the field visits included the SuperCoop e.G, Bauerngarten and the Genossenschaftsforum
Bauerngarten operates self-harvest vegetable plots on farmland in three different locations around Berlin. They use the Viennese Gemüseselbsternte model: the farm pre-plants circular parcels with some 25 organic crops, and members tend and harvest them over one season. It was run as a single-owner firm but recently the business has been transferred to a newly founded cooperative, bauerngarten eG, which will take over operations from 2027.
SuperCoop Berlin eG is a cooperative supermarket opened in September 2021 and modelled on the Park Slope Food Coop in New York and La Louve in Paris. Its roughly 2,000 members can shop a wide variety of food related items,
they contribute about three hours of work per month, and decide on assortment and policy under a one-member-one-vote rule.
Genossenschaftsforum e.V. is a non-profit association founded at the beginning of the 90s by twelve Berlin housing cooperatives and now comprising around 55 housing cooperatives from Berlin and Potsdam. It promotes the cooperative idea through publications, events and networking, and since 2021 runs the cooperativ Werkraum, a permanent exhibition and event space on the history of housing cooperatives in Berlin and Potsdam.
Benjamin Dannemann from DGRV Energy gave a lecture on cooperatives in the energy sector in Germany, highlighting different cooperative organisational models.