Drawing on a case study of Japanese Canadian (JC) fishing co-operatives on Canada’s West Coast at the beginning of the twentieth century, this article explores the politics of knowledge production in Canadian cooperative historiography and discourse. There is an absence of JC and other minority ethnic groups’ co-operative experiences in the Canadian co-operative literature that has resulted in a narrow Eurocentric, masculinist and colonizing understanding of co-operatives. The article argues a need for critically reconceptualizing Canadian cooperative history and offers implications for reconceptualizing co-operative theory and practice.
