Mary hilson will present a book project currently in progress and planned for completion later this year. Although it was one of the most important social movements in inter-war Europe, cooperation remains underresearched by historians, especially in a transnational perspective. From its beginnings co-operation was shaped by transnational exchange and from 1895 it also had its own international organization, the International Cooperative Alliance (ICA). The main question discussed in the book concerns the meaning of cooperation: was it a social movement or an economic enterprise? Did it aspire to challenge capitalism or reform it? The cooperative federations of the Nordic countries played a particularly important role in shaping these debates within the ICA. Studying the Nordic countries in the ICA sheds light on the development of Nordic cooperation (in the sense of nordiskt samarbete) during the inter-war period and the emergence of the Nordic "middle way".