The International Year of Cooperatives (2012) was established by the United Nations (UN) to highlight the importance of cooperatives for social and economic development. Hence, considering the role of cooperatives in the Brazilian rural sector, this article makes an analysis of scientific literature on cooperatives and cooperativism concerning the main journal of the Brazilian Society of Economics, Administration and Rural Sociology (Sober), the Journal of Economics and Rural Sociology (RESR). The aim is to determine the intensity of work on the topic as well as identify the main researchers and theoretical approaches. The findings showed that there are a small number of articles related to the topic and their references are mainly composed by economists. The analysis also concluded that the focus was related to economic issues like performance and profitability. Finally, we can also conclude that the key theoretical approaches of these scientific works under investigation rely primarily on Local Productive Arrangements and on The New Institutional Economics.