November 2015 - JoPP-Public - lists.ourproject.org

Deadline for peer production and work CFP extended
by Mathieu ONeil 12 Dec '15

12 Dec '15

Deadline extended to Friday 7 August 2015 CFP - Journal of Peer Production Peer Production and Work Editors: Phoebe Moore (Middlesex University London), Mathieu O'Neil (University of Canberra), Stefano Zacchiroli (University Paris Diderot) Details below. http://peerproduction.net/peer-production-and-work/

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Labour out of Control: The Political Economy of Capitalist and Ethical Organizations
by Mathieu ONeil 30 Nov '15

30 Nov '15

Hi all Some might be interested in the following paper which was just officially published. cheers Mathieu =-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Mathieu O'Neil "Labour out of Control: The Political Economy of Capitalist and Ethical Organizations" Organization Studies, December 2015, vol. 36 no. 12, 1627-1647 Abstract Digitally networked voluntary associations such as free software projects and Wikipedia can be distinguished from capitalist firms in two respects. First, their predominant logic is 'ethical'. Participation is primarily motivated by self-fulfilment and validated by a community of peers, rather than by earning wages. Second, their governance is 'modular', understood in a design sense (decomposable blocks sharing a common interface), but also in political economy terms: participants oppose restricted ownership and control by individually socializing their works into commons. In recent years capitalist-centralized firms have increasingly engaged with ethical-modular organizations, in some cases paying wages to participants (such labour is thus both 'alienated' or sold, and 'communal', as workers freely cooperate to produce commons). This article reviews the literature dealing with the relationship of these two organizational types. It argues that the manner in which scholars approach a central characteristic of ethical-modular organizations - participants relinquish exclusive property rights over the resource they have created - leads to highly diverse interpretations. Four hypotheses are presented. A 'panoptic' view overlooks the abjuration of exclusive property rights, so that ethical-modular organizations can be defined as a variant of the evolution of capitalist firms into post-bureaucratic networks. 'Skeptics' view this abjuration as irrelevant, and ethical-modular organizations as increasing worker exploitation. In contrast, 'activists' celebrate the abjuration of exclusive property rights, and present ethical-modular organizations as key actors in a historical process leading to the disappearance of capitalism and hierarchy. Finally 'reformists' suggest that the co-optation of communal labour by firms will benefit business practices and society. The article examines the analytical focus of each hypothesis in terms of labour, loss of control by firms over workers, and societal impact. Where appropriate, it raises questions and objections. The conclusion addresses communal labour's effective dependence on capitalist-centralized firms and suggests factors which may contribute to its emancipation.

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extended deadline 13 dec, CfP DIY-antropocene, 4-6 March 2016
by Johan Söderberg 20 Nov '15

20 Nov '15

CfP: Winter Symposium: "Appropriating Technology For Societal Change" 4-6th of March, 2016 Study Circle 6 of the Nordic Summer University (NSU) holds its winter symposium on: Do-It-Yourself in Anthropocene: New Political Imaginaries A planetary, ecological collapse threatens to end the world as we know it. International negotiations are being held without results. Both in the engineering community and in the ecology movement , attempts are made to develop alternatives from below. The training of technophile engineers and technophobic environmentalists places them in opposite camps on most issues. What these two communities have in common, however, is a shared problematic (i.e. technology) and a Do-it-yourself attitude towards societal problems. Under the pressure of a perpetual, ecological crisis, a hybrid imaginary is emerging. A case in point is the establishment of 'open source ecology villages' in the countryside in the US, in Ireland and in Spain. Another example is initiatives to secure food sovereignty through open sourced, automated greenhouses, tailored for the needs of urban dwellers. In either case, the universalistic aspiration of the engineering culture meets the particularism and the small-is-beautiful philosophy of the environmentalists. This nascent movement articulates a new cultural imaginary, utopic and apocalyptic at the same time. The winter session of study circle no. 6 will explore this new imaginary, its promises and pitfalls. In order to participate at the winter symposium, submit your proposal to one of the coordinators of the circle before December 13, 2015. We accept applications for presentations of papers and workshops as well as just participation. Please submit a short description (a few hundred words) of the paper or workshop you intend to present at the seminar together with a short bio. We welcome a range of topics and presentations, from engineering and the social sciences to more experience-based and practically oriented interventions. We strive for a mixture of participants, including academics, students, practitioners and activists, as well as in disciplinary background. The symposium will be held in the extended Göteborg area in Sweden, from Friday 4th till Sunday 6th of March. Participation fee is 500 SEK (50 euro). It covers food and accommodation. It might also be possible to apply for travel subventions, conditioned on available funds. For more information about the circle, please contact the coordinators. Johan Söderberg: johan [dot] soderberg [at] sts [dot] gu [dot] se Gustav Eek: gustav [dot] eek [at] fripost [dot] org Website: http://nordic.university/study-circles/appropriating-science-and-technology…

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Update: website; core team; new editor; schedule, p2pf
by Mathieu ONeil 10 Nov '15

10 Nov '15

Hi all A message to update on recent developments: As mentioned previously, the JoPP website has been compromised and an emergency theme has been put in place. Javier from P2P Foundation and Peter Troxler have been working to fix this. As Peter is becoming more heavily involved in the journal we invited him to join the core team and he accepted. Of course he will contribute more than CMS support. The core team now comprises: Peter, Sophie, Johan, Maurizio, Sara, Nate, maxigas and Mathieu. Panos introduced himself a while ago and no-one objected so he is now officially an editorial board member. Welcome Panos! Because of the bad current look of the website, we are proposing to delay the femhack issue release until January 2016 and the eds for that issue agreed. This will give more time for the situation to normalise, traffic to resume etc. So after there would be: June/July 2016 Alternative Internets Dec/Jan 2017 Work June/July 2017 Urbanism We hope this is OK for everyone. Please advise if any issues. Finally, we have written to the P2P foundation folks in order to clarify our relationship with them and assess to what extent they are willing / able to support us in a more systematic way. We will apprise this list of any developments on that front. cheers, Mathieu (for the JoPP core team)

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CfP: Winter Symposium: "Appropriating Technology For Societal Change"
by Johan Söderberg 05 Nov '15

05 Nov '15

CfP: Winter Symposium: "Appropriating Technology For Societal Change" 4-6th of March, 2016 Study Circle 6 of the Nordic Summer University (NSU) holds its winter symposium on: Do-It-Yourself in Anthropocene: New Political Imaginaries A planetary, ecological collapse threatens to end the world as we know it. International negotiations are being held without results. Both in the engineering community and in the ecology movement , attempts are made to develop alternatives from below. The training of technophile engineers and technophobic environmentalists places them in opposite camps on most issues. What these two communities have in common, however, is a shared problematic (i.e. technology) and a Do-it-yourself attitude towards societal problems. Under the pressure of a perpetual, ecological crisis, a hybrid imaginary is emerging. A case in point is the establishment of 'open source ecology villages' in the countryside in the US, in Ireland and in Spain. Another example is initiatives to secure food sovereignty through open sourced, automated greenhouses, tailored for the needs of urban dwellers. In either case, the universalistic aspiration of the engineering culture meets the particularism and the small-is-beautiful philosophy of the environmentalists. This nascent movement articulates a new cultural imaginary, utopic and apocalyptic at the same time. The winter session of study circle no. 6 will explore this new imaginary, its promises and pitfalls. In order to participate at the winter symposium, submit your proposal to one of the coordinators of the circle before November 15, 2015. We accept applications for presentations of papers and workshops as well as just participation. Please submit a short description (a few hundred words) of the paper or workshop you intend to present at the seminar together with a short bio. We welcome a range of topics and presentations, from engineering and the social sciences to more experience-based and practically oriented interventions. We strive for a mixture of participants, including academics, students, practitioners and activists, as well as in disciplinary background. The symposium will be held in the extended Göteborg area in Sweden, from Friday 4th till Sunday 6th of March. Participation fee is 500 SEK (50 euro). It covers food and accommodation. It might also be possible to apply for travel subventions, conditioned on available funds. For more information about the circle, please contact the coordinators. Johan Söderberg: johan [dot] soderberg [at] sts [dot] gu [dot] se Gustav Eek: gustav [dot] eek [at] fripost [dot] org Website: http://nordic.university/study-circles/appropriating-science-and-technology…

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