<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;">I wonder if the call should not also address the "sharing" economy and its companies (Uber etc.) / Peter<div><br><div><div>On 1 Jun 2015, at 09:48, Mathieu ONeil <<a href="mailto:mathieu.oneil@anu.edu.au">mathieu.oneil@anu.edu.au</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr" style="font-family: Geneva; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;"><div id="divtagdefaultwrapper" style="font-size: 12pt; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;">Hi all<br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;"><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;">Please find below a request for comments for a planned issue on peer production and work. </div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">T</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">his has been much delayed - my fault entirely.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">R</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">ather than choose between 'work' and 'labour' I suggest using both at strategic junctures.</span><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">We need to release this on June 3 to coincide with the COST action meeting...</span><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;"><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;">cheers<br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;"><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;">Mathieu<br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;"><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; text-align: center;">CFP Journal of Peer Production:</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; text-align: center;"><strong>Peer production and work</strong></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; text-align: center;"><strong> </strong></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; text-align: center;">Editors:</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; text-align: center;">Phoebe Moore (Middlesex University London)</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; text-align: center;">Mathieu O’Neil (University of Canberra)</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; text-align: center;">Stefano Zacchiroli (University Paris Diderot)</div><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; text-align: left;"> </p><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; text-align: left;">The rise in the usage and delivery capacity of the Internet in the 1990s has led to the development of massively distributed online projects where self-governing volunteers collaboratively produce public goods. Notable examples include Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) projects such as Debian and GNOME, as well as the Wikipedia encyclopedia. These distributed practices have been characterised as peer production, crowdsourcing, mass customization, social production, co-configurative work, playbour, user-generated content, wikinomics, open innovation, participatory culture, produsage, and the wisdom of the crowd, amongst other terms. In peer production, labour is communal and outputs are orientated towards the further expansion of the commons, an ecology of production that aims to defy and resist the hierarchies and the rules of ownership that drive productive models within capitalism (Moore, 2011); while the commons, recursively, are the chief resource in this mode of production (Söderberg & O’Neil, 2014).</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; text-align: left;"><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; text-align: left;">Peer projects are ‘ethical’ as participation is primarily motivated by self-fulfillment and validated by a community of peers, rather than by earning wages. 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. Conflicting interpretations of their societal impact have been articulated (O’Neil, 2015). Skeptics view the abjuration of exclusive property rights over the goods they produce as irrelevant, and ethical-modular projects as increasing worker exploitation: participants' passionate labour occurs at the expense of less fortunate others, who do not have the disposable income, cultural capital, or family support to engage in unpaid labourwork (Moore & Taylor, 2009; Huws, 2013). In contrast, reformists, often hailing from a management perspective, suggest that the co-optation of communal labour by firms will improve business practices and society (Arvidsson, 2008; Demil et al., 2015). Finally activists celebrate the abjuration of exclusive property rights, and present ethical-modular projects as key actors in a historical process leading to the supersession of capitalism and hierarchy (Kostakis & Bauwens, 2014).<br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; text-align: left;"><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; text-align: left;">This last perspective raises a central challenge, which is the avoidance of purely utopian thinking. In other words, how can commons-based peer production reach deeply into daily life? How can ‘already existing non-capitalist economic processes’ be strengthened, ‘new non-capitalist enterprises’ be built, and ‘communal subjects’ be established (Gibson-Graham, 2003: 157)? An increasingly large free public goods and services sector could well cohabit in a plural economy with employment in cooperatives, paid independent work, and the wage-earning of the commercial sector. However analysis of peer production typically eschews mundane considerations such as living wages, benefits, job security, working conditions, work-induced medical conditions, and debates on labour organization. How can peer production operate as a sustainable practice enabling people to live, if labour and work issues are not formally addressed?</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; text-align: left;"><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; text-align: left;">To advance the knowledge, analysis, and regulation of work and labour in peer production this special issue of the<em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Journal of Peer Production</em>, titled<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em>Peer Production and Work</em>, calls for papers in two linked areas:</div><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; text-align: left;"> </p><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; text-align: left;"><strong>Peer production in a paid work society</strong></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; text-align: left;">Nowadays firms extract ever-more value from the unpaid labour of volunteer 'prosumers' (Frayssé & O'Neil, 2015), or attempt to monetize crowdsourced labour. The paradigmatic example is Amazon’s Mechanical Turk labourers (popularly known as ‘Turkers’, ‘cloud workers’ or ‘click workers’) who accomplish micro-tasks such as tagging and labeling images, transcribing audio or video recordings, and categorizing products. This extreme modularization of work results in their status being that of independent contractors rather than employees with rights, necessitating novel means of protection and redress (Irani & Silberman, 2013). Finally capitalist 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. Do traditional categories such as exploitation and alienation still apply?</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; text-align: left;">Topics may include, but are not limited to:</div><ul style="list-style-type: disc;"><li>Peer production and the global political economy</li><li>Peer production and the rise of precarious work</li><li>Peer workers and possibilities for worker organisation</li><li>Does the autonomy of peer workers cause conflict in firms, and how is it resolved?</li><li>What strategies do firms adopt to co-opt peer production (e.g., ‘hackhathons’)?</li><li>Do tensions around property rights emerge?</li><li>Subjectivity in peer production </li><li>Peer production and intellectual property, coded work<br></li></ul><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; text-align: left;"><strong>Paid work in peer production projects</strong></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; text-align: left;">How does paid labour affect ethical P2P projects? Mansell and Berdou (2010) argue that firms supporting the work of programmers who contribute to volunteer projects, to the commons, will not affect the ‘cooperative spirit’ of projects; nor can this support prevent the results of labour from being socialized into commons. Is this always the case?</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; text-align: left;">Topics may include, but are not limited to:</div><ul style="list-style-type: disc;"><li>How do peer projects deal with the presence of paid or waged labour?</li><li>Is this topic discussed within peer production projects? In what way?</li><li>What benefits do paid or waged workers enjoy in peer projects?</li><li>How does paid labour affect peer production projects?<br></li></ul><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; text-align: left;"><strong>Suggested timeline:</strong></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; text-align: left;">CFP released: June 2015</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; text-align: left;">500 word-abstract due: 30 July 2015</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; text-align: left;">Notification to authors: 30 August 2015</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; text-align: left;">Submission of full paper: 31 December 2015</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; text-align: left;">Reviews to authors: 15 February 2016</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; text-align: left;">Revised papers: 30 April 2016</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; text-align: left;">Signals due: 30 May 2016<br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; text-align: left;">Issue release: June/July 2016<br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; text-align: left;"><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; text-align: left;">Submission guidelines:<br></div><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="color: rgb(119, 119, 119); font-family: Ubuntu, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14.3999996185303px; line-height: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></span></p><div>Submission abstracts of 300-500 words are due by<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong>30 July, 2015<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></strong>and should be sent to <<a href="mailto:work@peerproduction.net">work@peerproduction.net</a>>. All peer reviewed papers will be reviewed according to Journal of Peer Production guidelines. Full papers and materials (peer reviewed papers around 8,000 words;"tales of toil" in the Processed World tradition up to 4,000 words) are due by December 31st, 2015 for review.</div><div><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; text-align: left;"><strong>References</strong></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; text-align: left;">Arvidsson, A. (2008). The ethical economy of consumer coproduction.<em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Journal of Macromarketing</em>, 8, 326-338.</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; text-align: left;">Demil, B., Lecoq. X. & Warnier, E. (2015). The capabilities of bazaar governance: Investigating the advantage of business models based on open communities.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em>Journal of Organizational Change Management</em>, in press.</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; text-align: left;">Frayssé, O. & O'Neil, M. (2015)<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em>Digital labour and prosumer capitalism: The US matrix.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></em>Basingstoke: Palgrave, in press.</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; text-align: left;">Gibson-Graham, J.K. (2003). Enabling ethical economies: Cooperativism and class.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em>Critical Sociology</em>, 29, 123-164.</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; text-align: left;">Huws, U. (2013). The underpinnings of class in the digital age: Living, labour and value.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em>Socialist Register</em>, 50, 80-107.</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; text-align: left;">Irani, L. & Silberman, M. (2013). Turkopticon: Interrupting worker invisibility in Amazon Mechanical Turk. Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; text-align: left;">Kostakis, V. & Bauwens, M. (2014)<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em>Network society and future scenarios for a collaborative economy</em>. Basingstoke: Palgrave.</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; text-align: left;">Mansell, R. & Berdou, E. (2010). Political economy, the internet and FL/OSS development. In Hunsinger, J., Allen, M. & Klastrup, L. (Eds.)<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em>International handbook of Internet research</em>(pp. 341-362). Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Springer.</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; text-align: left;">Moore, P. (2011). Subjectivity in the Ecologies of P2P Production.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em>The Journal of Fibreculture</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>FCJ-119. Online, available:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://seventeen.fibreculturejournal.org/fcj-119-peer-to-peer-production-a-revolutionary-or-neoliberal-mode-of-subjectivation/">http://seventeen.fibreculturejournal.org/fcj-119-peer-to-peer-production-a-revolutionary-or-neoliberal-mode-of-subjectivation/</a></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; text-align: left;">Moore, P. & Taylor, P. A. (2009). Exploitation of the self in community-based software production: Workers’ freedoms or firm foundations?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em>Capital & Class</em>, 99 – 117.</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; text-align: left;">O’Neil, M. (2015). Labour out of control: The political economy of capitalist and ethical organizations.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em>Organization Studies</em>, in press.</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; text-align: left;">Söderberg, J. & O’Neil, M. (2014). Introduction.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em>Book of Peer Production<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></em>(pp. 2-3). Göteborg: NSU Press.<br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;"><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;"><br></div></div>_______________________________________________<br>JoPP-Public mailing list<br><a href="mailto:JoPP-Public@lists.ourproject.org">JoPP-Public@lists.ourproject.org</a><br><a href="https://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/jopp-public">https://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/jopp-public</a></div></blockquote></div><br></div></body></html>