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Kick-off Meeting @ Thessaloniki, 7-8 May 2017

DAY 1 , 7 MAY 2017

1st session: 3.00pm-4.30 pm

Introduction to the key ideas, objectives and methods of the Heteropolitics project
by Alexandros Kioupkiolis
Presentation followed by discussion

2nd session: 5.00pm-6.00pm
Presentation of background and relevant research interests, presentation of work related to the project and outline of specific contribution(s) to the fieldwork and the deliverables (wireless communities, networks etc.)
by Panayiotis Antoniadis

Presentation 20-25mins to be followed by discussion

3d session: 6.15pm-7.15pm
Presentation of background and relevant research interests, presentation of work related to the project and outline of specific contribution(s) to the fieldwork and the deliverables (the commons and heteropolitics in alternative education)
by Yiannis Pechtelidis

Presentation 20-25mins, followed by discussion

DAY 2,  8 MAY 2017

1st session: 11.00am-12.30am
Practical, technical and administrative aspects of the project
by Alexandros Kioupkiolis and Foteini Psarra

Presentation to be followed by discussion

2nd session: 1.00pm-2.00pm
Presentation of background and relevant research interests, presentation of work related to the project and outline of specific contribution(s) to the fieldwork and the deliverables (community currencies and Sardex)
by Paolo  Dini

Presentation 20-25mins to be followed by discussion

3d session: 2.15pm-3.00pm
Presentation of background and relevant research interests, presentation of work related to the project, ideas and suggestions for case studies or other research activities of the project
by Aimilia Voulvouli and Natalia Avlona

Presentations 15-20 mins each , followed by discussion

4th session: 3.30pm-4.30pm
For Y. Pechtelidis, P. Antoniadis, A. Voulvouli and N. Avlona: open discussion and planning of the case studies in Greece

 

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Two funded PhD positions – University of Twente

The Department of Science, Technology, and Policy Studies (STePS), Faculty of Behavioural, Management and Social sciences at the University of Twente is hiring two PhDs in Science and Technology Studies (STS) to join the ERC-funded project ‘Processing Citizenship: Digital registration of migrants as co-production of citizens, territory and Europe’ (ProcessCitizenship), with Dr. Annalisa Pelizza as Principal Investigator. The positions are fully-funded, full-time, and require commitment to the project’s goals.

Project and work description
‘Processing Citizenship’ investigates the information infrastructure for migrant registration at and across European borders, focusing on how citizenship, modernist institutions and territory are co-produced.

The project combines border studies and surveillance studies in IT and migration with a materialist performative approach derived from science and technology studies and media geography. It aims to develop a history of the present that accounts for contemporary materially-embedded practices of registration of migrants at Hotspots as activities of governance transformation. Data will be collected and analysed via qualitative and computational techniques.

We offer an interdisciplinary, interactive and international research environment in a leading Science and Technology Studies (STS) department. The PhDs will work as part of a trans-disciplinary team of seven, working under the supervision of the Principal Investigator and three post-docs.

Activities
The PhDs will conduct technology-focused qualitative analysis, as well as analyses using computational methods.

Fieldwork research will be conducted mainly at Hotspots for migrant registration in Greece and Italy, but other European locations might be added. It will consist of non-participant observation of identification and registration practices, focusing on the techno-social settings. Interviews with migration officers will also be conducted. Computational analyses will be conducted through existing and ad hoc developed techniques.

PhDs will receive initial training in STS and information systems, ethnographic methods and interviewing methodologies, plus training in the computational methods developed by the project team. Already possessing some of these skills is a plus.

As part of the team, the PhDs will conduct communication and organizational activities related to the project, and participate in publications and conferences. As doctoral researchers, they will submit a final PhD dissertation, on a topic drawn from their involvement in the project.
Your profile

The ideal candidates have a master (or equivalent) degree in:

profile 1: computer science or communication, including knowledge of the socio-political implications of technologies;
profile 2: anthropology, qualitative sociology, human geography or political sciences, including knowledge of the socio-political implications of technologies.

More details about the requested profile are available at https://www.utwente.nl/organisatie/werken-bij-de-ut/vacatures/!/vacature/1020480

Application procedure
Applications should be submitted via https://www.utwente.nl/organisatie/werken-bij-de-ut/vacatures/!/vacature/1020480  before May 7, 2017  h. 23:59 (CET).
Our offer
We offer a full-time contract spanning a period of 4 years. The appointees are expected to take office on September 1st, 2017. The monthly salary starts at € 2.191 gross per month in the first year, leading up to € 2.801 gross per month in the last year.

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Call for chapters

COMMONING THE CITY
COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVES FROM ISTANBUL AND BEYOND

 

Güldem Baykal Büyüksaraç & Derya Özkan (eds.)

This edited volume has its roots in Spaces in Common, a seminar series realized in Istanbul in the Spring of 2016, where a group of academics and activists were invited to think together about forms of urban living created through acts of commoning –spaces imagined and lived as urban commons, belonging to no one and everyone.

The proposed collection of papers similarly aims to reflect upon urban inhabitants’ commoning practices that produce and reproduce life in the city for the sake of cultivating a new ethos to sustain livelihoods and affirm communal instincts beyond motivations of profit, competition, and wealth spared for individual well-being at the expense of others. These practices develop a culture of commoning that helps imagine a city marked by alternative socio-spatial relations and practices. Such imagery is possible only with active and creative urban inhabitants immersed in cultures of commoning through their quotidian practices, be they work, reproductive labor, or leisure and festivity. It is these practices that make our spaces in common despite (and in the midst of) capitalist social relationships. We embrace the concept of urban commons as it allows us to think beyond the public-private and state-market dichotomies that are the building blocks of capitalist social formations.

Urban space is constantly subject to enclosure for capitalist profit. As a generative force for accumulation, enclosure entails dispossession in various forms: expropriation, evacuation, denying public access to a once common space, commodification of culture, etcetera. The dystopic conditions of neoliberal urbanism underlying these processes have until now received due scholarly attention. What equally deserves consideration, and yet has been less debated and undertheorized, is the very acts of commoning that escape the capitalist logic, materialize within the cracks of the capitalist system and potentially create new life-forms. This volume wants to highlight such commoning practices that are affirmative of the possibility of an urban life beyond capitalist social relationships.

We treasure practices of commoning, for they not only reveal urban inhabitants’ capacity to make the city but they also imply a radical will to remake ourselves and our lives by way of reorganizing our living spaces, redefining forms of production and labor, developing new means of livelihood, and in turn reminding us every day that we all inhabit a common life-world.

In this edited volume, we explore the extent to which urban life forms created through commoning challenge capitalist social relationships. We highlight both achievements and drawbacks. We dwell on the emancipatory potentials of these practices, as well as the incomplete or conflicting processes and incompatibilities they inhabit. We focus on cases of urban commoning while keeping an eye on their continuous enclosures. What are some of the ways in which we can imagine and sustain our ongoing everyday lives as a locus of commoning? What kinds of sensibilities and perspectives (for instance a feminist perspective) can we incorporate into our understanding of urban commons?

This volume aims to discuss these questions by bringing together case studies in different urban contexts and theoretical perspectives on emergent forms of production, consumption, exchange, and sociality, all relying on practices of commoning as their major resource.

We are calling for empirically informed and/or theoretical papers that offer refreshing perspectives on the following:

* Precarity and resistance

* Solidarity economies

* Commoning arts & culture in the city

* Commoning and law

* Commoning and affective labor in the city

* Experiences of commoning urban property

* Sustainable urban life

Please send abstracts (of 500 words) by May 1st to Derya Özkan (derya.ozkan@ieu.edu.tr) and Güldem Baykal Büyüksaraç (guldembaykal@gmail.com).

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Indicative Case Studies

The anthropological methodology of fieldwork and participant observation, which will be deployed in the case studies of the project, is more appropriate for in-depth, qualitative research which intends to capture local meanings and practices of community organization that diverge from the mainstream and from accumulated knowledge. Heteropolitics’ ethnographic work begins, thus, with situated listening, watching and learning:

1. Barcelona en Comú
2. Napoli-Città Bene Comune

3. Sarantaporo.gr

4. Sardex

5. Cooperativa Integral Catalana- Sistema Publico Cooperativo

6. Cooperative Housing-Switzerland