Research Assistant/Associate in Commons Technologies at Newcastle University

Newcastle University and Open Lab are looking for a Research Assistant/Associate in the context of a H2020 project on Generative European Commons Living Lab,  focusing on community technologies, digital and urban commons, social innovation, and issues of social justice in technology design and implementation.

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Social Solidarity Economy and the Commons: Contributions to the Deepening of Democracy

The second international conference “Social Solidarity Economy and the Commons” will be a meeting point for researchers, activists, public officials and social entrepreneurs involved in social and solidarity economy, governance of the commons and new social movements in different parts of the world.

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Call for Papers: Infrastructuring the Commons Today, when STS meet ICT

Journal of Peer Production
Call for Papers: Infrastructuring the Commons Today, when STS meet ICT

Peer production and collaborative forms of technological design – such as those based on commons-oriented approaches – have at their core a critical stance towards the technoscientific landscape, an approach shared with Science and Technology Studies (STS) as a theoretical archipelago that has produced a significant wealth of knowledge that points out the social constructive and performative character of technoscience.

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Interviews of activists from Sarantaporo.gr

From October 2017 to June 2018, in the framework of the Heteropolitics ERC COG (2017-2020) Research Project, we conducted ethnographic research in Elassona, where over the past nine years eleven villages have built, run and maintain a Wireless Community Network (WCN), sarantaporo.gr. The aim of our research is to contribute to the debate on Commons through feedback from the field where such ventures take place. More specifically, the aim of Heteropolitics is to highlight alternative, self-organised communities of Commons. In the case-study of sarantaporo.gr, we have focused on the community created around a Digital Commons and the perceptions emerging from participation in the WCN concerning the infrastructure, which is provided by all participants to all the inhabitants of the villages that belong on the network, either they are participants or not. The following narratives (in Greek) from interviews we held answer questions such as:

  • How do the Commons emerge as everyday politics?
  • How do the Commons differ from bureaucratic state policies?
  • How do the subjectivities of participants emerge and get transformed in the contexts of such endeavours?
  • How do participants understand their role in the endeavour and in the wider society they belong to?

You can read the full interviews (in Greek) here.

Call for a PhD student at University of Amsterdam

Research at the Faculty of Humanities is carried out by six research schools under the aegis of the Amsterdam Institute for Humanities Research. The Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, one of six research schools of the Faculty of Humanities, has a vacant PhD position as part of the Cross-lingual Event-centric Open Analytics Research Academy (CLEOPATRA ITN), led by Prof. dr. Richard Rogers.

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Call for Papers: Re-visiting the Communication Commons

Popular Communication: The International Journal of Media and Culture
Call for Papers: Re-visiting the Communication Commons

In the last decade, the concept of the commons has become prolific, if not popular. There are millions of references to the commons in a very wide range of literatures, from the academic, social activist, to the UN-and other multilateral institutions, think tanks, and popular literatures. However, in most, the idea of the commons is rather vague, a stand-in for public resources that avoids any references to specific collectivities of people, places, political economies and systems of power, and/or the historical and conflict-ridden origins of the commons at the dawn of the capitalist era in Northern Europe.

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Heteropolitics report on the Commons in Naples

Here’s our report on the commons in Naples, which readers of this blog should find of interest. It is based on our fieldwork in Ex Asilo Filangieri, a self-managed cultural space in the historic centre of the city.

From the introduction of the report:

In Naples, the fieldwork of Heteropolitics is focused on Ex Asilo Filangieri, a self-managed cultural space in the historic centre of the city. In this space, cultural activities are consciously organized as commons. Τhere is also an intense concern with the internal political self-administration of the space, the relationships with the municipality and the city at large, as well as an endeavor to experiment with alternative democratic politics in ways which could resonate with citizens, cities and communities more widely. Civic and cultural praxis in ‘L’Asilo’, as it is called by participants, pivots around a) collaborative artistic creation and experimentation; b) egalitarian democratic self-management; c) self-legislation through the production of an internal regulation that was finally ratified by the municipality after a long struggle; d) the making of a different community and politics informed by openness, plurality, horizontality, non-violence and non-domination, consensus, collaboration, and experimentation; e) the negotiation of a different relationship with the municipality characterized by both collaboration, struggle, conditional municipal support and autonomous self-organization of the community in l’Asilo.

From December 2008 to the Commons of our time

Tomorrow evening at 19:30, Alexandros Kioupkiolis will be a guest of the Refugee Center of Chania for a debate (spurred by the publication of his book ‘Politics of Freedom: Agonistic democracy, meta-anarchist utopias and the emergence of the multitude‘) on the significance of December 2008 and the commons of our time.

For more information (in Greek) about the event: https://www.kinimatorama.net/event/103325?userCalendar=55

The Community Network Manual: How to Build the Internet Yourself

The Community Network Manual: How to Build the Internet Yourself, which has just been published online, includes two chapters co-authored by Heteropolitics partner Panayotis Antoniadis (of NetHood), which should be of interest to readers of this blog: In ‘Complementary Networks Meet Complementary Currencies: Guifi.net Meets Sardex.net‘, Antoniadis et al. look at Guifi.net and Sardex,  while in ‘What Could Blockchain do for Community Networks‘, Antoniadis et al. explore the role that blockchain technology could play for community networks.