If I Only Had a Heart: Value Sovereignty, Care Work, Commons and Distributed Cooperative Organizations

We just finished reading If I Only Had a Heart: Value Sovereignty, Care Work, Commons and Distributed Cooperative Organizations, a brilliant synthesis of the ideas of the Commons and P2P, open cooperativism, open value accounting and feminist economics. Written by Stacco Troncoso and his colleagues from the Guerilla Translation team, this is a must-read for those interested in the theory and practice of commons-based peer production.

Demystifying the Digital Economy

The Research Group for the Digital Economy and Private Law (at the Faculty of Law at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki) is hosting a very interesting seminar cycle that begins tomorrow at 19:00 (Room 8, 3rd Floor) with a presentation from Alex Pazaitis (of the P2P Lab) themed “Demystifying the Digital Economy“.

The seminar cycle includes three more talks:

  • Fri 8 Nov: Alex Pazaitis – The Commons and peer production: A short introduction
  • Fri 15 Nov: Alex Pazaitis – The political economy of peer production: Two general approaches
  • Fri 22 Nov: Angelos Kornilakis – Legal mapping of small-scale economic networks of peer production

Industrious modernity

Readers of our website are familiar with the work of Adam Arvidsson, which explores the relationship between Capitalism and Commons-based peer production.  In his new book titled Changemakers: The Industrious Future of the Digital Economy, which has just been published by Polity, Arvidsson “argues that, as industrial capitalism enters a period of prolonged crisis, a new paradigm of ‘industrious modernity’ is emerging. Based on small-scale, commons-based and market-oriented entrepreneurship, this industrious modernity is being pioneered by the many outcasts that no longer find a place within a crumbling industrial modernity”.

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Capitalism and the Commons

A must-read for those interested in delving more deeply into the relationship between Capitalism and Commons-based peer production is Adam Arvidsson’s new paper, titled ‘Capitalism and the Commons‘, which has just been published in Theory, Culture & Society. The crux of its argument is nicely summed up in the concluding remarks:

The medieval commons emerged out of the process of social acceleration put in motion by feudalism. In turn, they supported new relations of production that pointed beyond feudalism. Capitalism developed through the privatization and enclosure of the medieval commons. At the same time, the process of social acceleration put in motion by capitalist real subsumption has generated new commons in the form of a planetary ‘general intellect’. Today we begin to see how these new commons are supporting new forms of petty production. It is possible that such commons-based petty production will affirm itself as an alternative to a capitalist economy in decline, first for the masses, and later also for the elites. This process is likely to be accelerated by a combination of economic decline and ecological crisis, similar to that of the 14th century.

Research Methodology Issues in the Social Sciences Conference

The next Research Methodology Issues in the Social Sciences conference organized by the University of Crete’s Faculty of Sociology will be held in Rethymnon on 8-10 November 2019. Of particular interest to readers of this blog, one of the main themes of the conference is ‘commons policies: social and solidarity economy and communities of emancipation’. For more info (in greek), here’s the call.

ABC of the Commons

One of the most useful online resources (in greek) we’ve recently come across is the abc of the commons. The website, which is largely based on the new book of our partner Vasilis Kostakis, Michel Bauwens and Alex Pazaitis, Peer to Peer: The Commons Manifesto,  focuses on the concept of the commons and commons-based peer production, explaining why they are relevant to a post-capitalist transition.

SSE and Commons: common places, divergences, limits and potential

Heteropolitics researcher Alexandros Kioupkiolis and our partner (from the P2P Lab) Vasilis Kostakis will be giving a talk at a workshop on the “Social & Solidarity Economy and the Commons: common places and divergences, limits and potential” organized by the Transdisciplinary Institute for Environmental and Social Studies (TIESS) and Heinrich Böll Foundation, which will be held at TIESS in Thessaloniki on April 20, 2019. The workshop will try to create a fertile dialogue between academics, researchers, members of SSE projects, social movements and Civil Society.

New Issue of Journal of Peer Production (JoPP)

The latest issue of the Journal of Peer Production (JoPP) has just been published online. It features contributions and reflections from several open access journal editors, peer-reviewed articles on co-sewing cafes and civic-tech as well as concrete proposals to develop the commons in employment, ‘good data’ and open communities.

You can view the latest issue’s table of contents at http://peerproduction.net/issues/issue-13-open/

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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