<nettime-ann> Free Work conf in Berlin (May 11-13)

[Geert Lovink <geert@xs4all.nl>]

.

Final deadline for abstracts: 14 March 2011

Call for papers for an ephemera conference in collaboration with Essex  
Business School, University of Essex

Free Work

Berlin, Germany, 11-13 May 2011

How do we understand the relation between freedom and work? For some,  
'freedom' and 'work' are inevitably contradictory terms, while for  
others new forms of work such as knowledge or creative work offer the  
opportunity of freeing ourselves. In times of unemployment and job  
precariousness, the freedom to work is of great concern, especially  
when working for 'free' - whether as an unpaid intern or a  
professional required to work overtime - is increasingly becoming an  
essential component of contemporary working life.

Many thinkers have conceptualised the relation between freedom and  
work. For Karl Marx, a clear incompatibility exists between the realm  
of freedom and the realm of labour. The sphere of production is one in  
which labour is determined by necessity and external expediency, and  
we can only hope to organise it collectively. True freedom, defined as  
'the development of human powers as an end in itself', is at odds with  
the realm of labour, although 'it can only flourish with this realm of  
necessity as its basis' (1991: 959). It is this insight that drives  
hopes for a freedom from work, in a leisure or post-work society  
(Aronowitz et al., 1998).

A similar idea guides Hannah Arendt's (1958) distinction between  
labour and work. For Arendt, labour is governed entirely by biological  
need, whereas work exceeds the realm of necessity to include the  
freedom to produce a world. Much of the hope of the nineteenth and  
twentieth century lay in attempts to transform labour into work and  
thus allow for the possibility of free work. But Arendt saw the  
opposite trend: the twentieth century, she said, is best understood as  
a 'society of labourers', which seeks to reduce work (and action) to  
'a job necessary for the life of society' (1958: 5).

In Max Weber's (2002) protestant work ethic, we see the quest for free  
work infused with a theology of redemption, with freedom to be  
gainedthrough work. In contemporary business gospel, we once again  
recognise the theme of redemption through work. The knowledge worker,  
or 'creative class' (Florida, 2002), is thought capable of finding  
freedom from earthly demands in a realm of pure expressivity where  
work cannot be distinguished from play. The internet is the latest in  
a line of technologies sustaining a hope for a technology-enabled  
freedom at work(e.g. Blauner, 1964).

Where freedom in work is promised to all of us, and work even  
necessitates the exercise of our creativity, innovation and  
authenticity at work, it is nonetheless often unpaid. So contemporary  
capitalism relies on incorporating the free labour of those who  
produce culture in the digital economy (Böhm and Land, 2009;  
Terranova, 2000); it appropriates the work of 'culturepreneurs' for  
the branding of the 'creative city' (Lange, 2005; Lanz, 2009); and  
develops techniques of crowd sourcing that blur the boundaries between  
creative potential and corporate interest (Arvidsson, 2007). The  
possibility of free work is also conditioned upon its socio-spatial  
opportunities. 'Free' spaces such as the digital commons or abandoned,  
vacant city areas that seem less determined by ownership, capital, or  
institutionalisation enable alternative working practices of artistic,  
activist or open source communities (e.g. Sheridan, 2007). Yet, these  
productive, innovative and creative free work forces taking place in a  
space beyond monetary value creation seem to be increasingly  
instrumentalised in line with the 'new spirit of  
capitalism' (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2005).

Freedom to work today also means workfare, precarity, sweatshops and  
child labour. As the French multitudes take to the streets, their 35- 
hour-week is extended and their retirement age is increased.  
Meanwhile, work in the humane workplaces of the new economy comes with  
hidden costs (Ross, 2004), and the post-bureaucratic organization  
makes freedom a privilege for those with potential and pushes all  
others into vicious cycles of opportunism (Maravelias, 2007). It is  
perhaps no wonder that here some of the most radical responses to  
contemporary forms of work involve attempting to free the soul from  
work, to move from alienation to autonomy (Berardi, 2009), or to  
insist on communism as the necessary condition of freedom (Badiou,  
2010).
Contributions

We invite contributions to this conference that seek to discuss all  
the ways in which freedom and work are juxtaposed today. Possible  
topics for investigation might include:

- Facebook, cyber-slavery and other forms of digital labour
- Artistic work and production in the creative industries
- Socio-spatial conditions of possibility for 'free work'
- Value creation through 'free work'
- 'Free work' communities (e.g. 'Linux', artist collectives, etc.)
- Origins and examples of user-driven innovation and social production  
(e.g. the skateboarding industry, or 'Threadless')
- The blurring of work and play in corporate structures
- Concepts of (free) work and play in the situationist movement
- 'Generation Praktikum', internships, gap years. '1-Euro Jobs' and  
other forms of contingent and precarious (non-)employment
- Redemption through work
- Self-realization and self-alienation in work
- Exploitation and control in the name of freedom

The deadline for abstracts is 14 March 2011. The abstracts should be  
submitted to conference@ephemeraweb.org. Full papers will be due by 1  
May 2011. Selected papers of the conference will be published in a  
special issue of ephemera.

Further Information

Further information about the conference can be found on the  
conference website: http://www.ephemeraweb.org/conference. To discuss  
potential contributions, please contact any of the organizers.


Armin Beverungen, University of the West of England
Email: armin.beverungen@uwe.ac.uk

Steffen Böhm, University of Essex
Email: steffen@essex.ac.uk

Kate Kenny, National University of Ireland, Galway
Email: kate.kenny@nuigalway.ie

Birke Otto, University of Essex
Email: bdotto@essex.ac.uk

Sverre Spoelstra, Lund University
Email: sverre.spoelstra@fek.lu.se

References

- Arendt, H. (1958) The Human Condition. Chicago: University of  
Chicago Press.
- Aronowitz, S., D. Esposito, W. DiFazio and M. Yard (1998) 'The post- 
work manifesto', in S. Aronowitz and C.Cutler (eds) Post-Work: The  
Wages of Cybernation. London: Routledge.
- Arvidsson, A. (2007) 'The logic of the brand', European Journal of  
Economic and Social Systems, 20(1): 99-115.
- Badiou, A. (2010) The Communist Hypothesis, trans. D. Macey and S.  
Corcoran. London: Verso.
- Berardi, F. (2009) The Soul at Work: From Alienation to Autonomy,  
trans. F. Cadel and G. Mecchia. New York:Semiotext(e).
- Blauner, R. (1964) Alienation and Freedom: The Factory Worker and  
His Industry. Chigaco: University ofChicago Press.
- Böhm, S. and C. Land (2009) 'No measure for culture? Value in the  
new economy', Capital & Class, 33(1): 75-98.
- Boltanski, L. and E. Chiapello (2005) The New Spirit of Capitalism,  
trans. G. Elliott. London: Verso.
- Florida, R. (2002) The Rise of the Creative Class. New York: Basic  
Books.

- Lange, B. (2005) 'Sociospatial strategies of culturepreneurs. The  
example of Berlin and its new professionalscenes', in Zeitschrift für  
Wirtschaftsgeographie, 49(2): 81-98.- Lanz, S. (2009) 'Korridore aus  
der Marginalität: Städtisches Handeln und subkulturelle Ströme  
zwischen Rio de Janeiro und Berlin', in S. Lanz et al. (2009) Funk the  
City. Sounds und städtisches Handeln aus den Peripherien von Rio de  
Janeiro und Berlin. Berlin: bbooks.

- Maravelias, C. (2007) 'Freedom at work in the age of post- 
bureaucratic organization', ephemera, 7(4): 555-574.

- Marx, K. (1991) Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Volume  
Three, trans. D. Fernbach. London: Penguin Books.
- Ross, A. (2003) No-Collar: The Humane Workplace and Its Hidden  
Costs. New York: Basic Books.
- Sheridan, D. (2007): the Space of Subculture in the City: Getting  
Specific about Berlin's Indeterminate Territories, in: Field Journal,  
Vol 1. (1), 97-119.
- Terranova, T. (2000) 'Free labor: Producing culture for the digital  
economy', Social Text 18(2): 33-58.
- Weber, M. (2002) The Protestant Ethic and the "Spirit" of Capitalism  
and Other Writings, trans. P. Baehr and G. C. Wells. London: Penguin.

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