<nettime> Networked Labour Seminar Report

[Orsan Senalp <orsan1234@gmail.com>]

          [Also To: esf-l-and-g <Esf-l-and-g@lists.contrast.org>, 
          "WSF L&G" <wsf-l-and-g@lists.contrast.org>, 
          network@lists.contrast.org -- mod (tb)]


Seminar Report Networking for the Emancipation of Labour
 By Orsan Senalp<http://transform-network.net/en/blog/blog-2013/news/author/Blog//314.html>

Supported by transform! europe, Transnational Institute, Networked Politics
and IGOPNet, an international seminar on Networked Labour was held in
Amsterdam from 7 to 9 May.

Around 25 activists, practitioners, researchers and theorists from various
networks , organisations and backgrounds came together to contribute to the
on-going debates on the changing nature of the capitalist modes of
production, linking it to emerging new social forces and political actors.

The program of the seminar was constructed in an open sourced way. The
?code? draft program was designed and shared online prior to the event.
According to it, the focus was the impact of internet and telecommunication
on production modes, *work organisation, and political protest and
organisation.*

Michel Bauwens, one of the participants, formulated the underlying question
of the seminar ?How to take labour out of the market??. Participants from
the Netherlands, the UK, France, Spain, Italy, Greece, Germany, Austria and
the US have built a collective and collaborative space in which labour and
possibilities for its emancipation from contemporary capitalism were
re-thought openly and creatively.

The first day of the seminar was devoted to get to know each other.
Informal chats sparked lively interactions during the opening lunch.
Participants agreed to start with introductory rounds with a focus on
participants? current work and interests. The participants were asked to
provide one question or issue to be further discussed in the following days
(See below link to a document with some items resulting from the two
introduction rounds).

At the end of the day, four thematic clusters were formulated: New value
creation and production practices, new subjectivities, new organisational
forms, issues related to state-regulation-power.

On the second day the debate started with a discussion addressing the new
value creation practices. Michel Bauwens, Jakob Rigi and Marco Berlinguer
gave the opening interventions. Each intervention was followed by an open
debate. The next cluster was on new subjectivities. Richard Barbrook,
Melissa Gregg, and Phoebe Moore made presentations to start up the round.
To open up the third session Sol Trumbo, Paolo Gerbaudo, and Peter Waterman
made their interventions.

The third day started with issues related to state, power and regulation.
Robin Murray and Selcuk Balamir gave the opening presentations, and Michel
Bauwens reacted by providing a template for governing the global commons,
including labour. The final session was dedicated to talk about ?what is to
be done!? ? in order to draw a road map to continue with the fruitful
production.

Further steps were identified to carry the ideas and energies coming out
from the seminar into our daily practices, research, organisational efforts
and activism. A concrete accessible publication has been drafted and ideas
have been collected to improve the website as an open platform which would
ideally serve as an effective tool for the continuation of exchange and
spreading its outcomes.

The spirits of Networked Politics encounters were back!

Website: www.networkedlabour.net

Document: http://transform-network.net/uploads/tx_news/Networked_Labour.pdf


#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime>  is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org