Dead Man Working

Dead Man Working

DEAD MAN WORKING

NEW TITLE FROM ZerO Books

Dead Man Working

By Carl Cederstrom and Peter Fleming

================

Capitalism has become strange. Ironically, while the ‘age of work’ seems to have come to an end, working has assumed a total presence – a ‘worker’s society’ in the worst sense of the term – where everyone finds themselves obsessed with it. So what does the worker tell us today? ‘I feel drained, empty – dead’; This book tells the story of the dead man working. It follows this figure through the daily tedium of the office, to the humiliating mandatory team building exercise, to awkward encounters with the funky boss who pretends to hate capitalism and tells you to be authentic. In this society, the experience of work is not of dying…but neither of living. It is one of a living death. And yet, the dead man working is nevertheless compelled to wear the exterior signs of life, to throw a pretty smile, feign enthusiasm and make a half-baked joke. When the corporation has colonized life itself, even our dreams, the question of escape becomes ever more pressing, ever more desperate.

================

‘Cederstrom and Fleming, like a present day Virgil, bravely venture into an underworld full of shades whose entire lives have been put to work, who throw themselves heart and soul into the job, and who are constantly implored by management gurus to ‘be themselves,’ ‘feel free,’ and ‘have fun’ in the office. This fascinating and dark little book is an excellent and disturbing introduction to what increasingly large realms of the world of work have become’ – Michael Hardt, Co-author of Empire, Multitude, and Commonwealth.

‘What has work done to us? Cederstrom and Fleming’s brilliant dark and witty book tells us the truth. Working in our sleep? Dressing up as infants? Deprivation tank addiction? Fitness centrers? Suicide? Email? If you didn’t already know what work has made you become then this book might have a devastating effect on your life. Read it!’ – Simon Critchley, Hans Jonas Professor, New School for Social Research.

‘Dead Man Working’ at Zero Books: http://www.zero-books.net/books/dead-man-working

**END**

 

‘I believe in the afterlife.

It starts tomorrow,

When I go to work’

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Human Herbs’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h7tUq0HjIk (live)

 

‘Maximum levels of boredom

Disguised as maximum fun’

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLjxeHvvhJQ (live, at the Belle View pub,Bangor, northWales)  

 

‘Human Herbs’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

‘Stagnant’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo  

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic

The Ockress: http://www.theockress.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Glenn Rikowski’s MySpace Blog: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski/blog

Erik Olin Wright on Worker-Owned Co-operatives

Erik Olin Wright

ERIK OLIN WRIGHT ON WORKER-OWNED CO-OPERATIVES

Worker-owned Cooperatives: A niche in capitalism or a pathway beyond?

A lecture by Professor Erik Olin Wright, University of Wisconsin

5pm-6.30pm, Wednesday 23rd May, 2012

Lecture Theatre, Department of Politics and International Relations, 
Manor Road Building, Manor Road, Oxford

Worker-owned Cooperatives have an ambiguous relationship to capitalism as an economic system. On the one hand, worker coops constitute a distinctive organizational form that occupies a small niche compatible with a well-functioning capitalist economy. On the other hand, worker-owned and managed firms violate in fundamental ways the class character of capitalism by being organized on democratic egalitarian principles. This contradictory relationship between cooperatives and capitalism poses an important question for critics of capitalism: To what extent could worker cooperatives ever constitute a significant component of an alternative to capitalism?

This lecture, hosted jointly by Oxford University’s Centre for Mutual and Employee-owned Business, Public Policy Unit and Centre for the Study of Social Justice, will explore worker-owned cooperatives, as a case of what Wright terms ‘real utopias‘. It will feature a response by Prof Stuart White (Politics) and be chaired by Dr. Will Davies (Centre for Mutual and Employee-owned Business). 

No registration is required. Please email william.davies@kellogg.ox.ac.uk for any further details about this event.

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

‘Stagnant’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo  

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

WUSA: The Journal of Labor and Society

Work

WUSA: THE JOURNAL OF LABOR AND SOCIETY

GLOBAL ECONOMIC CRISIS, LABOR MOVEMENTS AND WORKER ORGANIZATION (EDITORIAL COLLECTIVE)

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/wusa.2012.15.issue-1/issuetoc

March 2012, Volume 15, Issue 1, Pages 1-148

 

CONTEMPORARY LABOR AND CULTURAL EXCHANGE (pages 3-13)

Polina Kroik

 

TRANSNATIONAL LABOR AND AESTHETIC THEORY IN URSULA BIEMANN’S GEOBODIES VIDEO ESSAYS (pages 15-33)

Hanna Musiol

 

UNDERSTANDING GLOBALIZATION AND MIGRANCY THROUGH LITERATURE (pages 35-50)

Nandita Ghosh

 

SOLIDARITIES IN RUSSELL BANKS’S CONTINENTAL DRIFT (pages 51-66)

Joseph Entin

 

NAFTA, LABOR, AND THE RECOVERY PROJECT (pages 67-86)

Leisa Rothlisberger

 

COSMOPOLITANISM, ETHNIC BELONGING, AND AFFECTIVE LABOR: HAN ONG’S FIXER CHAO AND THE DISINHERITED (pages 87-102)

Christopher B. Patterson

 

FILIPINO WOMEN WRITERS IN ENGLISH AND THE WORK OF APPRENTICESHIP (pages 103-119)

Marites L. Mendoza

 

LABOR AND OCCUPY WALL STREET: COMMON CAUSES AND UNEASY ALLIANCES (pages 121-134)

Benjamin Heim Shepard

 

REVIEWS:

 

The Man Who Never Died: The Life, Times, and Legacy of Joe Hill, American Labor Icon – By William M. Adler (pages 135-138)

Laura Hapke

 

The Country and the City – By Raymand Williams (pages 138-140)

Houman Barekat

 

The Civil Wars in US Labor: Birth of a New Workers’ Movement or Death Throes of the Old? – By Steve Early (pages 140-144)

Paul Krehbiel

 

Live Working or Die Fighting: How the Working Class Went Global – By Paul Mason. Work and Struggle: Voices From U.S. Labor Radicalism – By Paul Le Blanc (pages 145-148)

Steve Early

 

**END**

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic

The Ockress: http://www.theockress.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Glenn Rikowski’s MySpace Blog: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski/blog

Workers, Despite Themselves

Work

WORKERS, DESPITE THEMSELVES

Call for Oapers for an ephemera issue on: ‘Workers, Despite Themselves’
Issue Editors: Stevphen Shukaitis and Abe Walker

Deadline for submissions: November 30th, 2012.

Workers’ inquiry is an approach to and practice of knowledge production that seeks to understand the changing composition of labor and its potential for revolutionary social transformation. It is the practice of turning the tools of the social sciences into weapons of class struggle. Workers’ inquiry seeks to map the continuing imposition of the class relation, not as a disinterested investigation, but rather to deepen and intensify social and political antagonisms.

The autonomist political theorist Mario Tronti argues that weapons for working class revolt have always been taken from the bosses’ arsenal (1966: 18). But, has not it often been suggested, to use feminist writer Audre Lorde’s phrasing (1984), that it is not possible to take apart the master’s house with the master’s tools? While not forgetting Lorde’s question, it is clear that Tronti said this with good reason, for he was writing from a context where this is precisely what was taking place. Italian autonomous politics greatly benefited from borrowing from sociology and industrial relations – and by using these tools proceeded to build massive cycles of struggle transforming the grounds of politics (Wright, 2003; Berardi, 2009).

Of these adaptations the most important for autonomist politics and class composition analysis is workers’ inquiry. Workers’ inquiry developed in a context marked by rapid industrialization, mass migration, and the use industrial sociology to discipline the working class. Workers’ inquiry was formulated within autonomist movements as a sort of parallel sociology, one based on a radical re-reading of Marx (and Weber) against the politics of the communist party and the unions (Farris, 2011). While the practitioners of workers’ inquiry were often professionally-trained academics – especially sociologists – its proponents argued their research differs in important ways from ‘engaged’ social science, and all varieties of industrial sociology, even if it there are similarities. If bourgeois sociology sought to smooth over conflicts, and ‘critical’ sociology to expose these same conflicts, workers’ inquiry takes the contradictions of the labor process as a starting point and seeks to draw out these antagonisms into the formation of new radical subjectivities.

This is not to say that workers’ inquiry is an unproblematic endeavor. We remain skeptical that the weapons of managerial control can be cleanly re-appropriated without reproducing the very social world they were designed to take apart. For as Steve Wright argues, “the uncritical use of such tools has frequently produced a register of subjective perceptions which do no more than mirror the surface of capitalist social relations” (2003: 24). As the legacy of analytical Marxism reveals, imitation is never far removed from flattery, and at its worst moments, workers’ inquiry risks becoming its object of critique. To be fair there are disagreements among the proponents of workers’ inquiry over the limitations of drawing from the social sciences. But to continue the metaphor, like any potentially dangerous ‘weapon’, sociological techniques must be carefully examined, and when necessary, disabled.

Today we find ourselves at a moment when co-research, participatory action research, and other heterodox methods have been adopted by the academic mainstream, while managerial styles like TQM carry a faint echo of workers’ inquiry. In the contemporary firm workers are already engaged in self-monitoring, peer interviews, and the creation of quasi-autonomous ‘research’ units, all sanctioned by management (Boltankski and Chiapello, 2005). Workers’ inquiry is now part of the accepted social science repertoire: its techniques no longer seem dangerous, but familiar, at least at the methodological level. The bosses’ arsenal now includes weapons mimicking the style, if not the substance, of workers’ inquiry. And as George Steinmetz (2005) has suggested, while blatantly positivistic research styles have fallen out of favor, this obscures the ‘positivist unconscious’ that continues to interpellate even apparently anti-positivist methodologies.

The pioneers of workers’ inquiry argued researchers must work through/against the ambivalent relations of (social) science; now, there may be no other option. Wherever there are movements organizing and addressing the horrors of capitalist exploitation and oppression, the specter of recuperation is never far behind. The point is not to deny these risks, but to the degree such dynamics confront all social movements achieving any measure of success. It is by working against and through them that recomposing radical politics becomes possible (Shukaitis, 2009). Today workers’ inquiry remains, as Raniero Panzieri claimed (2006 [1959]), a permanent reference point for autonomist politics, one that informs continuing inquiries into class composition. With this issue we seek to rethink workers’ inquiry as a practice and perspective, and through that to understand and catalyze emergent moments of political composition.

Contributors
We invite papers that update the practices of workers’ inquiry for the present moment of class de-/recomposition. Can we develop, taking up Matteo Pasquinelli’s suggestion (2008: 138), a form of workers’ inquiry applied to cognitive and biopolitical production? The very possibility of a *workers* inquiry begs reconsideration when official unemployment figures drift toward 50% among sectors of the industrial working class.

This issue picks up themes that developed in previous issues of ephemera inquiring into affective and immaterial labor (2007), digital labor (2010), militant research (2005), and the politics of the multitude (2004). We encourage submissions that draw upon this previous work, particularly on the politics of social reproduction.

Recently, workers’ inquiry has proven its versatility through new applications and reconfigurations. Groups like Colectivo Situaciones (2011) and have used the practice of workers’ inquiry to analyze popular uprisings. Scholars have drawn from class composition analysis to explore areas such as cognitive labor (Brophy, 2011; Peters & Bulut, 2011), citizenship and migration (Papadopoulos et al, 2008; Barchiesi, 2011), and finance (Marazzi, 2008; Mezzadra and Fumagalli, 2010). Militant research collectives such as Kolinko (2002), Team Colors (2010), and the Precarious Workers Brigade (2011) have employed workers’ inquiry to intervene composition of social movements and labor politics.

We are particularly interested in research that expands and/or deconstructs the project of workers’ inquiry, or that transposes workers’ inquiry onto unconventional terrain such as archival research and cultural studies. Additionally, we encourage contributors to include a substantial reflection on method, possibly addressing some of the tensions outlined above and engaging with recent debates about method and measure.

Deadline for submissions: November 30th, 2012.

Please send your submissions to the editors. All contributions should follow ephemera guidelines – see http://www.ephemeraweb.org/journal/submit.htm. In addition to full papers, we also invite notes, reviews, and other kinds and media forms of contributions – please get in touch to discuss how you would like to contribute. We highly encourage authors to send us abstracts (of 500 words) outlining their plans. The ephemera conference in May 2013 will focus on a related theme, with contributors for this issue invited to present their work.

Contacts:
Stevphen Shukaitis: stevphen@autonomedia.org
Abe Walker: awalker@qc.cuny.edu
http://www.ephemeraweb.org/

We’re also interested in putting together a panel on this theme for the Historical Materialism conference in London in November (information here: http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/conferences/annual9/call-for-papers), particularly with people who plan to submit a piece for this issue. If you are interested in this please contact Stevphen by April 20th.

References
Barchiesi, F. (2011) Precarious liberation: workers, the state, and contested social citizenship in postapartheid South Africa. Albany: SUNY Press.
Berardi, F. (2009) Precarious rhapsody: semiocapitalism and the pathologies of the post-alpha generation. London: Minor Compositions.
Boltanski, L. and E. Chiapello (2005) The new spirit of capitalism. London: Verso.
Brophy, E. (2011) “Language put to work: cognitive capitalism, call center labor, and workers inquiry,” Journal of Communication Inquiry. Volume 35 Number 4: 410-416.
Colectivo Situaciones (2011) 19&20: notes on a new social protagonism. Brooklyn / Wivenhoe: Minor Compositions.
Farris, S. (2011) “Workerism’s inimical incursions: on Mario Tronti’s Weberianism,” Historical Materialism Volume 19 Number 3: 29-62.
Kolinko (2002) Hotlines. Berlin: Kolinko. Available at www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/kolinko/lebuk/e_lebuk.htm
Lorde, A. (1984) “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house,” Sister outsider: essays and speeches. Berkeley: The Crossing Press: 110-114.
Marazzi, C. (2008) Capital & language: from new economy to war economy. New York: Semiotexte.
Mezzadra, S. and A. Fumagalli (Eds.) (2010) Crisis in the global economy: financial markets, social struggles, and new political scenarios. Los Angeles: Semiotexte.
Panzieri, R. (2006 [1959]) “Socialist uses of workers’ inquiry.” Available at http://www.generation-online.org/t/tpanzieri.htm.
Papadopoulos, D., N. Stephenson, and V. Tsianos (2008) Escape routes: control and subversion in the 21st century. London: Pluto Press.
Pasquinelli, M. (2008) Animal spirits: a bestiary of the commons. Rotterdam: NAi Publishers.
Peters, M. & E. Bulut, Eds. (2011) Cognitive capitalism, education and digital labor. New York: Peter Lang.
Precarious Workers Brigade (2011) Surviving internships: a counter guide to free labor in the arts. London: Hato Press.
Shukaitis, S. (2009) Imaginal machines: autonomy & self-organization in the revolutions of everyday life. Brooklyn: Autonomedia.
Steinmetz, G. (2005) “The genealogy of a positivist haunting: comparing pre-war and post-war U.S. sociology” boundary 2 Volume 32 Number 2: 109-135
Team Colors (Eds.) (2010) Uses of a whirlwind: movement, movements, and contemporary radical currents in the United States. Oakland: AK Press.
Tronti, M. (1966) Operai e capitale. Torino: Einaud.
Wright, S. (2003) Storming heaven: class composition and struggle in Italian autonomist marxism.London: Pluto Press.

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

‘Stagnant’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo  

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Work, Employment & Society Conference

Work

WORK, EMPLOYMENT & SOCIETY CONFERENCE

In 2012 Work, Employment and Society celebrates 25 successful years of publishing quality research in the sociology of work and employment!

To mark this landmark, we are planning a series of activities to mark the WES contributions to debates in work and employment over the last 25 years. The celebrations will culminate in a Special Issue of the journal to be published in February 2013.

The Editors are inviting submissions for consideration in the 25-year Special Issue. Submissions should either reflect on key debates launched by WES, review ‘hot topics’ of interest to scholars of work and employment or analyse the ‘direction of travel’ of the sociology of work and employment over the past 25 years. Papers that are broad in scope, review extant WES debates or re-appraise seminal WES contributions will be particularly welcome.

Read the full call for papers, including key topics of interest: http://www.britsoc.co.uk/publications/pubsvacancies.htm

Submission details:

Extended Deadline for submissions: 30 April 2012

Word limit: 8000 words (including references, abstract, keywords, images/tables)

Queries: m.a.stuart@lubs.leeds.ac.uk or irena.grugulis@durham.ac.uk

*Submit: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/wes

*Full submission instructions are available on the website on the ‘Instructions and Forms’ page. Please read these in full well before submitting your manuscript.

Interested in some of the other WES activities? Stay tuned to BSA Publications for details and look out for the February 2012 issue of WES.

 

Alison Danforth, Publications Officer, The British Sociological Association, +44 (0)191 383 0839

Visit our website at http://www.britsoc.co.uk

Find our more about our journals:

http://soc.sagepub.com

http://wes.sagepub.com

The BSA supports the Campaign for Social Science: http://www.campaignforsocialscience.org.uk/

Follow us via social networking:

http://www.facebook.com/britsoc

http://www.twitter.com/britsoci

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

‘Land and Destiny’ – A Film by Brett Story

The Island

‘LAND OF DESTINY’ – A FILM BY BRETT STORY

The Committee on Globalization and Social Change Presents

Brett Story – Filmmaker and Geographer, University of Toronto

Land of Destiny (80 minutes, 2010)

Friday, March 2nd, 2012 | 6.30 – 8.30 pm

Segal Theatre, The CUNY Graduate Center

365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY10016

A hard-working petrochemical town is rocked by revelations that its workers suffer an epidemic of cancers. But even more terrifying is the looming spectre of deindustrialization and joblessness.

Retired pipefitters serving fries, basement musicians, boilermakers and volunteer firemen, heartbroken widows and an optimistic mayor – the lives of a diverse medley of characters intersect to reveal the dramas and contradictions of an industrial town out of sync with a post-industrial economy. In the rich fabric of the city’s landscape – rows of boarded storefronts, the bright sprawl of petrochemical plants and the swollen rooms of hospital wards and crowded bars – one finds a microcosm of the 21st century. A portrait of a working-class city in paralysis and a meditation on work and place in the modern economy, Land of Destiny offers an intimate story about work, struggle, and
survival.

Brett Story is a writer, organizer, and independent documentary filmmaker based out ofToronto. She is currently working toward a PhD in geography at the University of Toronto, conducting a project about the relationship between prisons and cities.

Free and open to the public
The Committee on Globalization and Social Change Email: globalization@gc.cuny.edu
Website: http://globalization.gc.cuny.edu

**END**

 

‘I believe in the afterlife.

It starts tomorrow,

When I go to work’

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Human Herbs’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h7tUq0HjIk (live)

 

‘Maximum levels of boredom

Disguised as maximum fun’

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLjxeHvvhJQ (live, at the Belle View pub,Bangor, northWales)  

 

‘Human Herbs’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

‘Stagnant’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo  

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

‘The Lamb’ by William Blake – set to music by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw3VloKBvZc

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Anarchism and Autonomism – Call for Interventions

Autonomia

ANARCHISM AND AUTONOMISM – CALL FOR INTERVENTIONS

Call for Interventions: Anarchism & Autonomism, for the ASN 2.0 Conference ‘Making Connections’ at Loughborough University September 3rd – 5th, 2012
Coordinator: Stevphen Shukaitis (Autonomedia / University of Essex)

Over recent years anarchist and autonomist traditions of politics and analysis have proliferated in multiple and overlapping forms. While these currents are often conflated they emerge from distinct political trajectories, at times diverging over key questions.

This workshop is designed to tease out and compare the convergences, divergences, and productive tensions between these approaches. The goal is not to endlessly rehash debates between anarchism and marxism that seek to establish the superiority of one to the other, or to create a conceptual division of labor where anarchism handles ethics & tactics while marxism takes care of economics & strategy, but rather to create a space for transversal encounters ideas and practices.

Possible topics for consideration include, but are not limited to:
- The meaning and practice of autonomy today
- Communization & the commons
- Class composition & workers’ inquiry
- The refusal of work & the work of refusal
- Escape & the imperceptible politics of the undercommons
- The multitude & its dark side
- Affective labor & social reproduction
- Convergences / divergences between anarchism and autonomism
- Dialectics versus immanence
- Precarity & the autonomy of migration
- Schizoanalysis & class formation
- Anarchist and autonomist approaches to aesthetics

Send proposals of 200-500 words (along with bio and affiliation if applicable) to Stevphen Shukaitis (stevphen@autonomedia.org) by March 24th. Proposals for forms of intervention other than the reading of papers are highly encouraged.

Anarchist Studies Network: http://anarchist-studies-network.org.uk
Minor Compositions: http://www.minorcompositions.info

Stevphen Shukaitis is an editor at Autonomedia and lecturer at the University of Essex. He is the editor (with Erika Biddle and David Graeber) of Constituent Imagination: Militant Investigations // Collective Theorization (AK Press, 2007). His research focuses on the emergence of collective imagination in social movements and the changing compositions of cultural and artistic labor.

**END**

‘I believe in the afterlife.

It starts tomorrow,

When I go to work’

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Human Herbs’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h7tUq0HjIk (live)

‘Human Herbs’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

‘Stagnant’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo  

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

‘The Lamb’ by William Blake – set to music by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw3VloKBvZc

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Centre for the Study of Education and Work: Update 18th January 2012

Work

CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF EDUCATION AND WORK: UPDATE 18th JANUARY 2012

EVENTS

VIDEO & DISCUSSION – THE WAY FORWARD: RETHINKING THE PROBLEM OF WORKPLACE SEXUAL HARASSMENT

Wednesday, February 1, 2012
6:30 – 8:30 p.m.
OISE, Room 5–170
252 Bloor St. West, Toronto

Video followed by a dynamic panel discussion.

Sponsored by the Workplace Learning and Social Change Collaborative Program, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto.

+++++

LEFT BEHIND – CBC DOCUMENTARY ON INEQUALITY

Monday, January 16, 23, 30
on Ideas at 9:04 pm, CBC Radio One

Over the past 30 years, the benefits of economic growth in Canada, the US and much of the rest of the world, have gone increasingly to the top one percent of the population. For the majority of families, however, incomes have stagnated. This rise in inequality coincided with a sea change in government policy. Beginning in the 1980s, governments in much of the English-speaking world embarked on what has been called the neoliberal revolution – deregulation, privatization and tax cuts, aimed at liberating markets and stimulating the economy. The rising tide was supposed to lift all boats, but it didn’t. Jill Eisen explores what happened.

Part 2 airs on Monday, January 23, and part 3 on Jan 30.

To listen to a podcast of Part 1, click here: http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/episodes/2012/01/16/left-behind/

+++++

INTERCHANGE: EVERYONE CAN BE A PEACEBUILDER WORKSHOP

Wednesday January 25, 2012
6:00pm – 8:30pm
Ellington’s Cafe, 805 St.Clair Avenue West (http://ellingtonsmusicandcafe.com)
Suggested Fee: $30 general, $20 InterChange members, $20 students/unwaged

Everyone can be a Peacebuilder!

Please join us for a creative and participatory ‘Peace Ambassadors’ Workshop in which you will:

­- learn core peace concepts and models
­- explore the idea of “peace literacy” and how it can be promoted
­- discover your unique peacebuilding role
­- find out more about the InterChange workshops and facilitators and how these can be brought to your community
­- share your values and ideas with like-minded people
­- use the metaphor of a picnic to help spread the Culture of Peace

Food and refreshments will be provided!

Registration is limited so please e-mail in advance to reserve your spot!

To RSVP and for more information, contact community@interchange4peace.org or
http://www.interchange4peace.org

+++++

LUNCHBOX SPEAKERS’ SERIES – A GOOD FOOD SOCIAL ENTERPRISE: LEARNINGS FROM FOODSHARE

Wednesday, Jan 25, 2012
Noon – 1:30 pm
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, 252 Bloor St. West, (St. George Subway Station) Room 3-104

Zahra Parvinian, Director of Social Enterprise Programs, Alvin Rebick, Senior Manager of Kitchen and Focus on Food, and Meredith Hayes, Senior Manager of School Programs will introduce FoodShare Toronto’s social enterprise programs and discuss:  the organization’s different enterprise program models, as well as the challenges, sustainability issues, and other aspects related to running a food social enterprise.
   
*No registration required. Bring your lunch and a mug. Water, coffee, tea, and fresh-baked snacks from Lemon & Allspice will be provided.

For more information, please contact Andrea at secspeakerseries@gmail.com

Presented by the Social Economy Centre (OISE/UT) & Toronto Enterprise Fund.

This event will be webcast live on the Internet. For detailed instructions, please see our website at http://socialeconomycentre.ca/webcast-instructions
 
+++++

GREATER TORONTO WORKERS’ ASSEMBLY (GTWA) COFFEEHOUSE: OCCUPY DEBRIEF

January 27, 2012
7pm
Beit Zatoun, 612 Markham Street, Toronto

2011 – maybe it wasn’t quite 1968 but it was a year of great social upheaval. With 2011 behind us, the GTWA is holding the first in what will be a new series of Coffeehouses to discuss where we are as a movement, with this particular one featuring two local activists who were very involved in Occupy Toronto, and in particular building links between the Occupy movement and the labour movement. Is this the beginning of a new community/labour coalition that we’ve been waiting for? Will the Occupy movement be able to sustain itself and help awaken a dormant labour movement? How did the Occupy Toronto experience measure up with other Occupations? These and other issues will be topics of comradely discussion.

Speakers include two activists with the Occupy movement – Brendan Bruce and Lana Goldberg.

This Coffeehouse is organized by the Greater Toronto Workers’ Assembly Internal Education and Political Development Committee (IEPD).

+++++

NEWS AND VIEWS

CANADIAN LABOUR AT THE CROSSROADS?

By Doug Nesbitt, The Bullet

A wage cut of fifty per cent. An elimination of pensions. Cuts to benefits. These demands have inevitably led to a major showdown at a locomotive factory in London, Ontario between the 700 unionized workers of Electro-Motive Diesel (EMD) and Caterpillar, a massive U.S.-based corporation. The workers, members of Canadian Auto Workers Local 27, responded to the employer’s demands with a positive strike vote of 97 per cent. The employer, Progress Rail, a subsidiary of Caterpillar, locked out the workers on New Year’s Day.

In addition to facing down a notorious anti-union employer who hammered the American United Auto Workers in the 1990s, there are plenty of rumours about Caterpillar closing the London plant and moving operations to Muncie, Indiana. EMD workers in London make $36/hour while their counterparts in Muncie are paid only $12.50-14.50 (Cdn). Indiana is also on the cusp of becoming the first rust-belt state to introduce a “Right to Work” law, a notorious form of anti-union legislation made possible by the even more infamous Taft-Hartley law of 1947, the long-standing crown jewel of American anti-union legislation.

Read more: http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/586.php

+++++

SPECIAL ISSUE OF GUERNICA ON SCHOOLING

Here is the summary of the contents in the current issue on global education:

In this issue, we examine global education and the shifting gap between rich and poor countries. “Into this gap,” writes author Zadie Smith, “well-meaning people tend to pour in two large groups: the Church Workers and the Aid Workers.” When it comes to education, Smith writes, “there were so few people writing development stories from a human perspective. Stories that were not especially concerned with a man’s eternal soul or his statistical representation, but with his life.” Enter Writers Bloc, a group of renowned scribblers launched into far-flung corners of the globe to report humanely on schools: Aleksander Hemon on Bosnia and Herzegovina’s ethnic education enforcers; Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on Nigeria’s schools as battleground for politics; Kamila Shamsie on the struggles of education reformers in Pakistan; plus, Nathalie Handal on Haiti, two years after the earthquake. Nor is the United States spared this scrutiny. Former Gates Foundation education entrepreneur Tom Vander Ark and Waiting for Superman’s Michelle Rhee discuss why Latvia and Russia are surpassing Americans in schooling. And more great poetry, blogs, art; and for fiction–instead—a play. And Guernica launches the global education issue with a pair of events in London.

Read more: http://guernicamag.com/newsletter/newsletter_browser_Jan16.html

+++++

CALL FOR PAPERS ON COMMUNITY ORGANIZING

Call for papers:  COMM-ORG (http://comm-org.wisc.edu) is a website and list-serve that attempts to bring together theory and practice, and academics and organizers, to advance the craft of community organizing.

COMM-ORG is looking for papers to publish on the COMM-ORG Papers page (http://comm-org.wisc.edu/papers.htm). All papers are also announced on the list-serve, which reaches over 1000 people across more than a dozen nations.

COMM-ORG welcomes papers from scholars, organizers, and scholar-organizers. I also welcome previously published hard-to-find writing.  Authors retain complete control over their work, and COMM-ORG supports authors revising their papers for submission to other outlets.

To submit a paper, contact the editor, Randy Stoecker, at rstoecker@wisc.edu

+++++

OCCUPY WALL STREET: WHY NOW? WHAT’S NEXT?

Naomi Klein and Yotam Marom in conversation about Occupy Wall Street. Read more: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/10-1  

+++++
+++++
(END)

——————————————————————-

ABOUT CSEW (CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF EDUCATION & WORK, OISE/UT):

Head: Peter Sawchuk
Co-ordinator: D’Arcy Martin

The Centre for the Study of Education and Work (CSEW) brings together educators from university, union, and community settings to understand and enrich the often-undervalued informal and formal learning of working people. We develop research and teaching programs at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (UofT) that strengthen feminist, anti-racist, labour movement, and working-class perspectives on learning and work.

Our major project is APCOL: Anti-Poverty Community Organizing and Learning. This five-year project (2009-2013), funded by SSHRC-CURA, brings academics and activists together in a collaborative effort to evaluate how organizations approach issues and campaigns and use popular education. For more information about this project, visit http://www.apcol.ca

For more information about CSEW, visit: http://www.csew.ca

‘I believe in the afterlife.

It starts tomorrow,

When I go to work’

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Human Herbs’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h7tUq0HjIk (live)

‘Maximum levels of boredom

Disguised as maximum fun’

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLjxeHvvhJQ (live, at the Belle View pub, Bangor, north Wales)  

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a new song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic

The Ockress: http://www.theockress.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

The Global Emancipation of Labour

Global Power

THE GLOBAL EMANICIPATION OF LABOUR

Call for Papers: Volume 4 Issue 2 of Interface: A Journal for and about social movements 

Special Issue Theme: For the global emancipation of labour: new movements and struggles around work, workers and precarity

Special issue editors: Elizabeth Humphrys, Peter Waterman, Alice Mattoni, Ana Margarida Esteves

See: http://www.interfacejournal.net/2011/06/call-for-papers-volume-4-issue-2-for-the-global-emancipation-of-labour-new-movements-and-struggles-around-work-workers-and-precarity/

Once, the labour movement was seen as the international social movement for the left (and it was the spectre haunting capitalism). Over the last century, however, labour movements have been transformed. In most of the world membership rates have dwindled, and many act in defence of, or simply provide services to, their members in the spirit of interest or lobbying groups. Labour was once a broad social movement including cooperatives, socialist parties, women’s and youth wings, press and publications, cultural production and sporting clubs. Often it was at the core of movements for democracy or national independence, even of social revolution. Despite the rhetoric of ‘socialism’, ‘class and mass trade unionism’ or, alternatively, technocratic ‘organising strategies’, most union movements internationally operate strictly within the parameters of capitalism and the ideology of ‘social partnership’ (i.e. with and under capital and state).

New labour organising efforts are increasingly moving beyond traditional trade union forms, dependence on the state or parties of the left, and have found new forms linked to ethnic or geographical communities, working women, precarious workers, migrants and other radical-democratic social movements.

These changes may relate to the neoliberalisation and ‘globalization’ of capitalism, and its result in restructured industry and employment. They may also relate to the consequent disorientation of the left. Transformations at the political and economic level have not, however, meant the disappearance of labour movement. Multiple new expressions of labour discontent arise from the bases and the margins of the world of work.

New forms of organising and/or a revival?

Firstly, from the bases we find movements of workers, often in alliance with local communities or other social movements. They are to be found not only in advanced industrial and postindustrial economies, but also — more dramatically — at the capitalist periphery. Labour movements were important in the recent Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings. In the world’s second biggest economy, China, labour has been flexing its muscles in the most repressive and difficult of circumstances. Labour struggle has also begun to revive in the United States, and in the most dramatic fashion with the occupation of the legislature in Wisconsin.

Secondly, we see those who are situated at the margins of labour markets and who experience continuous uncertainty. Increasingly addressed as the ‘precariat’, this includes both high-skilled and low-skilled workers in the rich metropoles of the global North as well as in the slums and fields of the global South. The precarious are younger people, women and migrants, but increasingly those previously full-time workers whose rights and conditions are under attack due to the current economic crisis.

New and emergent movements are taking place at the local, national and transnational level, signaling the ongoing transformation of workers’ struggle all over the world. As capitalism reorganises, expands and reinvents, so too does resistance to its exploitation and subjugation. Some trade unions have encountered difficulty in working amongst workers who do not conform to the model of the full-time, male, family-wage-earning worker, and are seeking new ways of mobilizing and organising. This has been equally true amongst landless workers inBrazil, as with ‘undocumented’ or ‘excluded’ labour in California. Both at the bases and at the margins of the labour realms, women, men and youth are experimenting with radical new forms of struggle, new demands, new places / spaces of articulation, and perhaps re-discovering or re-inventing a global movement for ‘the emancipation of labour’.

Some places to start?

This issue of Interface: a journal for and about social movements seeks to reflect both this immense richness of experiences and the attempt to articulate what has been learnt in one place in ways that may be useful for activists elsewhere. We are looking for articles that tackle questions such as:

How are the geography and politics of labour struggles changing in the 21st century?

What use, and clarity, is there in the distinction between ‘old’ (labour) and ‘new’ social movements?

Is the historically central link with political parties and the state dead or can it be reinvented, and if so, how?

Have strategies such as ‘social movement unionism’, ‘community unionism’, ‘bio-syndicalism’, recognising precarity or movements organising informal workers been effective and how far? Where and to what extent are they successful?

What are the strengths and limits of labour organising among those for whom wage labour is only a part of their livelihood?

What are the relationships between trade unions on the one hand, and on the other hand solidarity economy movements, organisations working with precarious and unemployed workers, and identity- or community-based groups and the labour movement?

How are trade unionists engaging, or failing to engage, with the global justice and solidarity movement?

Are there new trade union or labour internationalism(s), and what form or forms demonstrate this?

What is the significance of information and communication technology (ICT), ‘knowledge workers’ and labour’s own cyberspace activities to such new worker movements?

We intend to explore such matters in this special issue of the new open-access, online, copyleft academic/activist journal, Interface: a Journal for and about Social Movements:  (http://www.interfacejournal.net/).

General submissions

Finally, as in all issues of Interface, we will accept submissions on topics that are not related to the special theme of the issue, but that emerge from or focus on movements around the world and the immense amount of knowledge that they generate. Such general submissions should contribute to the journal’s mission as a tool to help our movements learn from each other’s struggles, by developing analyses from specific movement processes and experiences that can be translated into a form useful for other movements.

In this context, we welcome contributions by movement participants and academics who are developing movement-relevant theory and research. Our goal is to include material that can be used in a range of ways by movements — in terms of its content, its language, its purpose and its form. We thus seek work in a range of different formats, such as conventional articles, review essays, facilitated discussions and interviews, action notes, teaching notes, key documents and analysis, book reviews — and beyond. Both activist and academic peers review research contributions, and other material is sympathetically edited by peers. The editorial process generally is geared towards assisting authors to find ways of expressing their understanding, so that we all can be heard across geographical, social and political distances.

We can accept material in Afrikaans, Arabic, Catalan, Croatian, Danish, English, French, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Latvian, Maltese, Norwegian, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish and Zulu. Please see our editorial contacts page for details of who to submit to.

Deadline and contact details

The deadline for initial submissions to this issue, to be published November 2012, is May 1 2012. For details of how to submit to Interface, please see the ‘Guidelines for contributors’. All manuscripts, whether on the special theme or other topics, should be sent to the appropriate regional editor. Submission templates are available online via the guidelines page.

 

Elizabeth Humphrys

Oceania &South-East AsiaEditor

lizhumphrys@me.com

**END**

 

‘I believe in the afterlife.

It starts tomorrow,

When I go to work’

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Human Herbs’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h7tUq0HjIk (live)

 

‘Maximum levels of boredom

Disguised as maximum fun’

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLjxeHvvhJQ (live, at the Belle View pub, Bangor, north Wales)  

 

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a new song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

ESRC Seminar Series on Global Labour Regulation

Work

ESRC SEMINAR ON GLOBAL LABOUR REGUALTION

ESRC Seminar Series ‘Beyond Labour Regulation’
Constructing Research Agendas

Monday January 16th 2012, The Boardroom, College Building, Middlesex University, Hendon, London NW4 4BT, 10am to 5 pm

This ESRC Seminar Series hosted by Middlesex University has brought together academics and practitioners to examine changing global regulation of labour standards. The seminars were organised by a team at Middlesex University including Professor Martin Upchurch, Professor Richard Croucher, Elizabeth Cotton and Professor Joshua Castellino. Professor Miguel Martinez Lucio Manchester University) and Dr. Conor Cradden (University of  Geneva) helped with organisation at the Liverpool and Geneva seminars respectively. Our first seminar took place at Middlesex University, London in January 2010 and examined the problems of Contract and Agency labour.

Participants included academics, practitioners from General Union Federations, and activists within global supply chains. The second seminar, on Migration and Labour Regulation, was held in the Liverpool in the International Slavery Museum in September 2010. Speakers included representatives of major institutions concerned with migration and migrant workers, migrant worker groups, and academics. Case studies were presented of problems facing migrant workers from across the world. The third seminar was on the problems of labour regulation caused by Private Equity, and was held in June 2011 at the Universityof Geneva. Our final seminar will be held at Middlesex University, London on January 16th 2012, and will attempt to bring together previous seminar participants and others interested in collaborating with new research to explore further areas of ‘beyond labour regulation’.

Research Agendas Seminar: Monday January 16th, 2012
‘What We Should be Researching and Why’

Panel Discussion led by

Miguel Martinez Lucio (Professor of International HRM at Manchester University), and co-editor with Luis Enrique Alonso of Employment Relations in a Changing Society, Palgrave, 2006.

Kevin Doogan (Professor of European Policy Studies at the University of Bristol), and author of New Capitalism, The Transformation of Work?, Wiley, 2009

Julie Froud (Professor of Financial Innovation at Manchester University) and co-author of Financialization at Work, Routledge, 2008

Joshua Castellino (Professor of Law at Middlesex University) and co-author of Minority Rights in Asia, OUP, 2006

Sonia McKay (Professor of European Socio-Legal Studies at London Metroolitan University) and author of Refugees, recent migrants and employment: challenging barriers and exploring path ways, Routledge, 2008

Plus Practitioner Forum, with invited speakers from NGOs, trade unions, and policy organisations in the field of global labour regulation.
If you are interested in attending the seminar, please contact Professor Martin Upchurch (m.upchurch@mdx.ac.uk) or the Seminar Series administrator Denise Arden (d.arden@mdx.ac.uk).

There is no registration fee, refreshments for the all day seminar will be provided, but please book places in advance: http://www.globalworkonline.net/blog/beyondlabour/

Martin Upchurch
Professor of International Employment Relations
Middlesex University Business School
The Burroughs
Hendon
London NW4 4BT
07545 487952
m.upchurch@mdx.ac.uk<mailto:m.upchurch@mdx.ac.uk>
Global Work and Employment Project (GWEp)
http://www.mdx.ac.uk/research/areas/HR/gwep/index.aspx

Globalisation and Work Facebook Group: http://www.facebook.com/#/group.php?gid=238371095227&ref=ts
http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#/group.php?gid=238371095227&ref=ts http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home%23/group.php?gid=238371095227&ref=ts

**END**

 

‘I believe in the afterlife.

It starts tomorrow,

When I go to work’

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Human Herbs’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h7tUq0HjIk (live)

 

‘Maximum levels of boredom

Disguised as maximum fun’

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLjxeHvvhJQ (live, at the Belle View pub, Bangor, north Wales)  

 

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a new song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Cognitive Capitalism, Education and Digital Labor

Cognitive Capitalism

COGNITIVE CAPITALISM, EDUCATION AND DIGITAL LABOR – MICHAEL PETERS & ERGIN BULUT

Michael A. Peters & Ergin Bulut (eds.)
Cognitive Capitalism, Education and Digital Labor 
Year of Publication: 2011 
Peter Lang Publishing Group
New York, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, Oxford, Wien,
2011. XLII, 341 pp.
ISBN 978-1-4331-0981-2 pb. 

http://www.peterlang.com/index.cfm?event=cmp.ccc.seitenstruktur.detailseiten&seitentyp=produkt&pk=54297&concordeid=310981

Contents: 

Antonio Negri: Foreword 

Michael A. Peters & Ergin Bulut: Introduction 

Timothy Brennan: Intellectual Labor 

George Caffentzis: A Critique of Cognitive Capitalism

Silvia Federici: On Affective Labor 

Christian Fuchs: Cognitive Capitalism or Informational Capitalism? The Role of Class in the Information Economy 

Jonathan Beller: Cognitive Capitalist Pedagogy and Its Discontents 

Ergin Bulut: Creative Economy: Seeds of Social Collaboration or Capital’s Hunt for General Intellect and Imagination? 

Mark Coté / Jennifer Pybus: Learning to Immaterial Labour 2.0: Facebook and Social Networks 

Emma Dowling: Pedagogies of Cognitive Capitalism – Challenging the Critical Subject 

Alex Means: Creativity as an Educational Problematic within the Biopolitical Economy

Toby Miller: For Fun, For Profit, For Empire: The University and Electronic Games 

Michael A. Peters: Algorithmic Capitalism and Educational Futures 

Alberto Toscano: The Limits of Autonomy: Cognitive Capitalism and University Struggles 

Nick Dyer-Witheford: In the Ruined Laboratory of Futuristic Accumulation: Immaterial Labour and the University Crisis 

Tahir Wood: The Confinement of Academic Freedom and Critical Thinking in a Changing Corporate World: South African Universities 

Cameron McCarthy: Afterword. The Unmaking of Education in the Age of Globalization, Neoliberalism and Information

About the author(s)/editor(s)

Michael A. Peters is Professor of Education at the University of Waikato (New Zealand) and Emeritus Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the executive editor of Educational Philosophy and Theory and editor of two international e-journals, Policy Futures in Education and E-Learning. His interests are in education, philosophy and social policy and he has written over fifty books, including Creativity and the Global Knowledge Economy (Lang, 2009) (with Simon Marginson and Peter Murphy).

Ergin Bulut is a PhD candidate at the Institute of Communications Research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is interested in political economy of labor and its intersection with education, communication and culture. 

Reviews

“Cognitive Capitalism, Education and Digital Labor’ provides us with a series of very thoughtful and provocative analyses of the relationship among political economy, education and new forms of knowledge and labor. It is definitely worth reading and then discussing its implications at length.” (Michael W. Apple, John Bascom Professor of Curriculum and Instruction and Educational Policy Studies, University of Wisconsin, Madison)

“This volume is a ‘tour de force’. Through its chapters, a new space is opened for understanding education in the contemporary world. With an magisterial introduction by its indefatigable editor, Michael A. Peters, and his colleague Ergin Bulut, ‘Cognitive Capitalism, Education and Digital Labor’ implicitly shows the limitations of postmodernism and offers a large conceptual framework that will surely be mined and critically examined for some years to come.” (Ronald Barnett, Emeritus Professor of Higher Education, Institute of Education, London)

“‘Cognitive Capitalism, Education and Digital Labor’ is extraordinarily instructive in studying the living bestiary of capitalism, a provocative text that enervates capitalism through helping us cultivate our critical faculties creatively and exultantly in the service of its demise. An important advance in our understanding the production of subjectivity in capitalist societies.” (Peter McLaren, School of Critical Studies in Education, Faculty of Education, University of Auckland)

“This valuable, lithe volume explores the ever-evolving, mutating forms of capitalism. It is a work of craft, intelligence and provocation. It reflects on some of the most important subterranean trends in contemporary societies. These unite the material and the immaterial, biology and power, economics and education. The contributors parse the intersections of intellectual and physical labour, paid and unpaid work, labour and pedagogy, research and gaming, free information and multi-national corporations, autonomy and liberalism, accumulation and enclosure, class and creativity. They do so with verve, steel and tenacious insight.” (Peter Murphy, Professor of Creative Arts and Social Aesthetics, James Cook University)

“If you read just a single book in the field of educational theory this year, make sure it’s this one. Drawing on the rich tradition of Marxist autonomism, the contributors pinpoint what the transmutation of labor and opening of new domains of class struggle under cognitive capitalism mean for education. The editors have assembled an impressive team, all accomplished scholars adept at envisioning changes in the sites and forms of knowledge-making, acquisition and contestation. For anyone interested in the educational implications of technologically-driven shifts in capitalism’s socio-economic structures, this is the volume to buy. Brimming with insight, balanced and lively – it will attract attention from scholars and students well beyond the confines of education faculties.” (James Reveley, Associate Professor, Faculty of Commerce, University of Wollongong)

“We have now for some time been undergoing intense technological and social revolutions that transformed the nature of labor, education and the capitalist economy. Peters and Bulut and their collaborators in ‘Cognitive Capitalism, Education and Digital Labor’ chart out the changes in the new economy and social life and explore its consequences for education. All educators and those concerned with transformations of contemporary culture and society should be concerned with these issues and learn from this book.” (Douglas Kellner, UCLA; Author of ‘Guys and Guns Amok’ and ‘Media Spectacle and the Crisis of Democracy’)

“The mainstream discourse of the knowledge economy is empty. The digital-Taylorist routinisation of much of the work that was once the preserve of knowledge workers and the offshoring of knowledge jobs to countries where skilled labour is much cheaper have given the game away. But it would be wrong to assume that the electronic/IT revolution has not changed our lives and our labour when it clearly has. This outstanding collection raises fundamental questions about knowledge, the role of education and labour in the digital world. It brings current debates to a new level and should be read by students, academics and policy makers across the globe.” (Hugh Lauder, Professor of Education and Political Economy, University of Bath)

“’Cognitive Capitalism, Education and Digital Labor’ presents a new theory of capitalism and digital labor. It is a very valuable resource and will spark an industry of debate and elaboration. This book presents such a wealth of diverse material that any reader will find something new and challenging, and each chapter in this collection makes a welcome contribution to the growing literature in the field.” (George Lazaroiu, Principal Research Fellow, Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences, New York)

“Cognitive capitalism is a crucial category for conceptualizing the workings of contemporary globalization. Using the theories of the Italian Autonomist Marxist tradition, or ‘operaismo’, Peters and Bulut along with the other authors in this collection present important, fascinating insights into capitalism, education and labor today. It should be read immediately by anyone concerned about how the daily practices of education prepare the multitude for the travails of their immaterial and material labor.” (Timothy W. Luke, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University)

“Peters and Bulut have provided us with a brilliant set of papers that take us to the heart of the political economy. Under ‘cognitive capitalism’ subjectivity is both the realm of freedom and the source of value, raising the stakes in control (governmentality). Hence the continuing fecundity of interpretations at the intersection of Marx/Foucault/Deleuze. We experience both larger productive community and heightened public surveillance, together with unsolvable tensions in education and research. But this book also reminds us that the circuits of cognitive capitalism continue to rest on a mountain of physical commodities, generated largely in the emerging economies and subject to more traditional (and more traditionally Marxist) forms of manufacture, energy consumption and hyper-exploitation of labour.” (Simon Marginson, Centre for the Study of Higher Education, University of Melbourne, Australia)

“Education cannot be understood outside of the diverse national and global forces in which it is situated, including the increasing separation of power from local politics. This book brings together a number of first-rate theorists in making clear the relationship among knowledge, power and digital labor. The book is a tour de force for anyone interested in the new registers of power that are now shaping education on a global level. This is an important book and should be put on the class list of every educator who views education central to politics.” (Henry A. Giroux, Global Television Network Chair Professor, English and Cultural Studies Department, McMaster University)

“The exceptional contributions assembled for this timely volume carefully anatomize – and critically question – the category of cognitive capitalism and its composition. This book is a major resource for a generation of academic workers with a very real stake in developments, conflicts and debates surrounding the edu-factory.” (Greig de Peuter, Co-author of  ‘Games of Empire’).

**END**

‘I believe in the afterlife.

It starts tomorrow,

When I go to work’

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Human Herbs’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h7tUq0HjIk (live)

‘Maximum levels of boredom

Disguised as maximum fun’

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLjxeHvvhJQ (live, at the Belle View pub, Bangor, north Wales)  

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a new song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

The Ockress: http://www.theockress.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Centre for the Study of Education and Work – Update 25th November 2011

Work

CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF EDUCATION AND WORK – UPDATE 25th NOVEMBER 2011

EVENTS

CLiFF TORONTO (CANADIAN LABOUR INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL) – DAY 3 AND 4 (NOV. 26-27)

Imagine a world where thousands of films are made about workers and the conditions under which they live, work, fight, and succeed in their daily lives!

2009 marked the first-ever Canadian Labour International Film Festival (CLiFF). This also marked the first ever labour-oriented film festival in Canada.

See the 2011 CLiFF Toronto schedule here: http://labourfilms.ca/?page_id=2031

Just added!
Labour and the Occupy Movement
What is the connection between Labour and the Occupy Movement? Come and join a discussion at CLiFF Toronto with Jesse McLaren – doctor, socialist, and activist, who has been an active participant among the organizers at Occupy Toronto.

Saturday, November 26, 7:00 PM
Innis Town Hall
2 Sussex Avenue, Toronto
5 minutes south of St. George subway
(wheelchair accessible)

+++++

BOOK LAUNCH – BRAVE NEW TEACHERS: DOING SOCIAL JUSTICE WORK IN NEO-LIBERAL TIMES

For 15 years York University’s Urban Diversity teacher education program has been training teachers with an equity, diversity and social justice focus. The founder of the program, Dr. Patrick Solomon, died in October, 2008. Before his death he saw the need for a study of the impact of the program on its graduates.  He carried out this study with a group of associates and the result is this book.

Book:  Brave New Teachers: Doing Social Justice Work in Neo-liberal Times
Authors:  Patrick Solomon, Jordan Singer, Arlene Campbell, and Andrew Allen
Publisher:  Canadian Scholars’ Press

When: December 1    5:30 – 8:00
Where: OISE Library
Panel: Jordan Singer, Andrew Allen, Sharron Rosen, Karen Murray
Moderator: John Portelli
Light refreshments

For more info: http://bit.ly/uffEZi

+++++

OUR TIMES MAGAZINE 30TH ANNIVERSARY PARTY

Our Times, Canada’s independent, bi-monthly labour magazine, is 30 years old this year, and we’re throwing a party to celebrate three decades of stories about workers’ rights and social justice. Please join us on December 3 at the Steelworkers Hall ( 25 Cecil Street ) in Toronto. Doors open at 7 p.m.

The celebration will include a light buffet, cash bar, silent auction, and a whole lot of dancing.

Our guest speaker is NDP MP Rathika Sitsabaiesan.

Rabia Syed’s talented children “HHSB” will do a number about Our Times early in the evening. Don’t miss them! And Jojo Geronimo and company will present a brief but creative verdict from the recent People vs. Harper People’s Court.

To wrap things up before we dance the night away, members from Toronto’s beloved Common Thread Community Chorus will sing songs with us to raise the rafters, including “Carry It On” in honour of Jack Layton’s wish that we all retain our love, hope and optimism in the struggles ahead for justice and dignity for all.

ACTRA member Bryn McAuley (on the cover of the current issue of Our Times) will be MCing the event, along with Our Times advisory board member Jorge Garcia-Orgales. It’s going to be a blast!

Tickets $50. Available in advance. (For students, low-waged and unwaged there is a $20 or pay-what-you-can option.)

You can get your party invitation online at http://www.ourtimes.ca

For more information or to buy tickets send an email to staff@ourtimes.ca or call 416.703.7661. Toll-free: 1.800.648.6131.

Hope to see you there!

+++++
+++++

NEWS AND VIEWS

NEW CCPA PUBLICATION – OUR SCHOOLS, OUR SELVES: INSTRUMENTS OF SOCIAL CHANGE

The fall 2011 issue of Our Schools/Our Selves asks: “If schools are truly to be instruments of social change, how we can ensure that the change we build together is inclusive, empathetic, just and empowering; that it serves students, educators and communities; that it broadens horizons rather than narrowing them; and finally, that its “strings” connect and engage rather than bind and limit?”

“The violin is a powerful image — strings and bridges evoke the act of making connections between students and their classrooms, and between schools and wider communities — and is a useful starting point into an exploration of what we must help schools do in order to build progress in a range of areas: gender equity; creating sustainable communities; media education and analysis; a school system that values experience, and cultural and social relevancy over standardization and evaluation; social justice, and accountable public institutions.”

For more info and to order: http://bit.ly/vPqNBE

+++++

BEHIND THE NUMBERS

CCPA’s national blog, Behind the Numbers, delivers timely, progressive commentary on issues that affect Canadians, including the economy, poverty, inequality, climate change, budgets, taxes, public services, employment and much more. Go behind the numbers with these latest posts:

- Naomi Klein on Capitalism vs. the Climate, by Erika Shaker
- A Progressive Alternative to the Harper Agenda, by Andrew Jackson
- Challenging Capitalism: a 12-step program, by Marc Lee
- The Mowat Centre and Employment Insurance, by Andrew Jackson
- An Inconvenient Occupation, by Christopher Majka
- Who Occupies the Skies? by Marc Lee

Visit the blog: http://www.behindthenumbers.ca/

+++++

THE OCCUPY MOVEMENT: A LESSON IN THE RISK OF INEQUALITY

Maytree Opinion, November 2011
By Alan Broadbent

The Occupy movement may be the harbinger of more serious discontent, writes Alan Broadbent in this month’s Maytree Opinion. The gap between society’s richest and poorest has indeed been growing. And in the developed world the middle class is all but disappearing. This inequality breeds instability which can have unpredictable outcomes. But we can find solutions in the work of think tanks such as Caledon, Mowat and others.

Read more: http://bit.ly/tjvVjQ
+++++
+++++
(END)

ABOUT CSEW (CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF EDUCATION & WORK, OISE/UT):
Head: Peter Sawchuk
Co-ordinator: D’Arcy Martin

The Centre for the Study of Education and Work (CSEW) brings together educators from university, union, and community settings to understand and enrich the often-undervalued informal and formal learning of working people. We develop research and teaching programs at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (UofT) that strengthen feminist, anti-racist, labour movement, and working-class perspectives on learning and work.

Our major project is APCOL: Anti-Poverty Community Organizing and Learning. This five-year project (2009-2013), funded by SSHRC-CURA, brings academics and activists together in a collaborative effort to evaluate how organizations approach issues and campaigns and use popular education. For more information about this project, visit http://www.apcol.ca

For more information about CSEW, visit: http://www.csew.ca

 

 

**END**

 

‘I believe in the afterlife.

It starts tomorrow,

When I go to work’

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Human Herbs’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h7tUq0HjIk (live)

 

‘Maximum levels of boredom

Disguised as maximum fun’

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLjxeHvvhJQ (live, at the Belle View pub, Bangor, north Wales)  

 

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a new song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

The Ockress: http://www.theockress.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com