From Economic Science Fiction to Labor as Commons
21 June 2019 – Middlesex University, Hendon Town Hall, Committee Room 1 -9:30-5:30
As suggested by William Davies et al. in the edited anthology Economic Science Fictions (2018), capitalism might be reconceptualised as an eminently fictional form of how social life should be organised that bears little relations to actual societal needs. Currently, around the globe we have seen the emergence of alternative, non-capitalist production models based on principles of worker democracy, self-management, horizontal decision-making that are emancipatory and solidaristic in nature. This conference, hosted by the Alternative Organisations and Transformative Practices Research Group at Middlesex University, London seeks to brings together the two parallel literatures of ‘economic science fictions’ and ‘labour as commons’ into dialogue by inviting the speakers and the audience to inquire into how can society move away from this dystopian economic science fiction via the practice of the labour commons. Register online here to reserve your place (£10/£5 fee includes lunch and refreshments and wine reception).
You can register here: http://www.tiny.cc/1ctu6y Join the facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/331338087556073/
9.30-10am Registration and Coffee
10-10.15am Welcome message
Dr Nico Pizzolato and Dr Daniel Ozarow. AOTP Convenors
10.15-11.30am Panel 1: From workplace Democracy to Labour Commons
Professor Martin Upchurch – Middlesex University, London
The Social and Economic Origins of Utopianism and Workers Control within the British Labour Movement
Sara Lafuente Hernandez, PhD Candidate, European Trade Union Institute, Assessing forms of democracy at work: why, what and how
Dr Cian McMahon, NUI Galway
Peace, Partnership, and Neoliberalism: The Irish Worker Coop Development Experience
Professor Marek Korczynski and Dr Andreas Wittel, Nottingham Trent University – The Workplace Commons: Towards Understanding and Mapping Commoning within Work Relations
11.30-11.45am Break and Coffee
11.45-1.15pm Panel 2: Workers’ Control in Greece and Argentina
Professor Verity Burgmann, Monash University, Australia
Labour as a Commons in the Twenty-First Century: Factories without Bosses in Argentina and Greece
Marco Gottero PhD Candidate, DeMontfort University, Leicester
‘Come together’: workers prefiguring a utopian, yet non-fictional, society
Orestis Varkarolis, PhD Candidate, Nottingham Trent University
Dr George Kokkinidis, University of Leicester
Establishing a meta-organization as commoning ‘labour as commons’
1.15-2pm Lunch
2-3pm World Café – Participatory activity for all attendees.
If economics is a form of fiction, how can labour emancipate itself from this fiction, return to its essence, and reclaim a non-fictional economy?
3-4.15pm Panel 3 Post-Capitalism
Dr Demet S. Dinler – University of Sussex
Imagining Post-Capitalist Exchange Organisations: Ethnographic Insights from the Turkish Cut Flower Cooperative and its Auctions
Dr William Monteith – Queen Mary University of London
Ordinary work in the post-wage economy: Reflections from a Ugandan marketplace
Dr Joseph Walton – University of Sussex
Science Fiction, Participatory Economics, and the Division of Labour
4.15-4.30pm Break and Coffee
4.30-5.15pm Keynote Speaker
Dr Dario Azzellini, (ILR School at Cornell University, USA)
Back to the Future
5.15-5.30pm Closing Remarks
Dr Nico Pizzolato and Dr Daniel Ozarow. AOTP Convenors
Post Conference Reception
