> > I have not seen many studies of labour / work in the WP-WM context
Genuinely curious: Would the ~25-50 papers per year studying work practices in Wikipedia/Wikimedia published in ACM human-computer interaction spaces each year not meet the definition? E.g. - https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=wikipedia+work&btnG=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C24 - https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=wikipedia+labor&btnG=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C24 -Aaron On Mon, Jun 8, 2015 at 7:12 AM, Mathieu ONeil <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi all > > I have not seen many studies of labour / work in the WP-WM context so I > thought this may be of interest to some? > > cheers > > Mathieu > > =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= > > <apologies if you receive this message more than once> > > CFP Journal of Peer Production: Work and peer production > Editors: Phoebe Moore (Middlesex University London), Mathieu O’Neil > (University of Canberra), Stefano Zacchiroli (University Paris Diderot) > > The rise in the usage and delivery capacity of the Internet in the 1990s > has led to the development of massively distributed online projects where > self-governing volunteers collaboratively produce public goods. Notable > examples include Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) projects such as > Debian and GNOME, as well as the Wikipedia encyclopedia. These distributed > practices have been characterised as peer production, crowdsourcing, mass > customization, social production, co-configurative work, playbour, > user-generated content, wikinomics, open innovation, participatory culture, > produsage, and the wisdom of the crowd, amongst other terms. In peer > production, labour is communal and outputs are orientated towards the > further expansion of the commons, an ecology of production that aims to > defy and resist the hierarchies and rules of ownership that drive > productive models within capitalism (Moore, 2011); while the commons, > recursively, are the chief resource in this mode of production (Söderberg & > O’Neil, 2014). > > Peer projects are ‘ethical’ as participation is primarily motivated by > self-fulfillment and validated by a community of peers, rather than by > earning wages. Their governance is ‘modular’, understood in a design sense > (decomposable blocks sharing a common interface), but also in > political-economy terms: participants oppose restricted ownership and > control by individually socializing their works into commons. Conflicting > interpretations of their societal impact have been articulated (O’Neil, > 2015). Skeptics view the abjuration of exclusive property rights over the > goods they produce as irrelevant, and ethical-modular projects as > increasing worker exploitation: participants’ passionate labour occurs at > the expense of less fortunate others, who do not have the disposable > income, cultural capital, or family support to engage in unpaid labour > (Moore & Taylor, 2009; Huws, 2013). In contrast, reformists, often hailing > from a management perspective, suggest that the co-optation of communal > labour by firms will improve business practices and society (Arvidsson, > 2008; Demil et al., 2015). Finally activists celebrate the abjuration of > exclusive property rights, and present ethical-modular projects as key > actors in a historical process leading to the supersession of capitalism > and hierarchy (Kostakis & Bauwens, 2014). > > This last perspective raises a central challenge, which is the avoidance > of purely utopian thinking. In other words, how can commons-based peer > production reach deeply into daily life? How can ‘already existing > non-capitalist economic processes’ be strengthened, ‘new non-capitalist > enterprises’ be built, and ‘communal subjects’ be established > (Gibson-Graham, 2003: 157)? An increasingly large free public goods and > services sector could well cohabit in a plural economy with employment in > cooperatives, paid independent work, and the wage-earning of the commercial > sector. However analysis of peer production typically eschews mundane > considerations such as living wages, benefits, job security, working > conditions, work-induced medical conditions, and debates on labour > organization. How can peer production operate as a sustainable practice > enabling people to live, if labour and work issues are not formally > addressed? > > To advance this agenda, the tenth issue of the Journal of Peer Production, > titled Peer Production and Work, calls for papers in two linked areas: > > *Peer production in a paid work society* > Nowadays firms attempt to monetize crowdsourced labour. The paradigmatic > example is Amazon’s Mechanical Turk labourers (popularly known as > ‘Turkers’, ‘cloud workers’ or ‘click workers’) who accomplish micro-tasks > such as tagging and labeling images, transcribing audio or video > recordings, and categorizing products. This extreme modularization of work > results in their status being that of independent contractors rather than > employees with rights, necessitating novel means of protection and redress > (Irani & Silberman, 2013). The so-called 'sharing economy' also uses peer > production methods, such as the self-selection of modular and granular > tasks, to extract ever-more value from the labour of volunteer ‘prosumers’ > (Frayssé & O’Neil, 2015). Capitalist firms are also increasingly engaging > with ethical-modular organizations, in some cases paying wages to > participants. Such labour is thus both ‘alienated’, or sold, and > ‘communal’, as workers freely cooperate to produce commons. Do traditional > categories such as exploitation and alienation still apply? > Topics may include, but are not limited to: > - Peer production and the global political economy > - Peer production and the rise of precarious work > - Peer workers and possibilities for worker organisation > - Does the autonomy of peer workers cause conflict in firms, and how is it > resolved? > - What strategies do firms adopt to co-opt peer production (e.g., > ‘hackhathons’)? > - Do tensions around property rights emerge? > - Subjectivity in peer production > - Peer production and intellectual property, coded work > > *Paid work in peer production projects* > How does paid labour affect ethical P2P projects? Mansell and Berdou > (2010) argue that firms supporting the work of programmers who contribute > to volunteer projects, to the commons, will not affect the ‘cooperative > spirit’ of projects; nor can this support prevent the results of labour > from being socialized into commons. Is this always the case? > Topics may include, but are not limited to: > - How do peer projects deal with the presence of paid or waged labour? > - Is this topic discussed within peer production projects? In what way? > - What benefits do paid or waged workers enjoy in peer projects? > - How does paid labour affect peer production projects? > > *Timeline* > 300-500 word-abstract due: 30 July 2015 > Notification to authors: 30 August 2015 > Submission of full paper: 31 December 2015 > Reviews to authors: 15 February 2016 > Revised papers: 30 April 2016 > Signals due: 30 May 2016 > Issue release: June/July 2016 > > *Submission guidelines* > Submission abstracts of 300-500 words are due by July 30, 2015 and should > be sent to <[email protected]>. All peer reviewed papers will be > reviewed according to Journal of Peer Production guidelines. See > http://peerproduction.net/peer-review/process/ > Full papers and materials are due December 31, 2015 for review. > Peer reviewed papers should be around 8,000 words; personal testimonies or > ‘tales of toil’ in the Processed World tradition should be up to 4,000 > words. > > *References* > Arvidsson, A. (2008). The ethical economy of consumer coproduction. > Journal of Macromarketing, 8, 326-338. > > Demil, B., Lecoq. X. & Warnier, E. (2015). The capabilities of bazaar > governance: Investigating the advantage of business models based on open > communities. Journal of Organizational Change Management, in press. > > Frayssé, O. & O’Neil, M. (2015) Digital labour and prosumer capitalism: > The US matrix. Basingstoke: Palgrave, in press. > > Gibson-Graham, J.K. (2003). Enabling ethical economies: Cooperativism and > class. Critical Sociology, 29, 123-164. > > Huws, U. (2013). The underpinnings of class in the digital age: Living, > labour and value. Socialist Register, 50, 80-107. > > Irani, L. & Silberman, M. (2013). Turkopticon: Interrupting worker > invisibility in Amazon Mechanical Turk. Proceedings of the SIGCHI > Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. > > Kostakis, V. & Bauwens, M. (2014) Network society and future scenarios for > a collaborative economy. Basingstoke: Palgrave. > > Mansell, R. & Berdou, E. (2010). Political economy, the internet and > FL/OSS development. In Hunsinger, J., Allen, M. & Klastrup, L. (Eds.) > International handbook of Internet research (pp. 341-362). Amsterdam, The > Netherlands: Springer. > > Moore, P. (2011). Subjectivity in the ecologies of P2P Production. The > Journal of Fibreculture FCJ-119. Online. > > Moore, P. & Taylor, P. A. (2009). Exploitation of the self in > community-based software production: Workers’ freedoms or firm foundations? > Capital & Class, 99-117. > > O’Neil, M. (2015). Labour out of control: The political economy of > capitalist and ethical organizations. Organization Studies, 1-21. > > Söderberg, J. & O’Neil, M. (2014). 'Introduction'. Book of Peer Production > (pp. 2-3). Göteborg: NSU Press. > > =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= > _______________________________________________ > Wiki-research-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l >
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