The commons as a radical democratic project
My intention is to say something about the potential of the commons as a political project.
Understanding Knowledge as a Commons: From Theory to Practice
In the first section the book gives a very thorough introduction and analysis of the concept of knowledge as a commons, appropriate for readers of all levels of familiarity with this field. The protection of the knowledge commons is the focus of the second section of the book.
Creative or common city? Civic or civil society?
At the end of February 2017, Pascal Gielen gave this lecture on the relationship between art, politics and the civil space in the creative city, as part of a programme which ran alongside CCA's exhibition Forms of Action (28 Jan - 12 Mar 2017) on socially engaged art practices. The lecture is based on a pilot research project Gielen undertook for the European Cultural Foundation in 2016, and also looks at how activists and creative workers respond to this policy by organising themselves in alternative ways.
Postajanje majkom u vreme neoliberalnog kapitalizma
Knjiga Postajanje majkom sadrži umetniãke radove, interdisciplinarne studije iz oblasti humanistiãkih i društvenih nauka, kao i tekstove koji se bave promišljanjem liãnog i aktivistiãkog iskustva i rada. Nastajala je u procesu istraživanja koje je sprovedeno kako bi se preispitale institucionalizovane prakse materinstva u savremenom društvu, njihovi efekti u svakodnevnom životu, kao i vidovi otpora i (radikalne) politiãke subjektivizacije u odnosu na njih. Knjiga je usmerena na demistifikaciju, denaturalizaciju i reevaluaciju normi materinstva koje uvek ukazuju na odnose u specifiãnim materijalnim uslovima i okolnostima centriranja ili decentriranja javne ili privatne moçi ili društvenosti. Bavi se materinstvom kao globalnim problemom, kroz analize i iskustva angažmana u pojedinim zemljama, ali ukazuje i na specifiãnosti lokalnog konteksta, kroz iskustva u pojedinim bivšim jugoslovenskim republikama, što predstavlja pokušaj povezivanja odre∂enih globalnih trendova sa posebnostima u lokalnoj sredini.
Radnici na lizing: Prava radnika privremeno angažovanih preko agencija za zapošljavanje
Praktičan vodič objašnjava pojmove lizinga u domenu rada i radnih prava, objašnjava zakonski okvir radnog prava u Srbiji, prenosi iskustva i preporuke iz međunarodnog konteksta i preporučuje promene koje je neophodno napraviti da bi se ublažio pritisak na radnike.
Nove politike solidarnosti: Sloboda od rada
Univerzalne osnovne usluge (universal basic services) su recentna ideja koja je privukla veliku pažnju javnosti zbog potencijala da redefiniše državu blagostanja i uspešno odgovori na izazove 21. veka. Univerzalne osnovne usluge podrazumevaju proširenje opsega besplatnih javnih usluga koji će osigurati pristup svakom građaninu (ili rezidentu) adekvatan stepen sigurnosti, mogućnosti i participacije. Termin univerzalne podrazumeva da su usluge dostupne svima, bez obzira na njihove prihode ili status.
The Bolshevik Revolution: One hundred years after
This issue of Crisis and Critique brings together some of the most important contemporary thinkers, who engage with the historical, political and philosophical resonances of the Bolshevik Revolution into our context.They engage with different dimensions which compose the Bolshevik Event and its aftermath.The point is not to reassert the relevance of the Revolution, nor explore the possibilities of faithfulness to it, but rather, the aim of this issue is to claim that politics of emancipation, philosophy and history cannot be the same after this Revolution. It is a unavoidable point of reference, one that cannot be simply ignored.
Performing the common city: On the crossroads of arts, politics and public life
Pascal Gielen, art theoretician from Belgium, writes about the contemporary city, its shift from the space for the bourgeois class to the current trend of privatisation of public spaces and the role of arts in these processes. His analysis is based on theories and practices of Haussmann, Michel de Certeau, Chantal Mouffe, Saskia Sassen and others, while going through different conceptions of the city as the common space: from Haussmann's urban structure in 18th century to Florida's creative city to the common city.
Labour as a commons: The example of workers-recuperated companies
This article argues that labour can be understood as a commons, located in the discussion of how commons can advance the transformation of social relations and society. To manage labour as a commons entails a shift away from the perception of labour power as the object of capital’s value practices, towards a notion of labour power as a collectively and sustainably managed resource for the benefit of society. Given that social change is largely a result of social struggle, it is crucial to examine germinal forms of labour as a commons present in society. I focus my analysis on worker-recuperated companies in Latin America and Europe. Worker-recuperated companies are enterprises self-managed by their workers after the owners close them down. Despite operating within the hegemonic capitalist market, they do not adopt capitalist rationality and are proven viable. Worker-recuperated companies offer a new perspective on labour as a commons.
“Being in Common” Theorizing Artistic Collaboration
Inspired by in-depth interviews with members of the international Brussels dance community and the work of some of the authors associated with autonomous Marxism (P. Virno, A. Negri, G. Agamben), the practice of collaboration within contemporary dance is elucidated from a theoretical point of view. Like other forms of creative or immaterial labour, artistic collaborations mobilize various generic competences and invoke in an often implicit way a cultural common or series of conventions.
Nestandardno zapošljavanje širom svijeta. Razumevanje izazova, oblikovanje mogućnosti
Februara 2015. godine Međunarodna organizacija rada je održala tripartitni sastanak stručnjaka o nestandardnim oblicima zapošljavanja, koji je okupio stručnjake kako bi, tokom četiri dana, razgovarali o izazovima za dostojanstven rad, koje oblici jurisdictions zapošljavanja mogu da generišu. U zaključcima sastanka, države članice, poslodavci i radničke organizacije pozvani su da osmisle politike za rešavanje deficita dostojanstvenog rada koji se povezuje sa nestandardnim oblicima rada kako bi svi radnici - bez obzira na oblik njihovog angažmana - imali koristi od dostojanstvenog rada. Ovaj izvještaj se zasniva na pripremama za sastanak stručnjaka 2015. godine, koje su obuhvatile nalaze iz širokog spektra studija o ekonomskim i pravnim aspektima nestandardnih oblika zapošljavanja u mnogim zemljama i not regionima sveta, kao na određene relevantne teme, kao što je uticaj na preduzeća, i bezbednost i zaštitu zdravlja.
The Role of the State in Governing the Commons
In Ostrom’s central concept of polycentrism, local decision making groups must often be ‘‘nested’’ within state structures at a higher level, so that the higher structures can provide the coercion and other resources that make local negotiation efficient.
„Holding zadruga“ Predlog modela zadružnog radničkog akcionarstva u Srbiji
Demokratičnim preduzećem smatra se svako preduzeće kojim upravljaju njegovi radnici, a koje se istovremeno nalazi u njihovoj (kolektivnoj ili privatnoj) svojini. Najrasprostranjeniji formalno-pravni oblik demokratskog preduzeća su zadruge koje odlikuje kolektivno radničko vlasništvo i zajedničko upravljanje prema principu „jedan član-jedan glas“. U prvom delu analize predstavljane su osnovne crte postojećih praksi radničkog akcionarstva i njihove ključne specifičnosti, a podrobnije je opisan model zadružnog radničkog akcionarstva. Drugi deo istraživa- nja ispituje mogućnost primene ovog modela u Srbiji, te na njegovom tragu, predlaže model „holding zadruge“ koji bi mogao biti ostvaren u okvirima domaćeg zakonodavstva.
ABC jugoslavenskog socijalizma
Knjiga je skup tekstova i istraživanja Branka Horvata koji je pokušao da osnovne pojmove jugoslovenskog socijalizma objasni na jasan i jednostavan način ("zbog toga nema ni citata, ni bibliografije, ni druge uobičajene aparature"), uzimajući za uzor Buharinovu knjigu "ABC komunizma" koju smatra dobrom idejom, ali lošom knjigom. U svom teorijskom radu, Horvat socijalizam posmatra kao svetsko-istorijski proces sa tri karakteristična prelaza ka socijalizmu: prelaz razvijenih kapitalističkih zemalja, prelaz etatističkih zemalja i prelaz nerazvijenih zemalja. Međutim, jugoslovenki slučaj ne pripada ni jednom od njih i zato je ovu knjigu posvetio upravo objašnjenju specfiičnosti jugoslovenskog socijalističkog projekta.
Taken literarly
The authors revisit the evolution of regulation of ownership in the field of intellectual production and housing as two examples of the historical dead-end in which we find ourselves.
The Capitalisation of Libraries
This paper will argue that the capitalisation of life as know it will be the logical extension of the global capitalist agenda.
Autonomous Universities and the Making of the Knowledge Commons
The article discusses the threats to academic freedom coming from the state and market trying to sketch a theory of academic freedom taking us beyond our need to defend academic work and institutions from these threats.
Universal Basic Income or Universal Basic Services?
Some people think universal basic income is a utopian impossibility. Others think it’s dangerous. So there’s a proposal for another solution: universal basic services. Instead of giving people money, why not guarantee all of the public services they need to live a full life?
State power and Commoning: Transcending problematic relationship
Izveštaj razmatra odnosn države i zajedničkih dobara. Učesnici radionice zastupaju tezu da država i zajednička dobra mogu plodno da koegzistiraju ako zajednica rekonceptualizuje državu iz perspektive zajedničkog dobra. Država može da podrži zajednička dobra i postkapitalističke oblike upravljanja.
Becoming Common: Precarization as political constituting
"The discourse on precarization that has emerged in the past decade, primarily in Europe, rests on an extremely complex understanding of social insecurity and its productivity. The various strands of this discourse have been brought together again and again in the context of the European precarious movement organised under EuroMayDay....What is unusual about this social movement is not only the way in which under its auspices new forms of political struggle are tested and new perspectives of precarizatin developed; rather - and it is striking in relation to other social movements - it is how it has queered a seemingly disparate fields of the cultural and political again and again. In the past decade, conversations concerning both the (partly subversive) knowledge of the precarious and a search for commons (in order to constitute the political), has conspicuously taken place more in art institution than in social, political, or even academic contexts."
The dynamism of the new economy: Non-standard employment and access to social security in EU-28
This paper examines the prevalence of non-standard workers in EU-28, rules for accessing social security, and these workers’ risk of not being able to access it. It focuses on temporary and part-time workers, and the self-employed, and offers a particularly detailed analysis of their access to unemployment benefits. It focuses on eligibility, adequacy (net income replacement rates) and identifies those workers which are at the greatest risk of either not receiving benefits or receiving low benefits. It offers a special overview of foreign non-standard workers, who may be particularly vulnerable due to the absence of citizenship in the host country. The paper also analyses access to maternity and sickness benefits for these three groups of workers, as well as their access to pensions. Its key contribution is in bringing together the different dimensions of disadvantage that non-standard workers face vis-à-vis access to social protection. This allows us to comprehensively assess the adaptation of national social security systems across EU-28 to the changing world of work over the past 10 years. The paper shows that there is a lot of variation between the Member States, both in the structure of their social security systems, as well as the prevalence of non-standard work. Most notably, the paper concludes that: i) access to unemployment benefits is the most challenging component of welfare state provision for people in non-standard employment; ii) policy reforms vis-à-vis access to social benefits have improved the status of non-standard workers in several countries, while they have worsened it in others, particularly in Bulgaria, Ireland and Latvia; iii) some Eastern European countries can offer lessons to other Member States due to their experiences with labour market challenges during transition and the subsequent adaptations of their social security systems to greater labour market flexibility. The paper also implies that a country’s policy towards nonstandard work cannot be examined in isolation from its labour market conditions, as well as its growth model, and that uniform policy solutions for non-standard work cannot be applied across EU-28.
Novi oblici samoupravljanja: radničko akcionarstvo i drugi oblici demokratskih preduzeća
Kada govorimo o savremenim borbama protiv komodifikacije rada i svakodnevnog života, te za uspostavljanje drugačijeg – pravednijeg, humanijeg i održivijeg – ekonomskog sistema, ne možemo, a da se ne osvrnemo na iskustvo samoupravnog socijalizma u SFRJ kao jedinstvenog istorijskog primera široke primene principa ekonomske demokratije sa ciljem ostvarivanja većeg učešća zaposlenih u donošenju ekonomskih odluka, decentralizacije vlasništva i vantržišne društvene reprodukcije. Kritički pogled na ovaj period može predstavljati putokaz za osmišljavanje savremenih modela i sistema koji umesto generisanju profita teže zadovoljenju potreba društva (i životne sredine).
Artist at work, Proximity of art and capitalism
The main affirmation of artistic practice must today happen through thinking about the conditions and the status of the artist's work. Only then can it be revealed that what is a part of the speculations of capital is not art itself, but mostly artistic life. Artist at Work examines the recent changes in the labour of an artist and addresses them from the perspective of performance. It draws its conclusions mainly from the argument that art no longer needs to re-affirm itself as a socially relevant and useful activity because this would lock it within immanent capitalist (and populist) production of value. Instead, art has to rediscover its material basis and 'occupy' exactly those abstractions which enable the preservation of the capitalist system and reproduction of capital. The book would like to remind art – which has constantly thermalized and practiced politics during the last decades – that it has forgotten its power to connect the abilities of the abstract (thinking) with the actual abstractions (value, capital, productivity, money, commodity, time, etc.)
Spaces of Commoning. Artistic Research and the Utopia of Everyday
The texts assembled in this book are a sincere attempt to document the trials and errors in a study of commoning, a series of disruptions, failures, of falling apart, and the search for means to come together again. With this in mind, many of the contributions here do confront questions of methodology: they reflect on methods that support the study as well as the practice of commoning, methods that cherish critical reexamination and allow for unresolved dilemmas.
Umetnik/ca u (ne)radu
Istraživačko-umetnički projekat Umetnik/ca u (ne)radu (održan u Novom Sadu između 2010. i 2012.godine) obuhvatao je seriju javnih razgovora, izložbi i publikacija, fokusiranih na istraživanje umetničkih i društvenih praksi koje kritički reflektuju savremeni pojam rada – uslove u kojima se rad ostvaruje, nove društvene potrebe i odnose koje rad proizvodi. Takođe, cilj je bio elaboriranje relativno neistraženog polja istorije umetnosti koje obuhvata prakse koje predstavljaju ekstrem na liniji ovog istraživanja – odluke umetnika/ca da napuste bavljenje umetnošću i produkciju umetničkih dela, propagirajući koncept nerada i „besposličarenja“ (idleness, slacking).
Forgotten history of the commons in socialist Yugoslavia: A case of self-managed cultural infrastructure in the period of 1960s and 1970s
The article makes a critical step towards a few now already established claims of the chief theoretical protagonists of the commons – Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri1 – who offer a way out from the allegedly false binaries and dilemmas between private or public, state or market, capitalism or socialism.
Le retour des communs. La crise de l’idéologie propriétaire
Knjiga (na francuskom jeziku) je zbirka tekstova dvadeset autora, uglavnom francuskih, koji se bave promenama u konceptu korišćenja digitalnih platformi za dostupnost znanja i rezultata rada u umetnosti, nauci i drugim oblastima znanja.
The Undercommons: Fugitive planning & black studies
In "The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study", Moten and Harney examine the University, Debt, Politics and Logistics to help us grasp how these (and other) institutions, organizations and capitalist mechanisms (including the State as an agent of capital) reduce our ability to empathize, our capacity for true learning and our ability to love. Moten and Harney define the “The Undercommons” as “Maroon communities of composition teachers, mentorless graduate students, adjunct Marxist historians, out or queer management professors, state college ethnic studies departments, closed-down film programs, visa-expired Yemeni student newspaper editors, historically black college sociologists, and feminist engineers ” that “refuse to ask for recognition and instead want to take apart, dismantle, tear down the structure that, right now, limits our ability to find each other, to see beyond it and to access the places we know lie beyond its walls. ” The structure itself is holding us back; as we pour our energies into combatting mass incarceration, debt-slavery, and the professionalization of intellect, Moten and Harney argue that we only buttress the society that makes such singularly anti-human calamities possible in the first place...