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- Convenors:
-
Marc Morell
(Rīgas Strādiņa Universitāte)
Oana Mateescu (Babes-Bolyai University)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 27 July, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
This panel aims to wedge value into the commons, asking for a transformative reflection on the possibilities for a value theory of commons. In the process, we foreground the relations between value and the commons, and we ask what part abstraction plays in representing the value-regime of commons.
Long Abstract:
A relatively recent collection of keywords for radicals showcases the term "commons" while ignoring "value". It is as if "class" (also featured in the keywords), could nowadays happen without "capital" (suspiciously absent, a mere coincidence?).
In fact, rarely are the commons and value brought together. Whereas the first are excitedly portrayed as inspiring an everlasting anti-capitalist struggle and are seen as almost classless seed for life-projects beyond capital, the latter seems demurely entrenched in the bland high-browed political economic terrain of really existing capitalism. Yet, any commoned emancipatory programme that views itself as revolutionary, begs for a reflection upon value and its class workings.
Thinking about the commons not only invites us to consider the ways in which contentious understandings of value are put into practice, but it also encourages us to think how a transformative anthropological imagination may unfold them and the very value this imagination holds.
This panel aims to wedge value into the commons, asking for a transformative reflection on the possibilities for a commons' theory of value (or a value theory of commons). In the process, we foreground the relations between value and the commons (from contradiction to co-optation), and we ask what part does abstraction play in representing the value-regime of commons, that is, what kinds of abstractions emerge out of the commons and commoning.
We will consider papers that critically focus on the relation value and the commons maintain, from a historical anthropological standpoint that equally acknowledges the importance of both ethnography and theory.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 27 July, 2022, -Oana Mateescu (Babes-Bolyai University) Marc Morell (Rīgas Strādiņa Universitāte)
Paper short abstract:
Is the end of capitalism the end of value? Can we take commons as the beginning of post-capitalist political economy with its own relations of value and abstraction? Introducing the panel, this paper takes a historical anthropological standpoint for a value theory of the commons.
Paper long abstract:
Is the end of capitalism the end of value? Can we take commons as the beginning of a post-capitalist political economy with its own relations of value and abstraction? Getting rid of the abstract forms the underlie value under capitalism would not wipe the social slate of the commons clean, ushering in a post-social era of transparency and immediacy. We argue that commons – particularly in their instantiation beyond capitalism – need to contend with value and its dialectic of qualitative and quantitative, equal and unequal, emancipatory and nonemancipatory.
This paper aims to work as an introduction to the panel by setting forward the generation of the idea of the commons in conjunction with and against history as constituted by capital, with a specific emphasis on the dialectical understanding the relation between value and the commons holds. It will also prepare the terrain for the discussion that will close the panel. In highlighting the need for a historical anthropological standpoint that equally acknowledges the importance of ethnography and abstraction for a reflection of a value theory of the commons, we hope to contribute to the debate and the polemics that revolve around the transformative potential of the idea and practice of the commons.
Razvan Papasima (National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest)
Paper short abstract:
Looking at the efforts of qualification of a football club as a common good, and examining how the concept of "value" is translated by actors, I show how value becomes imbued with affect and equivalent with "continuity" while at the same time "continuity" is also seen as the main source of capital.
Paper long abstract:
After the fall of communism, football clubs in Romania were privatized under the umbrella term of "professionalization" and started to be exchanged as commodities between different investors, many of them in search of recognition and public attention. After changing more than five investors, in less than 20 years, a notorious Romanian football club went bankrupt and was disaffiliated from the Romanian Football Federation (FRF) in 2010. Three years later, two new clubs emerged with the same name, same colours, both claiming the identity of the disaffiliated club. The controversy opened a black box, paving the way for a struggle between the two factions (i.e. networks) that divided an entire city. Investors, fans, media, lawyers, political actors, former players, patents, memories, transcriptions, intellectual property rights were enrolled and mobilized by each side, seeking to appropriate the old club's heritage and the football ethos of an urban community. In this process of recommoning, the two networks struggled to qualify (Callon 2013) their own club as a common good, but only one succeeded. By uncovering these efforts of qualification, and how the concept of "value" is translated by actors, I show how value becomes imbued with affect and equivalent with "continuity" while at the same time "continuity" is also seen as the main source of capital.
Natalia Avlona
Paper short abstract:
Over the last decade both the public discourse around the value of data - reflecting the economic imperative- as well as the implications of such logic in the increasingly data-driven healthcare sector, are highliting the need to account for a value theory of of data as commons.
Paper long abstract:
Over the last few years, the intrusion of the Big Tech in digital healthcare with AI technologies -data-driven decision making (Sharon, 2018) has accelerated the notions of individual "choice" and "personalised access" to healthcare (Mol, 2008), through the intensive collection and use of data. This turn corresponds to the logic of neoliberal economic imperative, which in the realm of data-driven services, is particularly manifested with dominating metaphors such as "data is the new oil" (Neelie Croes, 2011).
Academic scholarship (Birch, 2021; Thatcher, 2017; Taffer, 2021) has scrutinised the extractivist material relationships the data-oil associations signify. In this direction, "data (as) commons" and "Data as a relation" metaphors are developed both by scholars and activists, in order to account for alternative data-value conceptualisations (Viljoen, 2021; Purtova, 2017). This strand of discourse is accounting for data as common(s) or relationships via alternative data governance models (i.e. Data Trusts, Data cooperatives), yet it lacks an underpinning theory of how data come to be valued within socio-economic systems.
This paper argues that we cannot constitute "data commons" if we don't account for a value theory of the commons, and the latter cannot be done, if we don't provide an alternative understanding of data. This will be done by interviewing people from two companies, which utilise AI technologies for patient screenings, and for matching patients to new clinical trials. By exploring the market's understanding of health data, this paper accounts for the missing step, before we look into the alternative data-commons conceptualisations.
Ida Susser (HunterGCCUNY)
Paper short abstract:
The question of value may not have been abandoned by people involved in commoning, so much as the processes through which value is now extracted by capital have been addressed through new strategies of resistance. I examine these processes in relation to ethnographic research in Europe and the US.
Paper long abstract:
Since 2011, protests in Europe, the US and elsewhere have occupied space over time and claimed territory through commoning. Such protests reflect and have been adapted to the era of financialization in which industrial unions and strikes have more limited effects and are immeasurably more difficult to pursue, constrained through new regulations and the fragmentation of the workforce. With financialization, personal, national and international debt have come to the fore as a major medium of extraction and control. As has been argued, the accumulation of dispossession has once again become a central tactic of capital. Under these conditions, the working class has expanded with the reduction of incomes and autonomy of professional workers, displacement, wars and immigration. However, workers have also become more fragmented.
The transformation of labor in it’s location as well as configuration has rendered the extraction of value more individualized. However, I will argue that, although more difficult to counteract, such processes are not invisible to the working poor. Nevertheless, flexible work and the central importance of debt have forced workers to rethink collective action. From this perspective, the question of value may not have been abandoned by people involved in commoning or many analysts of the commons, so much as the processes through which value is now extracted by capital have been addressed through new strategies of resistance.
I examine these processes in relation to my ethnographic research and the literature on commoning and protests in Europe and the US