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- Convenors:
-
Saša Poljak Istenič
(ZRC SAZU)
Nina Vodopivec (Institute for Contemporary History, Ljubljana)
Olga Orlic (Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research)
Send message to Convenors
- Stream:
- Economy and Work
- Location:
- Aula 4
- Sessions:
- Monday 15 April, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Madrid
Short Abstract:
Neoliberal policies have encouraged socio-economic practices which develop new models for a more just, equal, diverse and eco-conscious society. The panel addresses those visions of social transformations in the (broadly understood) field of social economy.
Long Abstract:
The critique of the modern socio-economic development, neoliberal policies, individualization, uncertainty and estrangement as well as growing socio-ecological problems have strengthened the appeals for more socially oriented economy and encouraged diverse initiatives envisioning a more just, equal, supportive, integrated, diverse and environmentally conscious society. They range from formal businesses (cooperatives and social enterprises) to informal practices (communitarian practices, self-organised forms), including those that may not be recognised as operating economically at the first glance, but engage in the critique of the contemporary social organisation or address the politics and ethics of social care, ideas of exchange or sharing, and a redefinition of labour, development, community, dignity, and solidarity.
The panel addresses those visions of social transformations in the field of (broadly understood) social economy. A special emphasis may be placed on the conceptualisation of solidarity as an embodied practice in connection with the concepts of integration, trust, and community. It welcomes insights into the social models developed by the practices as well as into the actors' motivations, visions, expectations, and perceptions of the socio-economic development. Presentations may reveal how the practices have been experienced; what is the relation between aspirations and everyday realities; and how these practices contribute to the changing of the socio-economic systems, values, norms, and people's experience.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Monday 15 April, 2019, -Paper short abstract:
The paper deals with the contemporary formal (cooperatives and social enterprises) and informal (communitarian practices) socio- economic initiatives and practices in Slovenia It is interested in their motivations, cooperation, organisation, structure, experience and dynamics.
Paper long abstract:
The initiatives in social economy and communitarian practices among the people have formed through the critique of the modern socio-economic development, neoliberal policies, individualisation and estrangement, social and ecological problems (in relation with moral and ethical transformation), and as a response to the modern precarisation. These initiatives have also been - simultaneously and in a specific manner - included in the so-called rationalisation of the labour market social costs (the changing employment policies and social reforms), social welfare marketing, and entrepreneurialisation of society (Nikolas Rose 1998, Ash Amin 2002).
The paper explores the dynamic of these process by analysing various contemporary social entrepreneurial experiences in Slovenia - social economy at the national level was institutionalised as social entrepreneurship (2011), including a contemporary cooperative, and some informal communitarian practises (an eco-village experiment, a sustainable park, and a self-organised form of social care). It is interested in their motivations and experiences: How do they establish themselves, in what sort of environments, who encourages them, how are they related and structured? Are these responses to precarity and unemployment, survival strategies, or conceptions of something different? What is their dynamics? A special emphasis is on the conceptualisation of solidarity, the basis of social economy, identification and analysis of the experience in solidarity as an embodied practice, in connection with the concepts of integration, and community.
Paper short abstract:
Based on ethnographic research this paper will present initial findings on the evolution of the concept of the commons as part of broader political program for social change in the city of Barcelona with a particular focus on convergence between Commons and the Social and Solidarity Economy.
Paper long abstract:
The municipalist movement, Barcelona En Comu, entered the city council in 2015. Despite being a minority government with the support of social movements they have advanced a broad range of programs and policies aimed at strengthening the social economy in the city. A key concept in these developments has been the Commons.
Over the past twenty years the Commons has emerged as a political subject in discourses among activists in the global justice movements. At the same time advances in networked technologies have made possible new distributed forms of collaborative production and the creation of digital commons. Interest in Commons are informed by diverse experiences, practices and contexts. From ecological settings and urban spaces to software and cultural production.
The possibilities of the commons and their place in social and political imaginaries are deeply informed by local contexts and experiences. Based on ethnographic research ongoing since April 2018 this paper will present initial findings on the evolution of the concept of the commons as part of broader political program for social change in Barcelona.
The paper will have a particular focus on convergence between Commons projects and the Social and Solidarity Economy and explore the possibilities and challenges of working with institutions.
This paper will examine the following three questions -
1)How do participants situate commons in relation to broad movements for transformative social change?
2)What place do commons have in the constitution of political and economic alternatives to capitalism?
3)To what extent are alternatives replicable beyond their local contexts?
Paper short abstract:
What is valuable work? This question has come up for debate in Cuba as the government has opened up for a new private sector, transforming the way citizens can legally make a living. The paper explores how this transformation shifts how citizens naturally experience and consider the value of labor.
Paper long abstract:
What is valuable work? In recent years, this question has come up for debate in new ways in Cuba as the government has warily opened the way for a legal private sector, transforming the way citizens can legally make a living. The unprecedented *quantitative expansion* of private business in socialist Cuba is accompanied by a *qualitative shift* in how Cubans can value labor. Drawing on 18 months of ethnographic research among Cuba's new entrepreneurs, the so-called *cuentapropistas*, this paper proposes the concept of "the labor of labor" as a tool to understand these processes, and particularly how the emerging group of licensed entrepreneurs value work. The present material demonstrates how the symbolic meaning of labor in Cuba is in state of flux, corresponding both to past socio-economic transformations, and the current changing nature of the Cuba's economic model. Cuentapropistas are engaged in a battle for the meaning of work in relation to unlicensed informal workers and the state apparatus. While private sector workers have recently experienced policy setbacks, the paper argues that within the possibility of a legal and legitimate entrepreneur in Cuba lies also the prospect of a more assertive and collectively demanding citizen.
Paper short abstract:
The paper considers how best to promote and regulate the informal sector as a vital resource for sustainable development in Africa.
Paper long abstract:
As Africa seeks to achieve the new the Sustainable Development Goals, greater priority should be given to the vital resource in the informal sector for increased self-reliance and sustainable development. UN-Habitat and the ILO estimate that between 50 and 70 per cent of townspeople in sub-Saharan Africa cities work in the informal sector. Although critics dismiss this sector as "a chaotic jumble of unproductive activities", and an obstacle to the development of a modern market economy, the fact is that the informal sector has greatly helped to promote local entrepreneurship, employment and income, and thus to alleviate poverty and strengthen social protection. The main policy challenge is how best to support and regulate the sector in a way that translates the enterprise, resourcefulness and innovation of its operators into higher productivity and income, while at the same time ensuring a healthy and socially acceptable environment. The paper examines how the informal sector has developed over the last 50 years; the constraints imposed on the informal economy by official prejudice and neglect, and the main elements of a strategy for informal sector promotion and management. It underscores the importance of good and inclusive governance; appropriate macro-economic and legislative reforms to remove pointless restrictions which place informal sector operators at a disadvantage. Government needs to provide small amounts of credits and other forms of financial and business services to the poor; to promote skills training for unemployed youths; and consider policies that foster complementary links between the formal and informal economies.
Paper short abstract:
The aim of this paper is to explore through comparison of two community projects that utilise tourism as a resource for improving local economy explore different facets of tourism and the ways it impacts communities.
Paper long abstract:
The aim of this paper is to explore through comparison of two community projects that utilise tourism as a resource for improving local economy explore different facets of tourism and the ways it impacts communities.
Recent years brought a considerable increase in the presence of community projects in the socialist Cuba. It is important to underline they exist in a different institutional context, in a country where NGO's do not exist and thus any community project needs to be sustainable itself while aiming to bring sustainability for local communities.
First of the studies will be focused on a project dedicated to the marginalised community of illegal internal migrants living far from the touristic centre of Havana. Its coordinators on the one hand intend to integrate the community, on the other attract mostly academic tourism through capitalising on the overlooked, yet rich heritage of the district, as well as cultural and religious diversity of its inhabitants.
The second case study will focus on Callejón de Hamel, a renowned tourist destination in the centre of Havana, a community project that started as a place to cultivate the customs and religions of the Afro-Cuban community. Throughout the years however, it has become criticised for its commercialisation of Santeria religion and transforming it into a tourist attraction with little presence of the community itself.
The paper is based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Havana.
Paper short abstract:
Green cities have become a norm and a trend, embedding sustainable development in environmental, social, cultural and economic terms. Urban gardening and some other food-related practices are believed to successfully address those issues. The paper explores selected cases from Ljubljana.
Paper long abstract:
In the time of crisis, people maintain their economic and social stability by increasing the number and variety of resources as well as their social, cultural and symbolic capital. A wish or a need to be self-sufficient increases and people respond by producing more food on their own, relying on mutual help, and engaging in an exchange of goods and services. In Ljubljana, the network of social actors - ranging from individuals, informal communities, neighbourhoods, and associations to public institutes, NGOs and the municipality as well as social enterprises, cooperatives, and profit-oriented businesses - creates a lively atmosphere of informal and formal food economies which exist next to and benefit from each other. On the other hand, some of the practices are being criticised to gentrify places, authoritatively shape and control everyday life, and commercialize common goods.
The aim of the paper is to explore food-related practices in Slovenia's capital Ljubljana with a focus on urban gardening; seeds, plants and food exchange; and food-related social economy. The questions addressed include: Which cultural practices, related to food production and consumption, have developed into informal economic activities? What kind of social innovations arise from such practices? How do they influence the formal social economy?
Paper short abstract:
I draw on ethnographic research with UK healthcare activists and managers to explore the differences between the imagined values exhibited in their visions for what the NHS should be.
Paper long abstract:
In the UK, state-funded healthcare is undergoing reforms closely tied to a government austerity program affecting all public services. In this paper, I draw on ethnographic research with activists campaigning against these reforms, and the senior managers and local politicians pushing the reforms through.
The managers and politicians describe their own values, and the values of the NHS, in similar terms to those of the activists. However, the actions of the managers are in direct contradiction to those of the activists. In this paper, I reflect on the tension between these diverging actions and mirroring discourses of ostensibly similar moral projects.
While managers and politicians claim to share the same values of universality and comprehensiveness of a free service, they must also consider costs. Insofar as healthcare is a service provided by healthcare workers for a wage, it is a commodity that must be purchased. Managers and politicians argue that the "reality" is that they must stay within their budgets, pre-set by central authorities.
Parry and Bloch (1989) argue that that the problem of such imagined realities is not a result of the commodity fetish's ability to corrupt social relations, but in its ability to mask them. Marx's insight that the reality of the commodity's exchange value conceals a suite of social relations is recognised by activists, who seek to focus on exposing these social relations by making moral arguments regarding their right to healthcare. They counter the managers' economic argument emphasising necessity and constraint, with an ethical argument emphasising political choices and possibility.
Paper short abstract:
In addition to causing the economic development of the whole city, the initiation of the organized work of hand-made woolen garments, which included over 2000 Zlatibor knitwear, also implied a change in stereotypical family relations in this area.
Paper long abstract:
The work revises the process of commercialization of tradition in the case of fashion production "Sirogojno style" - which, using the segments of traditional thesaurus, created a visual identity recognizable on the domestic and foreign market in the second half of the last century. In addition to causing the economic development of the whole city, the initiation of the organized work of hand-made woolen garments, which included over 2000 Zlatibor knitwear, also implied a change in stereotypical family relations in this area. Growth production and distribution of hand-made triangles provided to rural women, until then exclusively related to family households and without personal income, the possibility of earning one's own earnings, thereby changing the traditional picture of the role of women in both the family and the wider community. The emancipation of a rural woman took place in several directions and at various levels of social and family relations.
Paper short abstract:
My paper reflects on the change in the tradition of donating for cultural purposes. How have the concept of giving and the experiences and motives of the private donors changed with the globalisation and the digitalisation of the society.
Paper long abstract:
Finland has a strong tradition of cultural philanthropy. However, the ways of donating change along the society. Collections knocking from door to door have been replaced by the virtual endowment.
Some of the motives to donate have remained, some have changed. However, the means to donate are fundamentally different. The hat does not circulate oppressively towards you, but you have to find your way to the cap of your choice.
Crowdsourcing is a form of civic activism in the digitalised society. Private people donate their time, work or other assets to projects that they consider valuable.
The popularity of crowdfunding platforms in the Internet is on the increase worldwide.
Why does a person donate to a cultural purpose? Is philanthropy always altruistic? Why did the public take part in the fundraising ventures of the 20th century? Why does someone want to participate in the crowdfunding today? What makes a donor to choose a certain campaign? Do these motives have anything in common?
I studied the motives and experiences of private donors examining two cases: the Finnish Cultural Foundation and the Mesenaatti.me.
The paper presents some of the results of the qualitative analysis. The data consists of written oral history and interviews of the donors, and written answers from the crowdfunders.
The collections (1938-1939 & 1964-1965) of the private Finnish Cultural Foundation are the most extensive ones ever organised in Finland. The Mesenaatti.me is a Finnish crowdfunding platform, currently the most successful in the Northern Countries.