Editors: Mathieu O\u2019Neil (University of Canberra), Stefano Zacchiroli (University Paris Diderot)<\/p>\n
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 (S\u00f6derberg & O\u2019Neil, 2014).<\/p>\n
Peer projects are \u2018ethical\u2019 as participation is primarily motivated by self-fulfillment and validated by a community of peers, rather than by earning wages. Their governance is \u2018modular\u2019, 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\u2019Neil, 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).<\/p>\n
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 \u2018already existing non-capitalist economic processes\u2019 be strengthened, \u2018new non-capitalist enterprises\u2019 be built, and \u2018communal subjects\u2019 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?<\/p>\n
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:<\/p>\n
Nowadays firms attempt to monetize crowdsourced labour. The paradigmatic example is Amazon\u2019s Mechanical Turk labourers (popularly known as \u2018Turkers\u2019, \u2018cloud workers\u2019 or \u2018click workers\u2019) 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 \u2018prosumers\u2019 (Frayss\u00e9 & O\u2019Neil, 2015). Capitalist firms are also increasingly engaging with ethical-modular organizations, in some cases paying wages to participants. Such labour is thus both \u2018alienated\u2019, or sold, and \u2018communal\u2019, as workers freely cooperate to produce commons. Do traditional categories such as exploitation and alienation still apply?<\/p>\n
Topics may include, but are not limited to:<\/p>\n
– Peer production and the global political economy
\n– Peer production and the rise of precarious work
\n– Peer workers and possibilities for worker organisation
\n– Does the autonomy of peer workers cause conflict in firms, and how is it resolved?
\n– What strategies do firms adopt to co-opt peer production (e.g., \u2018hackhathons\u2019)?
\n– Do tensions around property rights emerge?
\n– Subjectivity in peer production
\n– Peer production and intellectual property, coded work<\/p>\n
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 \u2018cooperative spirit\u2019 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:<\/p>\n
– How do peer projects deal with the presence of paid or waged labour?
\n– Is this topic discussed within peer production projects? In what way?
\n– What benefits do paid or waged workers enjoy in peer projects?
\n– How does paid labour affect peer production projects?<\/p>\n
300-500 word-abstract due: 30 July 2015
\nNotification to authors: 30 August 2015
\nSubmission of full paper: 31 December 2015
\nReviews to authors: 15 February 2016
\nRevised papers: 30 April 2016
\nSignals due: 30 May 2016
\nIssue release: June\/July 2016<\/p>\n