[ecrea] V Etnography and Qualitative Research Conference

it is with pleasure that we communicate the announcement of the keynote
speakers for the *V Etnography and Qualitative Research Conference*, to be
held in *Bergamo*, Italy in June (5th - 7th).

The keynote speakers are *Michael Burawoy*, University of California
Berkeley, and *Marc Abélès*,  LAIOS – Laboratoire d’Anthropologie des
Institutions et des Organisations Sociales.

We take this occasion to remind you the call for abstracts of the session
*It**’s a free work… When work relations become passionate* of the same
conference (available here:http://www.etnografiaricercaqualitativa.it/?p=13
).

Your contribution to the proposed session will be greatly appreciated!

On the conference website and below you can find the text of the call
for abstracts.
Proposals should be sent by* Februay 17, 2014 *to:
(annalisa.murgia /at/ unitn.it)
(maurizio /at/ ahref.eu)
Please, also CC the conference address:(workshop.etnografia /at/ unibg.it)

Each proposal, of a maximum length of 1000 words, should contain:
• the title of your talk;
• your contact details (full name, email address, post address and
affiliation) and those of your co-author/s, if any.

Contributions will be accepted both in *Italian* and *English*.

Acceptance of proposals will be notified by March 17, 2014. Contributors
must register by April 21, 2014 to be included in the program.

With best wishes,
Annalisa Murgia&  Maurizio Teli

—
*It’s a free work… When working relations become passionate*

Convenors:* Annalisa Murgia* (Department of Sociology and Social Research
of the University of Trento)&  *Maurizio Teli* (Fondazione<ahref, Trento)

In contemporary knowledge society, both creativity and the ability to put
into play personal resources are recognized as precious and valuable
competences. With this workshop, we want to stimulate a reflection within
the debate on free work (Beverungen et al. 2013; Chicchi et al. 2013),
starting with the ambivalent meaning of the word free, referring both to
the absence of a price and to the domain of freedom. We invite to elaborate
on the double face of contemporary work: on one side, it is characterized
by low or absent wages, it is so intrusive to become totalizing; on the
other side, it is often based on informal registers, on subjects’ desire
for freedom, and on the confusion between free time and working time.
Drawing upon the contribution on free software development by the
anthropologist Christopher Kelty (2008), we can frame this social
phenomenon as the expansion of voluntary activities that intertwine with
work activities in many forms.

What is common among software developers – and among others who describe
their work primarily as a passion – is not only the individual expression
of creativity, but also the translation of the playful-affective dimension
in recursive processes of relation, processes that bring to a preoccupation
for the institutional, technological, political and economical conditions
which the particular community and its productive activities are based on.
These are, therefore, working experiences (paid or unpaid) in which the
subjects’ identification and self-expression are conveyed both by putting
life itself at work (Morini e Fumagalli 2010; Fleming 2012) and by
questioning the social relations within which work is realised (Borghi et
al. 2011). The proposed subject of analysis is as wide as heterogeneous,
and it includes knowledge work, the creative industries and high tech
production chains, emotional and caring work, all sharing the ambivalences
of free work. What are the characteristics of the activities wherein
subjects invest their affections and desires and that become incorporated
by the rhetoric of work as a mission? If, on one side, free work makes
economically valuable free expert activities, can it allow the emergence of
new forms of collective action? How can we understand the main traits of
such phenomenon, in particular from a methodological perspective?


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