[ecrea] CfP: INTERNET AND NEW PRODUCTIVE PARADIGMS: THE STS CONTRIBUTION

*INTERNET AND NEW PRODUCTIVE PARADIGMS: THE STS CONTRIBUTION*

Thematic session at EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES, SOCIAL WORLDS, the 4th National
Conference of STS Italia (Italian Society of Science and Technology Studies)

The conference will be held in Rovigo from 21 to 23 June 2012, and will be
organized in partnership with CIGA of the University of Padua (Centre for
Environmental Law Decisions and Corporate Ethical Certification).

*Convernors*:   Stefano De Paoli (<ahref foundation, Trento),
(stefano /at/ ahref.eu), Cristiano Storni (University of Limerick),
(cristiano.storni /at/ ul.ie), Maurizio Teli (<ahref foundation, Trento),
(maurizio /at/ ahref.eu)

The exponential diffusion of the Internet on a global scale shows the
emergence of new and socio-technical arrangements that seem to call into
question our traditional separation between production and consumption. For
many, we are witnessing the emergence and consolidation of a completely new
production paradigm where production processes are decentralised,
distributed among an undisclosed mass of actors often proactive, sometimes
without a predictable path. The examples of this grow daily: Wikipedia,
free and open source software and hardware, folksonomies, crowdsourcing
platforms, online hacktivism, Do-it-Yourself communities, and so on.
New concepts have been developed in an attempt to capture these new
practices and these new socio-technical arrangements: in the late 1970s,
Toffler (1980) theorized the emergence of the prosumer, both producer and
consumer of goods. This phenomenon of convergence between the producer and
consumer has stimulated research to generate new concepts such as
"wikinomics (Tapscott and Williams, 2006)," commons-based peer production
"(Benkler, 2006)," produsage "(Bruns, 2008), and ideas like the Hack-tivism
(Auty, 2004) or Mash-ups technology (Hartmann et al. 2006). At the same
time, however, we are witnessing the emergence of criticisms that highlight
that these innovative aspects are the perpetuation, more or less obvious,
of the traditional capitalist logic. This  seems to fuel disputes around
the themese of control, surveillance, exploitation of intellectual property
management, deskilling, etc. (Lash, 2002, Terranova, 2000, De Paoli and
Storni, 2011)
Instead of taking the emergence of the new production paradigm as a matter
of fact, the goal of this track is to describe and understand the practices
and dynamics that characterize the socio-technical collectives behind the
phenomena mentioned above, and discuss how they help us to rethink not only
the traditional division of labour between production and consumption, but
mostly what we mean with the terms work, production, consumption, and
property (commons) in our information society.
In this sense to invite contributions and case studies in different areas
to discuss, but are not limited to:

   - the role of STS in the study of new emerging practices in the
   information society;
   - how to rethink and/or deconstruct empirically the concepts of
   production, consumption, property, work and good: debates, controversies
   and new definitions;
   - doing and undoing the boundaries between production and consumption
   (or design and use);
   - new conceptions of labor and its distribution;
   - Do-it-Yourself and Do-it-with-Others: new practices?


Abstracts (in Italian or* English)* should be sent as email attachment (as
MS word or Rich Text Format) to the track’s coordinators (and carbon copied
(to4convegnosts /at/ gmail.com)) by* March 1, 2012*. Abstracts with a maximum
length of *500 words* should contain the title, author’s name, affiliation
and contact details including e-mail.

The call for contributions can be downloaded from
http://www.stsitalia.org/conferences/STSITALIA_2012/STS_Track4.pdf

Further information on the conference on:
http://www.stsitalia.org/?p=744&lang=en

Best Regards

Maurizio


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