This policy brief discusses the implications for labour and trade unions of new forms of work that are organised via distributed digital networks using the internet. The authors focus on what has been called ‘commons-based peer production’ but also address the more controversial case of ‘platform capitalism’ (such as Uber or AirBnB). These new forms… Continue reading
Lessons from the Conference at the European Economic and Social Committee, 5 December 2016 Developing a Co-op commons alliance towards a Collaborative Equitable and Participatory Economy: Cooperative digital platforms Lines of research This in-depth summary was compiled by our colleague Nicole Alix and originally published in Commons Transition. Digital platforms are at the heart of the so-called “collaborative”… Continue reading
Paola Tubaro reports from the recent “How to coop the collaborative economy” in Brussels. Originally published at Data Big and Small. Paola Tubaro: I was yesterday at a nice and interesting conference in Brussels on “How to coop the collaborative economy“, organized by major actors of the Belgian cooperative movement and building on the experience of… Continue reading
A Q&A with Michel Bauwens by Oliver Sylvester-Bradley, as part of our focus on Platform Co-ops and the open2017 conference. Michel Bauwens is a theorist in the emerging field of P2P theory and director and founder of the P2P Foundation, a global organisation of researchers collaborating in the exploration of peer production, governance, and property. He has… Continue reading
“Transition to Co-operative Commonwealth: Pathways to a new political economy” This July 10 – 21, 2017 the Synergia Institute will gather in Tuscany, Italy for an intensive program exploring practical pathways to social change. The first course of it’s kind developed by Synergia offers a unique opportunity bringing together tutors to share their experience in implementing… Continue reading
This video offers a good explanation of community land trust in Brussels and its tripartite form of governance. (Video by ZEMOS98).
PRIMO NUTGMEG interviews Center for a Stateless Society senior fellow and P2P Foundation regular contributor Kevin Carson. From the shownotes to the podcast Kevin Carson is a left-wing libertarian who supports a free market but opposes “capitalism.” We discuss the differences between various schools of libertarianism and the possibility for collaboration. We also discuss the… Continue reading
If the need for more renewable energy* or more democracy seems pretty obvious to most of us, the need for more (citizen) ownership is generally less clear. And even less the combination of the three: community energy. Insights into the multiple benefits of community energy as a transformative process. Community energy refers to any kind of power plant using a renewable source of… Continue reading
The Design Museum in London recently opened at its new home with, as its centrepiece, an exhibition called Fear and Love curated by Justin McGuirk. I contributed the following text to the book. Why we need a new story In 1971 a geologist called Earl Cook evaluated the amount of energy ‘captured from the environment’ in… Continue reading
The first open source satellite ready to take off The University of Patras Satellite (UPSat) is a 2U Cubesat satellite constructed and delivered by Libre Space Foundation, begun by the University of Patras as part of the QB50 mission. The UPSat mission aspires to be the first completely open source satellite ever launched. Manufactured in… Continue reading
Remember the Oxfam report early last year that found sixty-two individuals owned as much wealth as the entire bottom half of humanity put together? It’s gone down to only six — that’s right, six — in the past year: Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos, Amancio Ortega, Mark Zuckerberg, and Carlos Slim Helu. The total wealth held… Continue reading
Michael Peter Edson: It was usually a note in the newspaper, a few pages back. Or, if the blaze was big enough and a camera crew arrived quickly, a feature on the evening news. It seems like house fires were more common when I was young, and the story was often the same: “As they… Continue reading
Anna Cash: Solidarity economy enterprises move beyond the “any job is a good job” logic sometimes found in efforts to address labor market exclusion. Instead, these more holistically supportive workspaces can help solidarity economy entrepreneurs move beyond “consumer citizenship” into a deeper participatory citizenship, becoming protagonists. But what does citizenship mean in the context of… Continue reading
The P2P Foundation is serializing videos on the Solidarity Economy produced by the SUSY (Sustainable and Solidarity Economy) Project. See all videos here. Associate Veena Nabar worked on behalf of the College in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, which is geographically isolated from mainland India, to produce a film about Ellon Hinengo Co-operative Society. Ellon… Continue reading
Bellowing out in the songs of eco-village choirs and reverberating down city streets through the chants of the 99%, the call for a new economy echoes out over the dying gasps of late capitalism. From energy co-operatives in Spain that are literally bringing power to the local level, to a small school hidden deep in… Continue reading
The P2P Foundation’s Michel Bauwens interviews Julien Reynier and Fabrice Clerc from L’Atelier Paysan L’Atelier Paysan is a French cooperative that works with farmers to design machines and buildings adapted to the specific practices of small farm agroecology. In addition to distributing free plans on its website, L’Atelier Paysan organizes winter self-help training sessions, during which farmers… Continue reading