autonomy

The politics of workers' inquiry

2 May 2013 to 3 May 2013

Banner displaying litography depicting historical workers' struggles

Conference Schedule

Workers’ inquiry is an approach to and practice of knowledge production that seeks to understand the changing composition of labor and its potential for revolutionary social transformation. It is the practice of turning the tools of the social sciences into weapons of class struggle. Workers’ inquiry seeks to map the continuing imposition of the class relation, not as a disinterested investigation, but rather to deepen and intensify... more

Keywords

Towards an anarchist cybernetics: Stafford Beer, self-organisation and radical social movements

Introduction

In this paper, I attempt to rehabilitate cybernetics, in some form, as a tradition that has the potential to enrich our understandings of radical or alternative forms of organisation. In doing so, I argue for an anarchist cybernetics: a reading of Stafford Beer’s organisational cybernetics that lends itself to forms of organisation that aim to limit if not completely reject centralised, top-down command and control in favour of participatory and democratic practices.

Roundtable: Free work

Introduction

Indier than thou – On creative professions, chefs, and the sacralization of margins

Soundly situated in obscurityland,
famous in inverse proportion to how cool I am,
and should I ever garner triple-digit fans
you can tell me then there’s someone I ain’t indier than
MC Frontalot, ‘Indier Than Thou’

autonomy

The politics of workers' inquiry

Conference Schedule

Towards an anarchist cybernetics: Stafford Beer, self-organisation and radical social movements

Introduction

Roundtable: Free work

Introduction

Indier than thou – On creative professions, chefs, and the sacralization of margins

Social work: A history of gender and class in the profession

Introduction

New conditions for identities, cultures and governance of welfare sector professionals: The teaching profession

Introduction