2^nd Call for Papers and extended deadline till February 14:

**** apologies for cross-posting***

RGS-IBG Annual International Conference 2016

London, 30 August - 2 September 2016

Session Convenors:

Janet Merkel (City University London)

Vasilis Avdikos (Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences Athens)

Co-working the city: New infrastructures of creative collaboration in cities

Collaborative oriented shared workspaces — so called co-working spaces — have proliferated in cities worldwide since the financial crisis of 2007-08 and the subsequent recession. This development is embedded in the rise of freelance work and freelancers as independent economic agents in the dominant project-based production mode of creative industries and thus, gives visibility to this ‘hidden’ work force (Watson 2012; Mould et al. 2014). Co-working spaces can be regarded a coping strategy with the multidimensional uncertainty in creative labour markets, yet they are also highlighted as new distinct geographies of collaboration in cities (Schmidt et al. 2014; Capdevila 2015; Merkel 2015). Often with more than 200 co-workers fluctuating throughout the space, co-working spaces are places of random or serendipitous encounter between different work, practice and epistemic cultures. Thus, co-working spaces can promote knowledge diffusion, and they may also facilitate knowledge creation. As spaces of encounter, co-working spaces link together a diverse set of actors in co-presence who have to negotiate a shared space; and they organize interaction across different spaces, supporting networks of communication that potentially could enable economic, political, and social action across wider territories.

For this session, we are interested in what is going on in the inside of co-working spaces and want to have a specific focus on the micro-dynamics and micro-politics of co-working. For what kind of action and coordination do co-working spaces become platforms and new infrastructures in cities?

- What kind of resources do co-working spaces provide freelancers with?

- How do co-workers engage with each other in a co-working space, what forms of collaboration and collectivization, sharing and learning can be found in co-working spaces?

- How is community building stimulated in co-working spaces?

- What kind of social and political initiatives are coming out of co-working spaces (e.g. freelancers’ movements)?

- How do co-working spaces engage with the neighbourhoods they are situated in, in political, social and economic geography terms? How do they interact with wider urban economic and political strategies?

- Can co-working can be considered an emancipatory practice, the creation of an alternative space, that challenges the ongoing (neo-)liberal politics of individualisation or does co-working represents the epitome of neoliberal self-governance (see e.g. Gandini 2015)? 

Since we currently lack systematic and methodologically robust social-scientific analysis about co-working, this session especially welcomes conceptual and methodological accounts as well as detailed empirical illustrations from cities around the world.

Those who would like to participate in the session should contact [log in to unmask] or [log in to unmask] by February 14, 2016 with an abstract of around 250 words. We will inform participants by February 16, 2016 whether their paper was accepted.

References

Capdevila, I. (2015) 'Co-Working Spaces and the Localised Dynamics of Innovation in Barcelona.', International Journal of Innovation Management, 19(3).

Gandini, A. (2015) 'The Rise of Coworking Spaces: A Literature Review', ephemera: theory & politics in organization, 15(1): 193 - 205.

Merkel, J. (2015) 'Coworking in the City', ephemera: theory & politics in organization, 15(1): 121-139.

Mould, O., Vorley, T.and Liu, K. (2014) 'Invisible Creativity? Highlighting the Hidden Impact of Freelancing in London's Creative Industries', European Planning Studies, 22(12): 2436-2455.

Schmidt, S., Brinks, V.and Brinkhoff, S. (2014) 'Innovation and Creativity Labs in Berlin Organizing Temporary Spatial Configurations for Innovations', Zeitschrift fuer Wirtschaftsgeographie, 58(4): 232-247.

Watson, A. (2012) 'Sociological Perspectives on the Economic Geography of Projects: The Case of Project‐Based Working in the Creative Industries', Geography Compass, 6(10): 617-631.

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Dr Janet Merkel

Lecturer in Culture and Creative Industries

City University London

School of Arts and Social Sciences

Department of Sociology

Center for Culture and the Creative Industries

Northampton Square

London EC1V OHB

Tel: 0044 (0)20 7040 8347

Email: [log in to unmask]

Read our department blog at http://blogs.city.ac.uk/cci/

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