In an age defined by capitalist systems that dominate our socioeconomic structures, the need for innovative perspectives and transformative theories has never been more pressing. “Capital Redefined,” crafted by S. A. Hamed Hosseini and Barry K. Gills, launches a pioneering scholarly endeavor to reconceptualize ‘capital’ and its intertwined value theory at a time when the resurgence of the ‘C word’ signals a reawakening of  longstanding disputes and the emergence of new theoretical discourses. Their book is not just an academic endeavor but a radical manifesto-making framework that challenges the established norms of value theory in the context of capitalism.

This short essay explores the core themes and radical insights presented in the book.

Professor Marcus Foth - from Queensland University of Technology - Hosted by UON-FEDUA Alternative Futures Research Hub

Tuesday 10 Sep 2019, 10am – 2pm incl. lunch-breakThe turn to participation in smart cities was intended to increase the involvement of diverse, often marginalized, citizens in the design and use of networked sensing technologies. However, ideals of activism, citizen engagement, and democratization through the co-design of networked technologies and services have been largely based on an understanding of urban space as separate from nature, and for human inhabitants alone. In current conditions of climate change, pollution, and loss of biodiversity, a human-centered perspective of cities is increasingly problematic.

This Commonist Episode focuses on an expanded more-than-human perspective for cities, informed by studies in the Anthropocene in fields such as STS, geography, planning, and design. We will interrogate how more-than-human perspectives and their resultant ethical, legal, and methodological concerns can shape participatory design practices and services towards cohabitation and push forward a cultural change in the agenda of sustainable smart cities, urban informatics, IoT, and design.

Professor Bronwen Morgan (UNSW Law) and Dr. Joanne McNeill (UWS) discuss the insights gained by thinking about the ownership and governance of platform cooperatives across a range of sectors through the tri-fold perspective of legal, design and urban policy perspectives. They highlight how this provides an important complement to the more traditional focus on greater regulatory protection of precarious labour in the digital economy. Bronwen Morgan is a Professor at UNSW Law School with a strong interest in new and diverse economies, mostly of the kind affiliated with solidarity and the creation of a commons. Bronwen has longstanding research interests in regulation, especially the interaction between its technocratic interstices and collective commitments to democracy and conviviality. Her more recent empirical research has focused on energy, food, water and new kinds of lawyers.   Joanne McNeill is Research Projects Manager with Western Sydney University’s Institute for Culture & Society, a Visiting Fellow at UNSW Law, and a founding Director of the fledgling Community Economies Institute. Her professional experience and research interests focus on various dimensions of alternative economic organizing, including around social procurement, cooperatives, social enterprises, capacity building and demonstrating ‘impact’. She is a Churchill Fellow, awarded in 2008.  

Alternative Futures and Regional Prospects Symposium Working across Differences, beyond Carbon, Capital and Commodity  Thursday 22nd & Friday 23rd of November 2018 Organizers: The University of Newcastle Alternative Futures Network, Common Alternatives Network (http://thecommonalts.com/); hosted by The University of Technology Sydney

Robyn Kaczmarek (Founder and Managing Director, The Co-operative Life), tells her story about how Australia’s first worker-owned cooperative delivers quality social care services and offers care workers a better deal.  Robyn Kaczmarek is the founder and managing director of The Co-operative Life, Australia’s first worker-owned cooperative in social care services. The cooperative began operating in 2013 with a single employee but has grown to around 75 staff members. Before entering the social care services sector, Robyn studied naturopathy, Chinese medicine and acupuncture (UTS) and ran a clinic in Mosman. She later completed a diploma in the coordination of care services. In setting up and continuing her passionate commitment to The Co-operative Life, Robyn strives to break the vicious cycle of poor work conditions for support workers and deliver improved quality of care services to the vulnerable.  

Alternative Futures and Regional Prospects Symposium Working across Differences, beyond Carbon, Capital and Commodity  Thursday 22nd & Friday 23rd of November 2018 Organizers: The University of Newcastle Alternative Futures Network, Common Alternatives Network (http://thecommonalts.com/); hosted by The University of Technology Sydney

Dr Louise Crabtree (and James Brown) discuss how co-operative housing is demonstrating how to break away from developer-led models of housing to focus on people and community. Several case studies highlight key aspects of the model, what it means to do housing cooperatively and why we should embrace co-operative housing in pursuit of a better and alternative future.  James Brown is the CEO of Common Equity NSW, the peak body for Housing Co-operatives in NSW. James has more than 15 years’ experience in Executive and leadership roles in local government, public health, aged care and housing. James has experience in diverse roles covering political, strategic and practical perspectives in pursuit of the public good. He is seeking to bring about change in Australia’s housing market by fostering a consumer-led approach to housing.  Louise was awarded her PhD in Human Geography from Macquarie University in 2007 and has been with Western Sydney University since 2007. Her research focuses on the social, ecological and economic sustainability of community-driven housing developments in Australia; on the uptake of housing innovation in practice and policy; on complex adaptive systems theory in urban contexts; and, on the interfaces between sustainability, property rights, institutional design and democracy.   

Alternative Futures and Regional Prospects Symposium Working across Differences, beyond Carbon, Capital and Commodity  Thursday 22nd & Friday 23rd of November 2018 Organizers: The University of Newcastle Alternative Futures Network, Common Alternatives Network (http://thecommonalts.com/); hosted by The University of Technology Sydney

Dr. Jarra Hicks (Co-Founder and Director of Community Power Agency) will discuss the work of the Community Power Agency is helping to support and build the capacity of community energy co-operatives.  Jarra is a passionate advocate, researcher and participant in the creation of community-owned renewable energy projects. She holds a PhD from University of New South Wales, and an Honors degree in Development Studies from the University of Newcastle. Jarra is an environmental activist and grass roots organizer. She is co-founder of the Beanstalk Organic Food Coop, and co-founder and director of Community Power Agency, a not-for- profit cooperative that supports the growth of a vibrant community-owned renewable energy future in Australia.  

Alternative Futures and Regional Prospects Symposium Working across Differences, beyond Carbon, Capital and Commodity  Thursday 22nd & Friday 23rd of November 2018 Organizers: The University of Newcastle Alternative Futures Network, Common Alternatives Network (http://thecommonalts.com/); hosted by The University of Technology Sydney

This panel brought together a group of people who have experience in designing, analyzing and implementing co-operative solutions to our most pressing everyday needs – work, energy, housing and care. The panel members introduced four case studies that demonstrate how the co-operative model has been used in the most innovative and practical ways to solve these problems at a grass roots level.  The panel has been organized by Ms Ann Apps (Newcastle Law School) and Dr. Sidsel Grimstad (Newcastle Business School) who provided a brief introduction to the session, linking it to the conference themes and will facilitate the general discussion at the end of the individual presentations.  Ms. Ann Apps is a lecturer in the Law School at University of Newcastle Law School. Ann currently teaches Contracts, Law of Business Organisation and Co-operative Law and Governance. Ann has previously practiced as a solicitor in regional New South Wales and is interested in the provision of legal services to support diverse and vibrant communities. Ann is completing her PhD at the University of Newcastle on the impact of regulation on co-operatives in Australia. Her research interests include corporate and co-operative governance, legal models for social enterprise and co-operative housing.  Dr. Sidsel Grimstad is a senior lecturer and Director of New Postgraduate Programs in the Newcastle Business School. She is the Program Convener for the Graduate Certificate in Co-operative Organisation and Management. Sidsel is currently working with a team of researchers funded by Common Equity NSW to look at the future of co-operative housing in Australia. Sidsel brings to the team her comparative knowledge of co-operative housing in Norway and other Scandinavian countries.  

Alternative Futures and Regional Prospects Symposium Working across Differences, beyond Carbon, Capital and Commodity  Thursday 22nd & Friday 23rd of November 2018 Organizers: The University of Newcastle Alternative Futures Network, Common Alternatives Network (http://thecommonalts.com/); hosted by The University of Technology Sydney

The Community Economies Research Network (CERN) is an international network of 200 scholars, activists, and artists working in locations throughout the world to enact a post-capitalist politics in economies understood to be already more than capitalist.  Seeing the economic landscape as intrinsically heterogeneous changes the optics of post-capitalism directing our gaze away from a Utopian horizon to the possibilities for ethically negotiating and politically shaping our shared existence in an imperfect present.   A current research project with Australian CERN members uses a case example approach to imagine other futures for manufacturing in Australia studying enterprises of various sizes, operating across a range of scales and organizational forms—capitalist enterprises, as well as cooperative and social-enterprises—including two within the Hunter region. We selected these case examples based on the idea that they are already practicing what Julien Agyeman calls just-sustainability, attending to ecological concerns by means of social inclusion, and in so doing contributing to what Tony Fry terms the radical unmaking of unsustainability. Looking through a post-capitalist lens we can see how social innovations coming from non-capitalist social enterprises may be broadened into a re-imaging of a new culture of manufacturing that is sensitive to 21st century social and ecological challenges.    Dr Stephen Healy is a Senior Research Fellow at ICS. His research has concentrated on the relationship between economy, subjectivity and the enactment of new econo-socialities exploring various topics: health care reform policy, cooperative and regional development, and the solidarity economy movement. His current ARC project, with CIs Katherine Gibson, and Jenny Cameron  Reconfiguring the Enterprise: Shifting Manufacturing Culture in Australia re-imagines the future of manufacturing in Australia. He is co-author of Take Back the Economy an Ethical Guide for Transforming our Communities (UMP 2013), presently translated into Korean, Spanish and Finnish with planned translations into Greek and French.  Stephen has been published in Geoforum, Antipode, Gender, Place and Culture, Professional Geographer, New Zealand Geographer, Journal of Political Ecology and Rethinking Marxism and elsewhere and in numerous edited volumes. Stephen is a founding member of the Community Economies Research Network (CERN) (http://www.communityeconomies.org/).   

 Alternative Futures and Regional Prospects Symposium Working across Differences, beyond Carbon, Capital and Commodity  Thursday 22nd & Friday 23rd of November 2018 Organizers: The University of Newcastle Alternative Futures Network, Common Alternatives Network (http://thecommonalts.com/); hosted by The University of Technology Sydney

As Marxist feminist political economists demonstrate reproductive labour is a key, oft, invisibilised feminised place, of value production (Federici 2004). As decolonial feminists demonstrate the raced and gendered body is faced with complex forms of onto-epistemological violences (Motta, 2018). The contemporary period has witnessed both the feminisation of precarious labour and the continuation of feminised social reproductive labour combined with the intensification of onto-epistemological violences against the raced and feminised body. Such a context leads to the intensification of the precariousness and precarity of everyday life for large sections of the Global South. In this talk I will explore how feminist nonviolent movements in Colombia are responding to such a double burden in the context of intensifying onto-epistemological violences through exploration of the politicisation of social reproduction, precariousness and precarity into new forms of feminised resistances and a politics in/of the feminine. In particular I will discuss the prefigurative and decolonising praxis being developed by women and men in movement through enfleshed epistemologies, insurgent temporalities, an ethics of care, and a politics of life.  Sara C. Motta is a mother, critical theorist, poet and popular educator who currently works in the Politics Discipline at the University of Newcastle, NSW Australia. At present she is co-facilitating a number of projects including ‘La Politica de la Maternidad (The Politics of Motherhood)’ with militant mothers and grandmothers in Colombia, Brazil and Australia. She has published over 40 academic articles/chapters covering the topics of decolonial feminism, another feminised politics, emancipatory pedagogies, and prefigurative epistemologies. Her latest books include ‘Constructing 21st Century Socialism in Latin America: The Role of Radical Education’ with Mike Cole (2014, Palgrave Macmillan Press) and ‘Liminal Subjects: Weaving (our) Liberation’ (2018, Rowman & Littlefield).  ------------------------------------------------------------ Alternative Futures and Regional Prospects Symposium Working across Differences, beyond Carbon, Capital and Commodity  Thursday 22nd & Friday 23rd of November 2018 Organizers: The University of Newcastle Alternative Futures Network, Common Alternatives Network (http://thecommonalts.com/); hosted by The University of Technology Sydney

In a time of ecological breakdown on a planetary scale, governments, business and United Nations agencies advance the Green Economy idea and Sustainable Development Goals as panacea. These programs look to entrepreneurial partnerships and research on innovative product design to 'join the dots' of society, economy, and ecology. But a sex-gendered reading of the Green Economy exposes the full depth of contradictions existing beneath and between these 'three pillars'. For example, environmental policy makers, academic theorists, even activists tend to overlook the multiple effects of learned sex-gender attitudes. Yet a structural analysis of energy consumption patterns shows women across cultures have a relatively small 'ecological footprint'. Moreover, women as reproductive labour skilled in multi-tasking tend to problem solve integratively. These sex-gender differences are not inborn but historically assigned, then reinforced sociologically by material necessity and lessons learned in everyday care-giving labour. This ecofeminist observation holds major implications for environmental politics. The paper outlines how the Green Economy idea came to dominate the discourse of global environmental politics, and what class, race, and sex-gender interests it serves. A critical analysis of 'ecological modernist' assumptions behind the Green Economy and United Nations Sustainable Development Goals reveals serious flaws on both justice and sustainability grounds. Conversely, it is argued that a global 'meta-industrial' labour majority, a sociologically 'unnamed class' at the domestic and geographic peripheries of capitalism, already demonstrates 'real green jobs', reproducing social relations while keeping the humanity-nature metabolism whole. The short-term international competitiveness of the Green Economy is contrasted with the locally oriented provisioning approaches of ecofeminism, buen vivir, and degrowth - as alternative social models for people engaging creatively in the re-vitalisation of post-industrial regions.      Hon Associate Professor Ariel Salleh, Political Economy, University of Sydney and Senior Fellow in Post-Growth Societies, Friedrich Schiller University Jena: www.arielsalleh.info ------------------------------------------------------------ Alternative Futures and Regional Prospects Symposium Working across Differences, beyond Carbon, Capital and Commodity  Thursday 22nd & Friday 23rd of November 2018 Organizers: The University of Newcastle Alternative Futures Network, Common Alternatives Network (http://thecommonalts.com/); hosted by The University of Technology Sydney