Fostering Commonfare. Infrastructuring Autonomous Social Collaboration

Abstract

Recently, HCI scholars have started questioning the relationship between computing and political economy, with both general analyses of such relationships, and specific design cases describing design interventions. This paper contributes to this stream of reflections, and argues that IT designers and HCI scholars can critically engage with the contemporary phase of capitalism by infrastructuring the emergence of new institutional forms of autonomous social collaboration through IT projects. More specifically, we discuss strategies and tactics that are available for IT designers embracing an activist agenda while infrastructuring autonomous social collaborations. We draw on empirical data from an H2020 EU funded project -Commonfare -that seeks to foster the emergence of alternative forms of welfare provision rooted in social collaboration. In this context, we discuss how the necessary multiple relations that unfold in a project with such ambitions shape both the language and the technologies of the project itself.

Communication in infrastructuring, or tales from a collaborative project

“…The consortium decided to create a glossary ś eventually implemented using a wiki ś to allow for clearer explanation of the words that would be used, and allow for discussion around their choice. This example in particular has been presented in an infrastructuring context by Lyle et al [20].…”

“…Signiicant efort has been made by the HCI and CSCW communities to discuss infrastructuring as a concept, including special issues [22]. The contribution we wish to focus on is that of Bodker et al [5] and Lyle et al [19,20] who enrich the ecological perspective of Pipek and Wulf with an understanding of actions of people surrounded by the technology, be they designers, users, or other stakeholders, through the concept of strategies and tactics (drawn from De Certeau [7], and, in HCI, more widely disseminated by Dourish [9]). As concepts, strategies and tactics allow for an interpretation of people's actions discussing the bases of their agency in any speciic time: when social actors have their own space and resources through which they can project in the future, they are acting strategically; when they act in a space and with resources deined mainly by others, they are acting tactically.…”

“…This political commitment has been recently strongly revived, both in the theme of the 2018 Participatory Design Conference ś łParticipatory Design, Democracy, and Politicsž ś and in more recent publications dealing with institutions [17,29] or contemporary political economy [28]. The political angle of PD is relevant to recent HCI research on the political economy of digital technologies [11,20] and on the so-called digital civics [33], as in both these areas of inquiry are issues of the relationship between digital technologies, collaborative action, and forms of transformation of the status-quo.…”

Institutioning the common

“…More in detail, following Teli et al [11,13], the open design process enacted sees the NGOs doing empirical activities as ieldwork (including focus groups, interviews, workshops) with the support of the designers. The project design approach, as well as the tensions and negotiations involved in such a project, have previously been discussed focusing on the role of PD practitioners in the process of designing digital tools fostering commonfare [46].…”

Sharing the Office, Sharing the Care?

“…Building on work-life balance initiatives deployed within organizations and on alternative forms of welfare provision rooted in social collaboration [24], this paper explores employees and managers perspectives toward collaborative childcare services to be deployed in the workplace, leveraging co-worker communities and the opportunities offered by digital platforms.…”