This work presents an ethnography of food startups in the «new food economy». The process whereby... more This work presents an ethnography of food startups in the «new food economy». The process whereby startuppers digitalize the informal agricultural knowledge of local farmers is explored. The accumulation of digitalized data is here interpreted as a form social-machinic dispossession. The process separates informal food knowledge from social actors and incorporates it into algorithmic machines. As a consequence, small farmers do not receive any direct or indirect form of financial benefit from their collaboration with food startups. On the other hand, however, the food startups themselves are not economically sustainable yet: this means that the extractive potential of a data-rentier economy remains a future promise.
Questo lavoro intende contribuire alla discussione critica sulla relazione tra il capitalismo dig... more Questo lavoro intende contribuire alla discussione critica sulla relazione tra il capitalismo digitale e il modello pandemico di shut-in society. L'obiettivo è di esplorare in che modo la diffusione del virus di Covid-19 e le misure di lock-down hanno prodotto un incontro tra paradigmi economici e sociali che si erano evoluti in relativo isolamento. Il focus dell'analisi si dispiega partendo dall'innovazione improduttiva e dai processi di finanziarizzazione dell'innovazione nell'economia startup. Analizzando i meccanismi che consentono alle big-tech di raggiungere valutazioni record nonostante la scarsa redditività, il lavoro si conclude proponendo di ri-configurare le condizioni entro le quali questo modello prospera per affrontare le sfide del vivere nell'era dell'Antropocene.
This study contributes to the theoretical perspectives on digital nomad identity. The aim is to g... more This study contributes to the theoretical perspectives on digital nomad identity. The aim is to go beyond the construction of the nomadic identity framed as identity work in liquid modernity. In doing that, the paper offers an empirical investigation of how knowledge workers construct and perform nomadic subjectivities through liminal work identities in underinstitutionalized contexts and symbolic consumption. Drawing on the life history of digital nomads living in Chiang Mai and Bangkok (Thailand), this work concludes that digital nomads know or make the experience that the nomadic lifestyle is not a permanent way of life but a specific stage of their life paths. Digital nomads frame their projects of self-realization through the digital nomad lifestyle as a liminal transition. The digital nomad identity emerges as a temporary and opportunistic assemblage of neoliberal do-ityourself biographies toward the emergence of a post-nomadic identity. However, the paradoxes and constraints embedded in the digital nomad lifestyle can freeze digital nomads in an objective and subjective permanent liminal condition.
Handbook of Research on Advanced Research Methodologies for a Digital Society, 2022
Startups are entrepreneurial organisations that aim to develop a scalable and disruptive business... more Startups are entrepreneurial organisations that aim to develop a scalable and disruptive business. However, these small ventures operate in an environment of extreme uncertainty. The startup economy takes place in the present but is directed towards the future. This chapter critically investigates in online and offline realms the circulation of imagined futures that create causal links to bridge the gap between the present economic scenario and potential futures in the Italian startup food economy. This work adopted a mixed-method approach framed in a qualitative exploratory strategy which was designed to integrate qualitative techniques and digital methods. This work concludes by highlighting the co-evolutionary process between online and offline realms. On the one hand, online narratives allow economic actors to perform in radical uncertain economic contexts, while, on the other hand, the offline practices give legitimacy and credibility to these potential future scenarios.
In Italia si è ormai consolidata l'idea che l'innovazione digitale debba passare per il modello s... more In Italia si è ormai consolidata l'idea che l'innovazione digitale debba passare per il modello startup/venture capital di origine Californiana. È dalla metà degli anni Novanta che il termine startup circola nelle discussioni sull'innovazione nel nostro paese, e nel ultimo decennio è diventato il modello dominante in assoluto. Da visioni per 'l'industria 4.0' al decreto crescita del governo Conte, passando per iniziative per valorizzare quartieri in degrado e contrastare la disoccupazione giovanile, 'investire in start-up' è diventato parte del senso comune di gramsciana memoria. Ma ha senso investire in startup? Quanto funziona l'ecosistema startup in Italia? Quanto è in grado di generare ricchezza e crescita? Quanto corrisponde il senso comune alla realtà?
Giordano, Alex, Vincenzo Luise, and Adam Arvidsson. "The coming community. The politics of altern... more Giordano, Alex, Vincenzo Luise, and Adam Arvidsson. "The coming community. The politics of alternative food networks in Southern Italy." Journal of Marketing Management 34, no. 7-8 (2018): 620-638.
This paper presents the case of “neo-rurality” in inner areas in the Campania region (southern It... more This paper presents the case of “neo-rurality” in inner areas in the Campania region (southern Italy). Inner areas are the scenery of innovative development processes, founded on structural and territorial resources, as well as on individuals and social capitals. Neo-rural exponents promote a new relationship between production and consumption. They are not only anti-consumerist: they articulate in a different way sustainability, visions of market relations, values and practices. Neo-rurality as a narrative-based brand collects various ideals, values and marketing behaviours, representing different economic actors in a common narrative. Based on fieldwork and interviews, undertaken in Campania during 2015, our study points out that, through the collective narrative, farmers are constructing a “neo-rurality” brand of local quality food and promotion of territory. We highlight how neo-rural farmers propose a novel combination of economic practices and value production in Alternative Agri-food Movements. Producers promote a combined approach to local development towards increasing food quality and cultural and environmental resources of territory. Furthermore, this is in line with recent studies on how agriculture and rural life have changed their role in post- modern society, and there we see also a trajectory for the future of inner areas.
This paper summarizes three years of ethnographic work on Commons Based Peer Production communiti... more This paper summarizes three years of ethnographic work on Commons Based Peer Production communities within the research project P2PValue, funded by the European Commission. Key insights are: • CBPP is part of a broader transformation in the information economy whereby collaboration and common knowledge have come to play an ever more important part in value creation. This development has roots that go back to the industrial revolution in the 19th century and it has been greatly accelerated by the diffusion of digital media. CBPP or CBPP like modes of production have become a core component to the contemporary information economy as a whole. • CBPP occurs in highly particular kinds of communities. They are not kept together by frequent interaction or a tight web of social relations. Instead they are kept together by sharing a common imaginary that posits a transformative potential on the part of the particular practice to which these communities are dedicated. • Contributions to this potential through technical skills and/or virtuous conduct is rewarded with reputation. Reputation is the form of that exchange value takes in CBPP communities, it is the 'fictious commodity' typical to CBPP. • Reputation is also the most important value form that structures transactions between CBPP and other institutional logics, such as that of markets, capitalism and the state. • The value of reputation lies in its ability to give a proximate measure to risk. • The fact that value is principally related to risk means that CBPP communities operate a value logic that mirror that of financial markets. • Most CBPP communities envision commons based markets as alternatives to capitalism. Such commons-based markets build on the construction of imaginaries that are able to transform insecurity into risk in ways that mirror communitarian principles.
Nella startup economy il successo può essere raggiunto attraverso un’idea rivoluzionaria. Mark Zu... more Nella startup economy il successo può essere raggiunto attraverso un’idea rivoluzionaria. Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, Peter Thiel, Jeff Bezos, Larry Page e Sergey Brin rappresentano l’incarnazione di questo mito. Giovani imprenditori che partendo dai propri garage sono riusciti a creare imprese digitali che hanno conquistato i mercati globali. Queste narrative sono costitutive dei nuovi modelli imprenditoriali diffusi dall’Ideologia Californiana. Nell’immaginario collettivo la Silicon Valley rappresenta l’epicentro dei cambiamenti generati dalla rivoluzione digitale. L’obiettivo del testo è quello di indagare il tipo di innovazione prodotta dall’economia startup attraverso l’esplorazione delle sue molteplici declinazioni, nel tempo e nelle forme. Il lavoro introduce una panoramica sul carattere multiforme di questa economia mostrando le dinamiche e le pratiche di funzionamento, e il modo in cui le retoriche “entrepreneurs are everywhere”, “fail fast, fail often”, “disruptive innovation” e “competition is for looser” hanno influenzato l’emergere e la diffusione di specifiche configurazioni organizzative e soggettività imprenditorializzate. Un modello che oggi appare in crisi: dal caso Cambridge Analytica al potere dei GAFA (Google, Apple, Facebook e Amazon), dalle crescenti critiche alle logiche finanziarie di investimento alla competizione con il distretto di Shenzhen in Cina. Il mito californiano sta tramontando?
From the phenomenological point of view of the everyday lifeworld, climate change, and the condit... more From the phenomenological point of view of the everyday lifeworld, climate change, and the condition of Anthropocene more generally, are often discussed as what Timothy Morton calls ‘hyperobjects’- objects that are ‘too big’ to be fully understood and acted on; that exceed the forms of rationality that our established habits and horizons permit. In this situation a common reaction is perplexity, a situation where established cognitive frames and forms of practice are unable to incorporate, comprehend and deal with the phenomenon in a coherent way and formulate rational, future-oriented horizons for action. In this article we use the case of Italian rural changemakers to investigate the features of such climate perplexity. Our conclusions problematize the future visions inherent in the changemaker ideology that stress the possibility of confronting phenomena related to the overall condition of the Anthropocene through value-oriented entrepreneurship.
This work presents an ethnography of food startups in the «new food economy». The process whereby... more This work presents an ethnography of food startups in the «new food economy». The process whereby startuppers digitalize the informal agricultural knowledge of local farmers is explored. The accumulation of digitalized data is here interpreted as a form social-machinic dispossession. The process separates informal food knowledge from social actors and incorporates it into algorithmic machines. As a consequence, small farmers do not receive any direct or indirect form of financial benefit from their collaboration with food startups. On the other hand, however, the food startups themselves are not economically sustainable yet: this means that the extractive potential of a data-rentier economy remains a future promise.
Questo lavoro intende contribuire alla discussione critica sulla relazione tra il capitalismo dig... more Questo lavoro intende contribuire alla discussione critica sulla relazione tra il capitalismo digitale e il modello pandemico di shut-in society. L'obiettivo è di esplorare in che modo la diffusione del virus di Covid-19 e le misure di lock-down hanno prodotto un incontro tra paradigmi economici e sociali che si erano evoluti in relativo isolamento. Il focus dell'analisi si dispiega partendo dall'innovazione improduttiva e dai processi di finanziarizzazione dell'innovazione nell'economia startup. Analizzando i meccanismi che consentono alle big-tech di raggiungere valutazioni record nonostante la scarsa redditività, il lavoro si conclude proponendo di ri-configurare le condizioni entro le quali questo modello prospera per affrontare le sfide del vivere nell'era dell'Antropocene.
This study contributes to the theoretical perspectives on digital nomad identity. The aim is to g... more This study contributes to the theoretical perspectives on digital nomad identity. The aim is to go beyond the construction of the nomadic identity framed as identity work in liquid modernity. In doing that, the paper offers an empirical investigation of how knowledge workers construct and perform nomadic subjectivities through liminal work identities in underinstitutionalized contexts and symbolic consumption. Drawing on the life history of digital nomads living in Chiang Mai and Bangkok (Thailand), this work concludes that digital nomads know or make the experience that the nomadic lifestyle is not a permanent way of life but a specific stage of their life paths. Digital nomads frame their projects of self-realization through the digital nomad lifestyle as a liminal transition. The digital nomad identity emerges as a temporary and opportunistic assemblage of neoliberal do-ityourself biographies toward the emergence of a post-nomadic identity. However, the paradoxes and constraints embedded in the digital nomad lifestyle can freeze digital nomads in an objective and subjective permanent liminal condition.
Handbook of Research on Advanced Research Methodologies for a Digital Society, 2022
Startups are entrepreneurial organisations that aim to develop a scalable and disruptive business... more Startups are entrepreneurial organisations that aim to develop a scalable and disruptive business. However, these small ventures operate in an environment of extreme uncertainty. The startup economy takes place in the present but is directed towards the future. This chapter critically investigates in online and offline realms the circulation of imagined futures that create causal links to bridge the gap between the present economic scenario and potential futures in the Italian startup food economy. This work adopted a mixed-method approach framed in a qualitative exploratory strategy which was designed to integrate qualitative techniques and digital methods. This work concludes by highlighting the co-evolutionary process between online and offline realms. On the one hand, online narratives allow economic actors to perform in radical uncertain economic contexts, while, on the other hand, the offline practices give legitimacy and credibility to these potential future scenarios.
In Italia si è ormai consolidata l'idea che l'innovazione digitale debba passare per il modello s... more In Italia si è ormai consolidata l'idea che l'innovazione digitale debba passare per il modello startup/venture capital di origine Californiana. È dalla metà degli anni Novanta che il termine startup circola nelle discussioni sull'innovazione nel nostro paese, e nel ultimo decennio è diventato il modello dominante in assoluto. Da visioni per 'l'industria 4.0' al decreto crescita del governo Conte, passando per iniziative per valorizzare quartieri in degrado e contrastare la disoccupazione giovanile, 'investire in start-up' è diventato parte del senso comune di gramsciana memoria. Ma ha senso investire in startup? Quanto funziona l'ecosistema startup in Italia? Quanto è in grado di generare ricchezza e crescita? Quanto corrisponde il senso comune alla realtà?
Giordano, Alex, Vincenzo Luise, and Adam Arvidsson. "The coming community. The politics of altern... more Giordano, Alex, Vincenzo Luise, and Adam Arvidsson. "The coming community. The politics of alternative food networks in Southern Italy." Journal of Marketing Management 34, no. 7-8 (2018): 620-638.
This paper presents the case of “neo-rurality” in inner areas in the Campania region (southern It... more This paper presents the case of “neo-rurality” in inner areas in the Campania region (southern Italy). Inner areas are the scenery of innovative development processes, founded on structural and territorial resources, as well as on individuals and social capitals. Neo-rural exponents promote a new relationship between production and consumption. They are not only anti-consumerist: they articulate in a different way sustainability, visions of market relations, values and practices. Neo-rurality as a narrative-based brand collects various ideals, values and marketing behaviours, representing different economic actors in a common narrative. Based on fieldwork and interviews, undertaken in Campania during 2015, our study points out that, through the collective narrative, farmers are constructing a “neo-rurality” brand of local quality food and promotion of territory. We highlight how neo-rural farmers propose a novel combination of economic practices and value production in Alternative Agri-food Movements. Producers promote a combined approach to local development towards increasing food quality and cultural and environmental resources of territory. Furthermore, this is in line with recent studies on how agriculture and rural life have changed their role in post- modern society, and there we see also a trajectory for the future of inner areas.
This paper summarizes three years of ethnographic work on Commons Based Peer Production communiti... more This paper summarizes three years of ethnographic work on Commons Based Peer Production communities within the research project P2PValue, funded by the European Commission. Key insights are: • CBPP is part of a broader transformation in the information economy whereby collaboration and common knowledge have come to play an ever more important part in value creation. This development has roots that go back to the industrial revolution in the 19th century and it has been greatly accelerated by the diffusion of digital media. CBPP or CBPP like modes of production have become a core component to the contemporary information economy as a whole. • CBPP occurs in highly particular kinds of communities. They are not kept together by frequent interaction or a tight web of social relations. Instead they are kept together by sharing a common imaginary that posits a transformative potential on the part of the particular practice to which these communities are dedicated. • Contributions to this potential through technical skills and/or virtuous conduct is rewarded with reputation. Reputation is the form of that exchange value takes in CBPP communities, it is the 'fictious commodity' typical to CBPP. • Reputation is also the most important value form that structures transactions between CBPP and other institutional logics, such as that of markets, capitalism and the state. • The value of reputation lies in its ability to give a proximate measure to risk. • The fact that value is principally related to risk means that CBPP communities operate a value logic that mirror that of financial markets. • Most CBPP communities envision commons based markets as alternatives to capitalism. Such commons-based markets build on the construction of imaginaries that are able to transform insecurity into risk in ways that mirror communitarian principles.
Nella startup economy il successo può essere raggiunto attraverso un’idea rivoluzionaria. Mark Zu... more Nella startup economy il successo può essere raggiunto attraverso un’idea rivoluzionaria. Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, Peter Thiel, Jeff Bezos, Larry Page e Sergey Brin rappresentano l’incarnazione di questo mito. Giovani imprenditori che partendo dai propri garage sono riusciti a creare imprese digitali che hanno conquistato i mercati globali. Queste narrative sono costitutive dei nuovi modelli imprenditoriali diffusi dall’Ideologia Californiana. Nell’immaginario collettivo la Silicon Valley rappresenta l’epicentro dei cambiamenti generati dalla rivoluzione digitale. L’obiettivo del testo è quello di indagare il tipo di innovazione prodotta dall’economia startup attraverso l’esplorazione delle sue molteplici declinazioni, nel tempo e nelle forme. Il lavoro introduce una panoramica sul carattere multiforme di questa economia mostrando le dinamiche e le pratiche di funzionamento, e il modo in cui le retoriche “entrepreneurs are everywhere”, “fail fast, fail often”, “disruptive innovation” e “competition is for looser” hanno influenzato l’emergere e la diffusione di specifiche configurazioni organizzative e soggettività imprenditorializzate. Un modello che oggi appare in crisi: dal caso Cambridge Analytica al potere dei GAFA (Google, Apple, Facebook e Amazon), dalle crescenti critiche alle logiche finanziarie di investimento alla competizione con il distretto di Shenzhen in Cina. Il mito californiano sta tramontando?
From the phenomenological point of view of the everyday lifeworld, climate change, and the condit... more From the phenomenological point of view of the everyday lifeworld, climate change, and the condition of Anthropocene more generally, are often discussed as what Timothy Morton calls ‘hyperobjects’- objects that are ‘too big’ to be fully understood and acted on; that exceed the forms of rationality that our established habits and horizons permit. In this situation a common reaction is perplexity, a situation where established cognitive frames and forms of practice are unable to incorporate, comprehend and deal with the phenomenon in a coherent way and formulate rational, future-oriented horizons for action. In this article we use the case of Italian rural changemakers to investigate the features of such climate perplexity. Our conclusions problematize the future visions inherent in the changemaker ideology that stress the possibility of confronting phenomena related to the overall condition of the Anthropocene through value-oriented entrepreneurship.
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Papers by Vincenzo Luise
and consumption. They are not only anti-consumerist: they articulate
in a different way sustainability, visions of market relations, values
and practices. Neo-rurality as a narrative-based brand collects
various ideals, values and marketing behaviours, representing
different economic actors in a common narrative.
Based on fieldwork and interviews, undertaken in Campania during 2015, our study points out that, through the collective narrative, farmers are constructing a “neo-rurality” brand of local quality food and promotion of territory.
We highlight how neo-rural farmers propose a novel combination of economic practices and value production in Alternative Agri-food Movements.
Producers promote a combined approach to local development towards increasing food quality and cultural and environmental resources of territory. Furthermore, this is in line with recent studies on how agriculture and rural life have changed their role in post- modern society, and there we see also a trajectory for the future of inner areas.
• CBPP is part of a broader transformation in the information economy whereby collaboration and common knowledge have come to play an ever more important part in value creation. This development has roots that go back to the industrial revolution in the 19th century and it has been greatly accelerated by the diffusion of digital media. CBPP or CBPP like modes of production have become a core component to the contemporary information economy as a whole.
• CBPP occurs in highly particular kinds of communities. They are not kept together by frequent interaction or a tight web of social relations. Instead they are kept together by sharing a common imaginary that posits a transformative potential on the part of the particular practice to which these communities are dedicated.
• Contributions to this potential through technical skills and/or virtuous conduct is rewarded with reputation. Reputation is the form of that exchange value takes in CBPP communities, it is the 'fictious commodity' typical to CBPP.
• Reputation is also the most important value form that structures transactions between CBPP and other institutional logics, such as that of markets, capitalism and the state.
• The value of reputation lies in its ability to give a proximate measure to risk.
• The fact that value is principally related to risk means that CBPP communities operate a value logic that mirror that of financial markets.
• Most CBPP communities envision commons based markets as alternatives to capitalism. Such commons-based markets build on the construction of imaginaries that are able to transform insecurity into risk in ways that mirror communitarian principles.
Books by Vincenzo Luise
Drafts by Vincenzo Luise
and consumption. They are not only anti-consumerist: they articulate
in a different way sustainability, visions of market relations, values
and practices. Neo-rurality as a narrative-based brand collects
various ideals, values and marketing behaviours, representing
different economic actors in a common narrative.
Based on fieldwork and interviews, undertaken in Campania during 2015, our study points out that, through the collective narrative, farmers are constructing a “neo-rurality” brand of local quality food and promotion of territory.
We highlight how neo-rural farmers propose a novel combination of economic practices and value production in Alternative Agri-food Movements.
Producers promote a combined approach to local development towards increasing food quality and cultural and environmental resources of territory. Furthermore, this is in line with recent studies on how agriculture and rural life have changed their role in post- modern society, and there we see also a trajectory for the future of inner areas.
• CBPP is part of a broader transformation in the information economy whereby collaboration and common knowledge have come to play an ever more important part in value creation. This development has roots that go back to the industrial revolution in the 19th century and it has been greatly accelerated by the diffusion of digital media. CBPP or CBPP like modes of production have become a core component to the contemporary information economy as a whole.
• CBPP occurs in highly particular kinds of communities. They are not kept together by frequent interaction or a tight web of social relations. Instead they are kept together by sharing a common imaginary that posits a transformative potential on the part of the particular practice to which these communities are dedicated.
• Contributions to this potential through technical skills and/or virtuous conduct is rewarded with reputation. Reputation is the form of that exchange value takes in CBPP communities, it is the 'fictious commodity' typical to CBPP.
• Reputation is also the most important value form that structures transactions between CBPP and other institutional logics, such as that of markets, capitalism and the state.
• The value of reputation lies in its ability to give a proximate measure to risk.
• The fact that value is principally related to risk means that CBPP communities operate a value logic that mirror that of financial markets.
• Most CBPP communities envision commons based markets as alternatives to capitalism. Such commons-based markets build on the construction of imaginaries that are able to transform insecurity into risk in ways that mirror communitarian principles.