- Goldsmiths, University of London, Centre for Cultural Studies, Graduate StudentGoldsmiths, University of London, Media and Communications, Department Member, and 2 moreadd
- I am an Associate Professor in Media and Creative Industries at the University of Warwick. My research focuses on eme... moreI am an Associate Professor in Media and Creative Industries at the University of Warwick. My research focuses on emerging subjectivities in digital societies. In particular, I am interested in conceptions and experiences of the selfhood in the context of digital media, and in collaborative work environments.Currently, I am focusing on romantic and sexual cultures.edit
Contemporary Western societies seem to be marked by a revival of ethics: virtually every actor claims to be doing something ‘good’, or even to be willing to ‘change the world’. Social innovation, sharing economy and ethical business are... more
Contemporary Western societies seem to be marked by a revival of ethics: virtually every actor claims to be doing something ‘good’, or even to be willing to ‘change the world’. Social innovation, sharing economy and ethical business are just few of the tags attached to this manifold cultural trend, which is indicative of the attempt to reintegrate ethical responsibility with economic conduct. But how can entrepreneurship be redefined as the best way to express one’s will to change society? How can people decide to actualise their desire to change how things are by means of a business? Social Entrepreneurship and Neoliberalism: Making Money While Doing Good tackles these questions, offering a critical yet empathetic account of the lifeworld of young social entrepreneurs in London and Milan.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This chapter reflects on the relationship between coworking spaces as a type of creative hub, and the practices of networking that are often described as typical of the creative economy. Elaborating on ethnographic research conducted by... more
This chapter reflects on the relationship between coworking spaces as a type of creative hub, and the practices of networking that are often described as typical of the creative economy. Elaborating on ethnographic research conducted by the authors in the UK and Italy, we argue that coworking spaces can be seen as heterotopic spaces (Foucault 1986) in which a certain vision of the world is produced and reproduced. This vision acts as a symbolic dimension that expands the practices of ‘network sociality’ (Wittel 2001) by adding to them an imaginary communitarian element. This is characterised by the enactment of a specific disposition that we call ‘collaborative individualism’. With this term, we want to capture the ambivalence of coworkers’ sociality and point at the compresence of an entrepreneurialised and individualised conduct with an ethics of sharing and collaborating.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This chapter offers an account of the relationship between hubs and networks in the creative economy. Reflecting on ethnographic research conducted by the authors in the UK and Italy, the chapter contends that hubs have emerged as... more
This chapter offers an account of the relationship between hubs and networks in the creative economy. Reflecting on ethnographic research conducted by the authors in the UK and Italy, the chapter contends that hubs have emerged as heterotopic spaces that fulfil the need of a space where social commitment and entrepreneurial attitude can be nurtured to facilitate social and professional collaboration among workers. Yet, this is often an idealised form of collaboration, which ultimately serves individual rather than common or shared goals. The chapter discusses the irredeemable interaction and intersection between hubs and networks and identifies the emergence of a mode of action that we call ‘collaborative individualism’, which expands the practices of ‘network sociality’ (Wittel, 2001) of creative workers by adding to them in an imaginary communitarian element.
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This article adds to contemporary studies of neoliberalism by offering an empirical investigation of the production of subjectivity in the context of coworking spaces’ sociality. Coworking spaces are exemplary milieux in which to explore... more
This article adds to contemporary studies of neoliberalism by offering an empirical investigation of the production of subjectivity in the context of coworking spaces’ sociality. Coworking spaces are exemplary milieux in which to explore the organisation and significance of work. Drawing on the life history of a creative worker and member of a leading coworking space, I unveil the ethical labour that is required to access coworking’s sociality. Using a Foucauldian framework, I conceptualise this process as a process of subjectivation and concentrate on its ambivalent character, signalling the inherent intertwinement of self-commodification and self-improvement. This article contributes to the scholarly debates on the organisation and significance of work in two key ways. First, it expands our understanding of how the production of subjectivity is experienced at the level of the self. Second, it argues that coworking spaces function as apparatuses for the production of subjectivities...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This article uses the case of social entrepreneurs or “Changemakers” to investigate the phenomenon of self-branding among knowledge workers. We argue that self-branding is not only the effect of a neoliberal regime of governmentality, but... more
This article uses the case of social entrepreneurs or “Changemakers” to investigate the phenomenon of self-branding among knowledge workers. We argue that self-branding is not only the effect of a neoliberal regime of governmentality, but that this phenomenon could also represent the seed of a new and more rational value regime that could provide the basis for a more adequate institutional framework for an emerging economy of immaterial labor. We explore the political and ethical implications of this suggestion.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Dating apps promise a ‘digital fix’ to the ‘messy’ matter of love by means of datafication and algorithmic matching, realising a platformisation of romance commonly understood through notions of a market’s rationality and efficiency.... more
Dating apps promise a ‘digital fix’ to the ‘messy’ matter of love by means of datafication and algorithmic matching, realising a platformisation of romance commonly understood through notions of a market’s rationality and efficiency. Reflecting on the findings of a small-scale qualitative research on the use of dating apps among young adults in London, we problematise this view and argue that the specific form of marketisation articulated by dating apps is entrepreneurial in kind, whereby individuals act as brands facing the structural uncertainty of interacting with ‘quasi-strangers’. In so doing, we argue, dating app users enact a Luhmanian notion of interpersonal trust, built on the assessment of the risk of interacting with unfamiliar others that is typical of digitally mediated contexts dominated by reputational logics. From a sociocultural perspective, dating apps emerge as sociotechnical apparatuses that remediate the demand to rationally choose a partner while at the same ti...
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This report provides an account of a series of interviews, observational visits and hosted events with 8-10 fashion designers in three cities: London, Berlin and Milan, carried out from 2012-2016. In some cases we interviewed the same... more
This report provides an account of a series of interviews, observational visits and hosted events with 8-10 fashion designers in three cities: London, Berlin and Milan, carried out from 2012-2016. In some cases we interviewed the same designers two or three times over a period of nearly three years. The research project also entailed documented conversations and meetings with a range of fashion experts, consultants, legal advisors and policy makers in each city. Often these took place within the context of organised events undertaken as part of the research process. The aim was to investigate the kind of start-ups or micro-enterprises which have come into being in the last decade. We were interested in whether these were the outcome of pro-active urban creative economy policies or if they were self-organised initiatives, a reaction to the crisis of the euro-zone of 2008 and the consequent recession. Was it the case that long-term austerity policies and exceptionally high rates of yo...
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In this article, we take dating apps as a case study to tackle the question of desire and enjoyment in contemporary society. Moving away from an instrumental conception of digital media, we focus on their (mis)functions and the related... more
In this article, we take dating apps as a case study to tackle the question of desire and enjoyment in contemporary society. Moving away from an instrumental conception of digital media, we focus on their (mis)functions and the related (dis)satisfactions. We argue that dating apps’ key function and significance is not that of offering a means through which to find a potential partner, but rather of engaging the subject’s desire without the need for an actual relationship with another person. Applying Lacanian theory to the analysis of empirical data, we dwell on the microphysics of enjoyment of dating apps to analyse the ways in which they activate, exploit and turn the subject’s desire. We maintain that dating apps entail a libidinal economy that operates independently of the app’s obvious function of connecting individuals: they act seductively, engaging the subject’s desire in a pulsating dynamic of loss and gain, promise and frustration, thus becoming an affective object in thei...
In this chapter we draw on our ongoing research on freelance knowledge workers in London and Milan to discuss how “public brands” operate within self-organized productive networks and how self-branding in its current usage points toward a... more
In this chapter we draw on our ongoing research on freelance knowledge workers in London and Milan to discuss how “public brands” operate within self-organized productive networks and how self-branding in its current usage points toward a different conception of value proper to such emerging networked models of organization.1 We suggest that since their origin as superficial symbols— perhaps the antithesis of ethics—brands, and in particular personal brands, are now becoming foundational devices for the realization of a new kind of ethics proper to the emerging modes of productive organization that knowledge workers promote.
Social entrepreneurship is a growing cultural phenomenon that involves a variety of actors – politicians, academics, business men and women, private citizens - across a range of interconnected fields – e.g. social work, sustainable... more
Social entrepreneurship is a growing cultural phenomenon that involves a variety of actors – politicians, academics, business men and women, private citizens - across a range of interconnected fields – e.g. social work, sustainable development, the sharing economy and technological innovation. Notwithstanding its heterogeneous manifestations, social entrepreneurship is characterised by the attempt to re-embed social and ethical dimensions within the individualised conduct of the entrepreneur of the self. The aim of this dissertation is to investigate how this process is thought of and negotiated on a subjective level by young social entrepreneurs in London and Milan. Based on an understanding of social entrepreneurs as individuals who perceive work as a means for self-expression, I contextualise this enquiry within the field of cultural studies on the changing nature of labour in neoliberal societies. This thesis draws on an 18-month period of multi-sited and reflexive fieldwork tha...
This chapter is concerned with offering an understanding of the main traits that characterise the subjectivity of these social actors, and assess their emergence and significance. Building on individual ethnographic fieldwork conducted in... more
This chapter is concerned with offering an understanding of the main traits that characterise the subjectivity of these social actors, and assess their emergence and significance. Building on individual ethnographic fieldwork conducted in various contexts between 2011-2014, we offer an ex-post reflection that draws from each author’s empirical research to provide a better understanding of the role these subjects play in the meeting of collaboration and creativity. These, we will argue, represent - each with its own peculiar features - an accurate illustration of the process of reshaping of the creative economy in the shift towards collaboration and sharing – a shift one encounters in the confluence of emergent ‘alternative’ economic perspectives in the aftermath of the financial crisis and the rise of forms of economic valorisation that are increasingly rooted in the social (Arvidsson and Peitersen, 2013). Within this scenario, freelancers, social entrepreneurs and artists have inte...
Freelancers, social entrepreneurs and artists have intervened in the social fabric by operating in peculiar, but somewhat analogous ways, blending collaboration, entrepreneurship and creative practice in an original manner. Each from... more
Freelancers, social entrepreneurs and artists have intervened in the social fabric by operating in peculiar, but somewhat analogous ways, blending collaboration, entrepreneurship and creative practice in an original manner. Each from their own standpoint, they now reclaim a central role in an urban collaborative scene that they commonly consider the space for the enactment of their creative, (self)entrepreneurial endeavours. Their subjectivity, as we are about to observe, is similarly characterised by a political attitude towards change and an ideological disposition to ‘newness’, that is made explicit in the attempt to combine economic with what may be seen as forms of ‘aest-ethical’ action – and is nonetheless frustrated in the capacity to coalesce as a collective subject within and beyond the fragmented scene they inhabit. By operating in a milieu largely determined by a market economy, yet nonetheless experimenting with forms of commons-based peer production, we argue that freel...
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This article adds to contemporary studies of neoliberalism by offering an empirical investigation of the production of subjectivity in the context of coworking spaces' sociality. Coworking spaces are exemplary milieux where to explore the... more
This article adds to contemporary studies of neoliberalism by offering an empirical investigation of the production of subjectivity in the context of coworking spaces' sociality. Coworking spaces are exemplary milieux where to explore the organisation and significance of work. Drawing on the life history of a creative worker and member of a leading coworking space, I unveil the ethical labour that is required to access coworking's sociality. Using a Foucauldian framework, I conceptualise this process as a process of subjectivation and concentrate on its ambivalent character, signalling the inherent intertwinement of self-commodification and self-improvement. This article contributes to the scholarly debates on the organisation and significance of work in two key ways. Firstly, it expands our understanding of how the production of subjectivity is experienced at the level of the self. Secondly, it argues that coworking spaces function as apparatuses for the production of subjectivities in neoliberal culture industries.
Research Interests:
This chapter reflects on the relationship between coworking spaces as a type of creative hub, and the practices of networking that are often described as typical of the creative economy. Elaborating on ethnographic research conducted by... more
This chapter reflects on the relationship between coworking spaces as a type of creative hub, and the practices of networking that are often described as typical of the creative economy. Elaborating on ethnographic research conducted by the authors in the UK and Italy, we argue that coworking spaces can be seen as heterotopic spaces (Foucault, 1986) in which a certain vision of the world is produced and reproduced. This vision acts as a symbolic dimension that expands the practices of 'network sociality' (Wittel, 2001) by adding to them an imaginary communitarian element. This is characterised by the enactment of a specific disposition that we call 'collaborative individualism'. With this term we want to capture the ambivalence of coworkers' sociality and point at the compresence of an entrepreneurialised and individualised conduct with an ethics of sharing and collaborating.
Research Interests:
More than a decade after the enthusiastic call for the rise of a 'creative class' (Florida, 2002), the conditions of today's creative economy appear to be quite different from the expectations that accompanied its acclaimed surge as a... more
More than a decade after the enthusiastic call for the rise of a 'creative class' (Florida, 2002), the conditions of today's creative economy appear to be quite different from the expectations that accompanied its acclaimed surge as a propeller of economic development in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The frenzy around creativity that has characterised cultural economies as a whole since then has evolved into a context that is now largely animated by a casualisation and entrepreneurialisation of work, with project-based employment rising to an unprecedented scale (McRobbie, 2015).
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Contemporary Western societies seem to be marked by a revival of ethics: virtually every actor claims to be doing something ‘good’, or even to be willing to ‘change the world’. Social innovation, sharing economy and ethical business are... more
Contemporary Western societies seem to be marked by a revival of ethics: virtually every actor claims to be doing something ‘good’, or even to be willing to ‘change the world’. Social innovation, sharing economy and ethical business are just few of the tags attached to this manifold cultural trend, which is indicative of the attempt to reintegrate ethical responsibility with economic conduct. But how can entrepreneurship be redefined as the best way to express one’s will to change society? How can people decide to actualise their desire to change how things are by means of a business? Social Entrepreneurship and Neoliberalism: Making Money While Doing Good tackles these questions, offering a critical yet empathetic account of the lifeworld of young social entrepreneurs in London and Milan.