Media Practices Commoning
* Special Issue: Introduction to the Special Issue “Media Practices Commoning”. By Anne Ganzert, Beate Ochsner, Robert Stock. Open Cultural Studies, 1 January 2020
"An international and interdisciplinary group of speakers discussed the concepts of commoning and conviviality from different disciplines and perspectives."
Abstract
"The issue “Media Practices Commoning” contains a selection of contributions that critically discusses current concepts like commons and conviviality by situating them within the contemporary framework of digital media technologies. We thus contribute to the ongoing debate on media practices of commoning as well as a media ontological understanding of commoning processes. These are pressing issues in times of ubiquitous computing and platform capitalism, where an ever-increasing number of devices, technologies and complex infrastructures are interwoven with human and other organic agencies. Daily practices are increasingly framed by digital technologies and thus rendered as productive sources for data production.
Thereby, the media ontological question is raised how practices, technologies and data might be conceptualised as commons without being commodified and functionally operationalised (Deuber-Man-kowsky). Yet these seemingly antagonistic strategies are intertwined, indicating that more and more new forms of coexistence emerge through an increasing number of socio-technical arrangements. Hence, the idea of conviviality, or living together, is undergoing deep transformations and requires a thorough analysis.
The issue is a continuation of the conference “Media | Practices | Commoning” that took place at the University of Konstanz, Germany (October 9-11, 2017). An international and interdisciplinary group of speakers discussed the concepts of commoning and conviviality from different disciplines and perspectives.
From this discussion, three lines of inquiry emerged that we set out to further develop in this issue.
- In a first line of inquiry we seek to explore the art of conviviality and recent forms of friendly togetherness while relating them to media-technological infrastructures that frame their emergence. Within recent notions of convivialism, a new style of cohabitation (Adloff and Legewie) is normatively claimed as a way of shaping as well as analysing a pos-itive constitution of social relations that overcomes globalist utilitarian."