What is your thesis about?
My thesis is about open workshops in Sweden. Open workshops are shared infrastructures of production, that allow citizens to do manual work, like repairing a table or producing a prototype. Exploring open workshops I address three questions, (1) how they organize, (2) what challenges they face, and (3) what this case of co-organized and shared infrastructure can say about strategies for social-ecological transformations.
In Sweden open workshops are typically organised as non-profit associations [förening]. In the dissertation I discuss the changing role of associations since the 1990s. I explore how associations organise internally and how they struggle in two ways. One struggle is to find suitable and affordable premisses for their activities. The second is that the readiness of members to engage and take responsibility for the association does not match up with the number of tasks necessary to be done for the associations to run smoothly. Zooming out to a more general discussion on degrowth and strategy and the question of how solidarity and cooperation can be inspired in times of neoliberalism, I discuss what I call pragmatic commoning. Pragmatic commoning emerges not out of political motivations or situations of need, but as an answer to experienced contradictions with neoliberal understandings and practices. I argue that research on degrowth and strategies needs to conceptually integrate such pragmatic degrowth practices.
How did you come to choose this particular topic?
The choice to study open workshops was both theoretically driven and motivated by my personal experience and interest. The theoretical entry into the project was my interest in social-ecological transformation and how such a transformation can happen. I wanted to explore how communities self-organize non-capitalist relationships of sharing and caring, while they are at the same time embedded in capitalist everyday life. By engaging with open workshops empirically I was able to also follow my interest in crafts, repair, and manufacturing. Already during my undergraduate studies, I was able to repair a bicycle in a local bike kitchen which was an empowering and fun experience which made me interested in open workshops. With the thesis I was able to combine that interest with the political project of degrowth and debates on strategies for social-ecological transformation.
What research methods have you used?
I applied qualitative methods inspired by the ethnographic tradition. To learn about the open workshops and how they are organized in Sweden I used participant observation. Here I was for example a member of an open workshop. I made things and engaged with others using the workshop. Later I did semi-structured interviews to gain additional perspectives on how workshop associations are organised.
Was there anything that surprised you along the way?
With the project I followed an interpretative approach. Here the research process starts with something that is puzzling and aims at finding explanations that make whatever it is less puzzling. Being ready to be puzzled and surprised was in that sense an intended part of the research journey. The original idea with the project was to understand how it is to be part of a prefigurative community in tension with mainstream capitalist practices. Engaging empirically with open workshops in Sweden, I found rather individualistic spaces with people working on their own on private or professional projects. Here the focus shifted towards understanding why this is. How workshops, that are potentially prefigurative of commoning, are reproducing the same patterns visible in neoliberal capitalism.
Another surprise was that I engaged extensively with the association as organisational form, as well as its history. In the beginning of the project, I had expected to work with social movement theory. The empirical reality led me however to look at engagement in associations and how associations and ideas about them have developed and changed especially since the neoliberalisation of Swedish politics in the 1990s.
Have you discovered any interesting findings or results?
I would like to highlight three interesting findings, interesting for different audiences. The first finding is mainly interesting for those who organise open workshops in Sweden and in extension also for others active in associations. With the thesis I show how maintaining the workshop infrastructure requires not only maintenance of machines and tools, but that sustaining and nourishing a community of co-organisers is essential for the survival of the workshop.
The second finding is interesting regarding questions of social trust and democratic engagement in Sweden. In Sweden associations are considered a foundation for democratic socialisation and practice. The thesis discusses how associations and engagement in them are changing. The research suggests that associations capacity of democracy building cannot be taken for granted but needs to be reproduced against neoliberal values.
The third finding I want to highlight here is directed to the debate and efforts for social-ecological transformation. With the thesis I argue that degrowth research can learn from projects that are not explicitly radical or aiming for social-ecological transformation. While within degrowth thinking non-politicised projects are often ascribed less transformative potential, I argue with the thesis that they carry a different transformative potential and need to be part of the debate on degrowth strategies. I suggest that such cases can teach us about how non-exploitative practices can be normalised through everyday and pragmatic answers to contradictions experienced in capitalism.
What do you hope your dissertation can contribute to?
I hope the thesis can contribute to an awareness that association democracy and associations infrastructure cannot be taken for granted but need to be sustained through everyday practices and against neoliberal values.
