Platform cooperativism proposes to create an alternative to the corporate sharing economy based on a model of democratically owned and governed co-operatives. The idea sounds simple and convincing: cut out the corporate middleman and replace Uber with a service owned and managed by taxi drivers themselves, create a version of Airbnb run by cities, or turn Facebook into a platform democratically controlled by all users. This article discusses the ambivalences of platform cooperativism, exploring both the movement’s potentials to subvert digital capitalism from the inside and the risk of being co-opted by it. Platform cooperativism aims to foster social change by creating a People’s Internet and replacing corporate-owned platforms with user-owned co-operatives. It yokes social activism with business enterprise. As a result, the movement is shaped by tensions and contradiction between politics and enterprise, democracy and the market, commons and commercialisation, activism and entrepreneurship. This article explores these tensions based on a Marxist perspective on the corrosive powers of capitalist competition on the one hand and a Foucaultian critique of entrepreneurialism on the other. It concludes with a reflection on the politics of platform cooperativism, drawing out problematic implications of an uncritical embrace of entrepreneurialism and highlighting the need to defend a politics of social solidarity, equality and public goods.

This article focuses on the relation between work and pleasure in the cultural sector. I first unpack the concept of passionate work, situating it within four possible ways of relating work and pleasure. I argue that the work ethic of do what you love, contrary to what it promises, limits the prospects of loveable work. As part of a neoliberal work culture, do what you love transfers the battleground from society onto the self. It favours self-management over politics. Drawing on findings from interview research with members of worker co-operatives in the UK cultural industries, I then go on to explore the relation between work and pleasure within cultural co-ops. I discuss how cultural co-ops might inspire and contribute to a movement for transforming the future of work by turning the desire for loveable work from a matter of individual transformation and competition into a practice of co-operation and social change.

The overall task of this paper is to elaborate a typology of the forms of labour that are needed for the production, circulation and use of digital media. First, we introduce a cultural-materialist perspective on theorising digital labour. Second, we discuss the relevance of Marx’s concept of the mode of production for the analysis of digital labour. Third, we introduce a typology of the dimensions of working conditions. Fourth, based on the preceding sections we present a digital labour analysis toolbox. Finally, we draw some conclusions. We engage with the question what labour is, how it differs from work, which basic dimensions it has and how these dimensions can be used for defining digital labour. We introduce the theoretical notion of the mode of production as analytical tool for conceptualizing digital labour. Modes of production are dialectical units of relations of production and productive forces. Relations of production are the basic social relations that shape the economy. Productive forces are a combination of labour power, objects and instruments of work in a work process, in which new products are created. We have a deeper look at dimensions of the work process and the conditions under which it takes place. We present a typology that identifies dimensions of working conditions. It is a general typology that can be used for the analysis of any production process.

This paper focuses on the design and application of a teacher training strategy to promote the inclusive education of students with disabilities in the science classroom, through the creation of adult learning environments grounded on the principles of dialogic learning. Participants of the workshop proposal consisted of a group of twelve teachers who were working at various educational levels. Teacher teams proposed and implemented in their classroom, innovative, inclusive science-learning activities about a topic of their choice. Data were collected from interviews with teachers five months after the courses, teachers’ portfolios about their practice during implementation of such sequences, and researchers’ observations. The data suggest that it is possible to stimulate a gradual transformation of teaching practices through a teacher training proposal that promotes self-awareness and critical reflection, situated in the creation of meaning and a willingness to change in the spirit of solidarity and social action. We found elements to recommend the incorporation of these innovations at the curricular and practical level for teacher training schools and for in-service teacher development programmes in Mexico and elsewhere.

The task of this paper is to trace the academic discourse on corporate social responsibility (CSR) by discussing how CSR approaches and models relate profit goals and social goals of the corporation. I show that CSR approaches that dominate the academic discourse either instrumentalize the social, idealize the corporate, or separate the corporate from the social. Based on a critical political economy perspective I argue that it is necessary to consider mutual interrelations between profit goals and social goals. This perspective reveals an antagonism between the corporate and the social that points to the impossibility of CSR. Critical CSR research thus far has failed to draw the necessary conclusions from its own analysis: despite acknowledging the structural flaws of the concept of CSR, critics have hardly made any attempts to overcome it. I argue that despite its ideological character CSR contains a rational element. Realizing this rational kernel however requires going beyond CSR. I therefore suggest a new concept that turns CSR off its head and places it upon its feet.

This reflection introduces a new term to the debate on open access publishing: diamond open access (DOA) publishing. The debate on open access is a debate about the future of academia. We discuss the problems of for-profit academic publishing, such as monopoly prices and access inequalities and point at the limits of contemporary perspectives on open access as they are frequently advanced by the publishing industry, policy makers and labour unions. The article introduces a public service and commons perspective that stresses the importance of fostering and publicly supporting what we term the model of diamond open access. It is a non-profit academic publishing model that makes academic knowledge a common good, reclaims the common character of the academic system and entails the possibility for fostering job security by creating public service publishing jobs. Existing concepts such as “gold open access” have serious conceptual limits that can be overcome by introducing the new term of diamond open access. The debate on open access lacks visions and requires social innovations. This article is a policy intervention and reflection on current issues related to open access (OA) publishing. It reflects on the following questions: * What should the role of open access be in the future of academic publishing and academia? * How should the future of academic publishing and academia look like? * Which reforms of academic policy making are needed in relation to open access publishing? We want to trigger a new level of the open access debate. We invite further reflections on these questions by academics, policy makers, publishers, publishing workers, labour unions, open access publishing associations, editors and librarians. Twitter: #DiamondOA