DARMSTADT DELEGATION

GRAPH

http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/laborofdivisions

MAGNETS


READINGS TAKEN INTO ACCOUNT


Maybe


MIRIYAM's SELECTION OF CATCHPHRASES

Haraway: “Ironic Myth”

“Difference is the grammar of indifference” the “multiplication of sameness”
[see also Myth of Tolerance eg Kundnani].

In “culpable innocence” .
[Observation Jara see also epistemological advantage/ modest witness.]

“Stripped of identity the bastard race teaches about the power of the margins.”

“Epistemological feminist mental hygiene” [woohoooo]McKenzie

“Not to abandon the struggle under difficult conditions by retreating into
mere philosophy”

Ekbia & Nardi
“more than [real time] wage contraction...takes away the last residues of
[long term] security (jobs, savings, pensions), foreclosing the future for a
large portion of the population.”

Irani “technology as a social category lets companies elide labor”

“researchers come up with an idea, demonstrate it, and then move on, leaving
the rest of the world to sustain it, adopt it, nurture it, or pick up the pieces”
[observation miri: this so clearly echoes our critique of division of labour and
relates to the issue of continuity/care taking/maintenance]

“Mutual aid takes infrastructure, and infrastructure is always labor. Progress is
never just an "idea that matters," despite TED's tag line.”

“We need theories that emerge out of specific struggles and experiments, but
that take technology seriously once again, understanding technology not just as
that which subjects us, but as configurable media, as a seductive object of
hope, and as an object of collective labor”.

“Much practice-based work has focused on questions of epistemology and
relations, but for me TO opens up questions of the labors and infrastructures that
sustain worlding in long duration.”

SCHEDULE

10:15 General mise en scene, landscape -- MA

10:25 Concepts, linked to magnets, glossary -- JR

10:45 Femke
10:50 Seda
10:55 Miriyam
11:00 Jara

11:05 Discussion / together
11:20 Introduce method: tools, magnets -- FS (tools shape practice shapes tools)
11:30 Break
11:45 Reintroduce methods -- JR (documentation, graphing; divide over groups)

12:00 Start express exercise
12:45 End exercise, express feedback

13:00 Lunch

14:00 Talk
14:30 Workshop representation

14:40 Discussion

15:00 Coffee break

// Thinking Complex programming vs cleaning. Discussing rotation. Child care. Listing who takes responsibility. Who do we want to take care; conditions. 
// Obsession with representation. Some tasks are hard to share; what do we do not want to do. 
// Training. How to use counter surveillance tools. Who trains? 
// Acknowledgment of skill, work. Visibility. Conditions. Awareness of non-equal treatment (?). Accountability of divisions. Structure? Reflection?
// Questions vs. problems vs. circumstances. A situation to affect. What is a problem, what is not a problem. Promiscuous with problems.
// We have activists developers, security developers, proprietary and free technology, master, but also crafting.

Labors of Division / Divisions of Labor

Division of labor as a marxist concept, critique of
Division of labor in interface design, end-users
Division of labor Heteromation: between humans and machines
Division of labor experts, specialisation, universalism
Division of labor between tech-activists and activists using tech
Division of labor and meritocracy
Division of labor between visible and invisible work
Division of labor and neo-liberal ideas on efficiency, optimisation, and the backbone of supply chains
Division of labor and biopolitics: selfish genes etc.
Division of labor and post-disciplinarity, diffraction
Division of labor and need for collaboration, collectivity
Division of labor and outsourcing, post-colonial critique
Division of labor and intersectionality
Division of labor and the masters tool, the masters house

----

"Difference work" (what is this term, where to locate it) -> Lilly Iriani

Ibn Khaldun -> Division of labor

"Relational singularity" (???)

Karen Barad "Agential Realism", Haraway, diffraction

Haraway on respons-ability (2008)

Suchman, Star and invisible work

De Certeau: The expert and the philosopher (in: Practice of everyday life)

Post-colonial theory and division of labor

What kind of object, book, collection


Division of Labour

The division of labour is a specific mode of cooperation wherein different tasks are assigned to different people. Division of labour is as old as labour itself, stretching back to the birth of the human race.

“This division of labour is a necessary condition for the production of commodities <https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/c/o.htm#commodity>,
but it does not follow, conversely, that the production of commodities is a necessary condition for the division of labour. In the primitive Indian
community there is social division of labour, without production of commodities. Or, to take an example nearer home, in every factory the
labour is divided according to a system, but this division is not brought about by the operatives mutually exchanging their individual products.

“... In a community, the produce of which in general takes the form of commodities, *i.e.*, in a community of commodity producers, this
qualitative difference between the useful forms of labour that are carried on independently of individual producers, each on their own account, develops into a complex system, a social division of labour.

“... Wherever the want of clothing forced them to it, the human race made clothes for thousands of years, without a single man becoming a tailor. [*Capital*, Chapter 1<https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#050>]

More than anything else, human history is characterised by the ever-increasing complexity of the division of labour. The form of the division of labour changes however, passing through a number of distinct phases.

“The various stages of development in the division of labour are just so many different forms of ownership, i.e. the existing stage in the division
of labour determines also the relations of individuals to one another with reference to the material, instrument, and product of labour.” [*German Ideology*<https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm#5a3>]

Prior to the rupture of society into classes<https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/c/l.htm#class>, the social division of labour was almost exclusively based on kinship relations, within a relatively closed circle, wherein the character of an individual’s labour was determined by their age, sex and position within the family. This division of labour based on kinship relations continues up to the present day, but with the collapse of tribal society and the formation of social classes there began a new kind of division of labour, based on class relations, including the division between mental and manual labour.

The division of labour has the most profound effect on the forms of consciousness predominating in a given society since such forms can only be, after all the internalised forms of social activity.

During the whole feudal period, the division of labour is still determined along kinship lines, but now on a much wider class encompassing social classes.

With the development of manufacture however, division of labour takes a big step upwards:

“That co-operation which is based on division of labour, assumes its typical form in manufacture, and is the prevalent characteristic form of
the capitalist process of production throughout the manufacturing period properly so called. That period, roughly speaking, extends from the middle of the 16th to the last third of the 18th century.

“Manufacture takes its rise in two ways:

“(1.) By the assemblage, in one workshop under the control of a single capitalist, of labourers belonging to various independent handicrafts, but through whose hands a given article must pass on its way to completion. ...

“(2.) Manufacture also arises in a way exactly the reverse of this namely, by one capitalist employing simultaneously in one workshop a number of
artificers, who all do the same, or the same kind of work [*Capital*, Chapter 14 <https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch14.htm>]

All subsequent developments in the forces of production correspond to qualitative changes in the social division of labour. In the last hundred years, the most significant markers in the development of the social division of labour are the successive management ideologies which achieved dominance: Taylorism<https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/t/a.htm#taylorism>, Fordism<https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/f/o.htm#fordism> and Toyotism<https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/t/o.htm#toyotism>.

Up till the present time, the development of the social division of labour has tended to channel individuals into narrowly defined occupations,
situating them in a well-defined position in the social division of labour for a life-time. That is to say, no-one is a *person*, she is rather a
labourer in this or that *occupation*. Nowadays however, in the developed capitalist countries, it is rare for someone to work in a specific line of
work for more than a decade without being obliged, if not by their own will, to change occupation.

In a socialist society of the future, there would remain of course a highly developed social division of labour, but it is likely that a person who is one day an artist, will be on another a tourist guide, on another a teacher and on another a machinist. It is in this sense that Marx and Engels said:

“In the present epoch, the domination of material relations over individuals, and the suppression of individuality by fortuitous
circumstances, has assumed its sharpest and most universal form, thereby setting existing individuals a very definite task. It has set them the task
of replacing the domination of circumstances and of chance over individuals by the domination of individuals over chance and circumstances. .... This
task, dictated by present-day relations, coincides with the task of organising society in a communist way.

“... the abolition of a state of affairs in which relations become independent of individuals, in which individuality is subservient to chance
and the personal relations of individuals are subordinated to general class relations, etc. - that the abolition of this state of affairs is determined
in the final analysis by the abolition of division of labour. We have also shown that the abolition of division of labour is determined by the
development of intercourse and productive forces to such a degree of universality that private property and division of labour become fetters on
them. We have further shown that private property can be abolished only on condition of an all-round development of individuals, precisely because the
existing form of intercourse and the existing productive forces are all-embracing and only individuals that are developing in an all-round fashion can appropriate them, i.e., can turn them into free manifestations of their lives. We have shown that at the present time individuals *must*abolish
private property, because the productive forces and forms of intercourse have developed so far that, under the domination of private property, they
have become destructive forces, and because the contradiction between the classes has reached its extreme limit. Finally, we have shown that the
abolition of private property and of the division of labour is itself the association of individuals on the basis created by modern productive forces and world intercourse.” [*German Ideology*<https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch03o.htm#p438>]

*Further Reading*:

[In the Iron Age] the second great division of labor<https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/l/a.htm#labour> took place: handicraft separated from agriculture. The continuous increase of production and simultaneously of the productivity of labor heightened the value of human labor-power. Slavery, which during the preceding period was still in its beginnings and sporadic, now becomes an essential constituent part of the social system; slaves no longer merely help with production -- they are driven by dozens to work in the fields and the workshops. With the splitting up of production into the two great main branches, agriculture and handicrafts, arises production directly for exchange, commodity production; with it came commerce, not only in the interior and on the tribal boundaries, but also already overseas. All this, however, was still very undeveloped; the precious metals were beginning to be the predominant and general money commodity, but still uncoined, exchanging simply by their naked weight.

The distinction of rich and poor appears beside that of freemen and slaves -- with the new division of labor, a new cleavage of society into classes. The inequalities of property among the individual heads of families break up the old communal household communities wherever they had still managed to survive, and with them the common cultivation of the soil by and for these communities. The cultivated land is allotted for use to single families, at first temporarily, later permanently. The transition to full private property <https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/p/r.htm#property> is gradually accomplished, parallel with the transition of the pairing marriage into monogamy. The single family is becoming the economic unit of society....

[In overview:] At the lowest stage of barbarism men produced only directly for their own needs; any acts of exchange were isolated occurrences, the object of exchange merely some fortuitous surplus. In the middle stage of barbarism we already find among the pastoral peoples a possession in the form of cattle which, once the herd has attained a certain size, regularly produces a surplus over and above the tribe's own requirements, leading to a division of labor between pastoral peoples and backward tribes without herds, and hence to the existence of two different levels of production side by side with one another and the conditions necessary for regular exchange. The upper stage of barbarism brings us the further division of labor between agriculture and handicrafts, hence the production of a continually increasing portion of the products of labor directly for exchange, so that exchange between individual producers assumes the importance of a vital social function.

Civilization consolidates and intensifies all these existing divisions of labor, particularly by sharpening the opposition between town and country (the town may economically dominate the country, as in antiquity, or the country the town, as in the middle ages), and it adds a third division of labor, peculiar to itself and of decisive importance: it creates a class which no longer concerns itself with production, but only with the exchange of the products -- the merchants. Hitherto whenever classes had begun to form, it had always been exclusively in the field of production; the persons engaged in production were separated into those who directed and those who executed, or else into large-scale and small-scale producers. Now for the first time a class appears which, without in any way participating in production, captures the direction of production as a whole and economically subjugates the producers; which makes itself into an indispensable middleman between any two producers and exploits them both. Under the pretext that they save the producers the trouble and risk of exchange, extend the sale of their products to distant markets and are
therefore the most useful class of the population, a class of parasites comes into being, "genuine social icbneumons," who, as a reward for their actually very insignificant services, skim all the cream off production at home and abroad, rapidly amass enormous wealth and correspondingly social influence, and for that reason receive under civilization ever higher honors and ever greater control of production, until at last they also bring forth a product of their own -- the periodical trade crises....

Fredrick Engels
Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State<https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/ch09.htm>

With commerce the prerogative of a particular class, with the extension of trade through the merchants beyond the immediate surroundings of the town, there immediately appears a reciprocal action between production and commerce. The towns enter into relations with one another, new tools are brought from one town into the other, and the separation between production and commerce soon calls forth a new division of production between the individual towns, each of which is soon exploiting a predominant branch of industry. The local restrictions of earlier times begin gradually to be broken down....

The existence of the town implies, at the same time, the necessity of administration, police, taxes, etc.; in short, of the municipality, and thus of politics in general. Here first became manifest the division of the population into two great classes, which is directly based on the division of labour and on the instruments of production. The town already is in actual fact the concentration of the population, of the instruments of production, of capital, of pleasures, of needs, while the country demonstrates just the opposite fact, isolation and separation. The antagonism between town and country can only exist within the framework of private property <https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/p/r.htm#property>.
It is the most crass expression of the subjection of the individual under the division of labour, under a definite activity forced upon him -- a subjection which makes one man into a restricted town-animal, the other into a restricted country-animal, and daily creates anew the conflict between their interests. Labour is here again the chief thing, power over individuals, and as long as the latter exists, private property must exist. The abolition of the antagonism between town and country is one of the first conditions of communal life, a condition which again depends on a mass of material premises and which cannot be fulfilled by the mere will, as anyone can see at the first glance.....

Marx and Engels
German Ideology -- Section 3<https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01c.htm#c1>

How far the productive forces of a nation are developed is shown most manifestly by the degree to which the division of labour has been carried.
Each new productive force<https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/p/r.htm#productive-forces>, insofar as it is not merely a quantitative extension of productive forces already known (for instance the bringing into cultivation of fresh land), causes a further development of the division of labour....

Further, the division of labour implies the contradiction between the interest of the separate individual or the individual family and the
communal interest of all individuals who have intercourse with one another. And indeed, this communal interest does not exist merely in the imagination, as the "general interest", but first of all in reality, as the mutual interdependence of the individuals among whom the labour is divided.
And finally, the division of labour offers us the first example of how, as long as man remains in natural society, that is, as long as a cleavage
exists between the particular and the common interest, as long, therefore, as activity is not voluntarily, but naturally, divided, man's own deed
becomes an alien power opposed to him, which enslaves him instead of being controlled by him. For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into
being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a
fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society<https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/c/o.htm#communism>, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic. This fixation of social activity, this consolidation of what we ourselves produce into an objective power above us, growing out of our control, thwarting our expectations, bringing to naught our calculations, is one of the chief factors in historical development up till now.

Marx and Engels
German Ideology -- Section 1<https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm>

The great progress of the division of labor began in England after the invention of machinery. Thus, the weavers and spinners were for the most
part peasants like those one still meets in backward countries. The invention of machinery brought about the separation of manufacturing
industry from agricultural industry. The weaver and the spinner, united but lately in a single family, were separated by the machine. Thanks to the
machine, the spinner can live in England while the weaver resides in the East Indies. Before the invention of machinery, the industry of a country was carried on chiefly with raw materials that were the products of its own soil; in England, wool, in Germany, flax, in France, silks and flax, in the East Indies and the Levant, cottons, etc. Thanks to the application of machinery and of steam, the division of labor was about to assume such
dimensions that large-scale industry, detached from the national soil, depends entirely on the world market, on international exchange, on an
international division of labor. In short, the machine has so great an influence on the division of labor, that when, in the manufacture of some
object, a means has been found to produce parts of it mechanically, the manufacture splits up immediately into two works independent of each other.

Karl Marx
The Poverty of Philosophy<https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/poverty-philosophy/ch02b.htm>

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Index of the Letter D <https://www.marxists.org/glossary/d.htm> | Encyclopedia
of Marxism <https://www.marxists.org/glossary/index.htm>

Readings, references from our e-mails over the last few months



Library


New sites/initiatives we could look at together


Other



LINKS TO WHAT WE DO (FOR STUDENTS PARTICIPATING)


Jara Rocha

Seda Guerses

Femke Snelting

Miriyam Aouragh

AGENDA

Monday 19 October
Evening: Miriyam arrives, dinner in studio 8

Tuesday 20 October
Morning: Femke + Miriyam prepare
Afternoon: Seda arrives
Evening: Dinner in studio 8

Wednesday 21 October
Afternoon: Jara arrives
Evening: Darmstadt Delegation Dinner at the Schloss Restaurant

Thursday 22 October 
Morning + afternoon: Darmstadt Delegation prepares
Evening: dinner in studio 8, lectures Martha Woodmansee, Felix Stalder

Friday 23 October
10:00 - 13:00 workshop Darmstadt Delegation
14:00 - 15:00 talk Darmstadt Delegation
15:15 - 16:15 talk Sebastian Luetgert, Andrew Norman Wilson
16:30 sound performance
19:00 conference dinner
20:00 performance

Saturday 24 October
Morning: Seda Leaves
14:00 - 15:30 panels
15:45 panel incl. Antoinette Rouvroy
Evening: dinner in town?

Sunday 25 October
Morning: Miriyam, Jara leave


WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION

Modes of Production after the Computational Turn I -- Let's first get things done

During particular historical junctures, characterised by crisis, deepening exploitation and popular revolt, hegemonic hierarchies are simultaneously challenged and reinvented, and in the process of their reconfiguration in due course subtly reproduced. During such 'sneaky moments', the shared authorship of collective action is split between those engaged in struggles of social justice and those struggling for just technologies.
The paradoxical consequences of this divide have been baffling: (radical) activists organize and sustain themselves using 'free' technical services provided by Fortune 500 companies. At the same time, 'alternative tech practices', like the Free Software Community, are sustained by a select few, some of which propose crypto with 9-lives as the minimum infrastructure for any political undertaking, and refute the rest as naive or unsophisticated  in their technical practices. Even when there is a great desire to bridge the gap, the way in which delegation of technological matters to the 'progressive techies' is organised, reconfirms hegemonic divisions of labor and can be as pertinent as political and philosophical differences. Conversely, if our tools inform our practices  and our practices inform our tools, then we will have to reconfigure the divisions of labour between 'activists' and 'techies'

How can we re-tell narratives of social justice activism and struggling for just technologies in a way that they converge rather than divide? What stories of collective authorship can we produce in those 'sneaky moments'? The workshop is an occasion to discuss design artefacts, computational tools and language devices available in moments of crisis. Participants are invited to bring case studies that they want to analyse collectively.

The Darmstadt Delegation is an ongoing collaboration following from a workshop based on anecdotes that took place as part of the Thinking Together Symposium (http://www.osthang-project.org/projekte/thinking-together/?lang=en) in 2014 at the Osthang Architecture Summer School, Darmstadt, Germany. It is the assignment of the delegation to explore the techno-political and socio-emotional relationships between activist practice and tools. Currently active delegates are: Miriyam Aouragh (University of Westminister, UK), Seda Guerses (Princeton, US), Jara Rocha (GREDITS/Objetologías, Bau School of Design, ES) and Femke Snelting (Constant, BE).

Seda's Qs:
how do/don't we organize divisions of labor in collective authorship?
in which case, we could say we suggest that collective action is a kind of collective authorship…
OR, an important aspect of mediated social movements is their ability to taylor collective stories (miriyam, help!)
what are the ways in which the production of these collective stories organized
specifically between social justice and tech activists…

DIGRAPH here >> http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/laborofdivisions