...encompassing organizations, groups, unions, institutions, agencies, Communities (of Interest and Practice) and NGOs...
This page replaces the external COCAL link page to make room for more organizations. Alternately (or additionally), I could add a feed for academic labor that includes COCAL or create a custom feed.
Another work in progress. But what to call it? Not organizations. "Solidarity" would be hard to manage without irony. Cooperation seems thin yet quixotic but less loaded.
Oh I like how everything is looking!
ReplyDeleteAnd I thought of a term you might want to use for the name? It has an interesting reflection after its definition, which you might really like, so I'll let you think about it and savor it...
Who knows? Maybe it will seep into your thoughts too and you'll like it as well :)
According to my Apple Version 2.2.1 (178) Dictionary, which uses the New Oxford American Dictionary, I give you the following definition:
SYNERGY: cooperative interaction, cooperation, combined effort, give and take.
Reflections from David Lehman
synergy
"Some words don't work. Synergy is one of them. Theoretically it makes sense. Synergy is a business term, corporate-speak for the advantages of amalgamating the operations of several different but related companies. When, for example, a book publisher merges with a movie studio, one reason given is that there are bound to be significant synergies: ways one branch of the new structure can feed the other. It turns out, however, that the concept is flawed; these mergers seldom go according to plan. And that is surely why you hear the word only in the business news, among executives and mouthpieces for whom hope springs eternal."
There you have it...
Now I'll let you mull this over to decide if this term helps you figure out what to use, so you can continue finishing up your great opus!
Besos, not borders,
Ana/Adjunct Justice
Nope. Sorry but synergy (besides being bizspeak) is too 90s California. New Agey. Savor? Just thinking about it gives me indigestion.
DeleteSteven Downes' 2010 post, Collaboration and Cooperation draws parallels to groups and networks.
But discussion/explanation of cooperation (or whatever) is definitely in order. Cooperation fits networks. Communities of Practice and Communities of Interest fall in between.
DeleteI also see fuzzy / porous boundaries between "programs" and "cooperation," with some programs (projects, actions) being associated with groups -- or evolving into communities over time.
Oops...Unfinished Opus indeed. This particular spot on the Precarity Network do-over is no further long than it was when I proposed it in May. I sheepishly confess to having forgotten about it altogether. Blogging has taken a back seat to collecting and curating. An obvious solution would be to blog what I curate
ReplyDeleteTentatively, "cooperation" is as much about cooperative projects (sometimes of limited duration), groups (formal and informal), organizations (not necessarily unions or affiliated with them). That may still be too broad and thereby unwieldy to be useful.
It might be easier to work out from a few cooperative entities that fit the basic concept, which would also be open to revision along the way. Intermittent and perhaps even systemic dysfunctionality aside, COCAL and CPFA come to mind. So does Interfaith Worker Justice -- but not CAW. That the page won't be renamed either "synergy" or "solidarity" is about the only thing I'm sure of.