Apologies for cross-posting, I thought it can interest some of you. Maurizio --- Dear colleague, We are pleased to send you the call for abstracts of the session *It**’s a free work… When work relations become passionate* of the V Ethnography and Qualitative Research Conference. Your contribution to the proposed session will be greatly appreciated! Attached & below, please find the call for abstracts of the *V* *Ethnography and Qualitative Research Conference*, to be held in Bergamo*, **Italy**, Ju* *ne* *5**-**7**, 2014*. Proposals should be sent by* Februay 17, 2014 *to: annalisa.murgia@unitn.it maurizio@ahref.eu Please, also CC the conference address: workshop.etnografia@unibg.it Each proposal, of a maximum length of 1000 words, should contain: • the title of your talk; • your contact details (full name, email address, post address and affiliation) and those of your co-author/s, if any. Contributions will be accepted in both *Italian* and *English*. Acceptance of proposals will be notified by March 17, 2014. Contributors must register by April 21, 2014 to be included in the program. With best wishes, Annalisa Murgia & Maurizio Teli ****** *Call for **abstracts* *V Ethnography and Qualitative Research Conference.* Bergamo, Italy *5-7* *June** 2014* *website: *www.etnografiaricercaqualitativa.it *Proposed session: * *It’s a free work… When work relations become passionate* *Session Organizers* Annalisa Murgia, University of Trento, Italy, *annalisa.murgia@unitn.it*<annalisa.murgia@unitn.it> Maurizio Teli, <ahref Foundation, Trento, Italy, maurizio@ahref.eu In contemporary knowledge society, both creativity and the ability to put into play personal resources are recognized as precious and valuable competences. With this workshop, we want to stimulate a reflection within the debate on *free work *(Beverungen et al. 2013; Chicchi et al. 2013), starting with the ambivalent meaning of the word *free*, referring both to the absence of a price and to the domain of freedom. We invite to elaborate on the double face of contemporary work: on one side, it is characterized by low or absent wages, it is so intrusive to become totalizing; on the other side, it is often based on informal registers, on subjects’ desire for freedom, and on the confusion between free time and working time. Drawing upon the contribution on free software development by the anthropologist Christopher Kelty (2008), we can frame this social phenomenon as the expansion of voluntary activities that intertwine with work activities in many forms. What is common among software developers – and among others who describe their work primarily as a passion – is not only the individual expression of creativity, but also the translation of the playful-affective dimension in recursive processes of relation, processes that bring to a preoccupation for the institutional, technological, political and economical conditions which the particular community and its productive activities are based on. These are, therefore, working experiences (paid or unpaid) in which the subjects’ identification and self-expression are conveyed both by putting life itself at work (Morini e Fumagalli 2010; Fleming 2012) and by questioning the social relations within which work is realised (Borghi et al. 2011). The proposed subject of analysis is as wide as heterogeneous, and it includes knowledge work, the creative industries and high tech production chains, emotional and caring work, all sharing the ambivalences of free work. What are the characteristics of the activities wherein subjects invest their affections and desires and that become incorporated by the rhetoric of work as a mission? If, on one side, free work makes economically valuable free expert activities, can it allow the emergence of new forms of collective action? How can we understand the main traits of such phenomenon, in particular from a methodological perspective? *References* - Beverungen, A., Otto, B., Spoelstra, S., Kenny K. (eds.) (2013) Special Issue on “Free work”, *ephemera, **theory** & politics in organization*, vol. 13, n. 1. - Borghi, V., Dorigatti, L., Rizza, R., Telljohann, V. (eds.) (2011) *Lavoro e partecipazione**. Sindacati **e** movimenti sociali nella globalizzazione dei processi produttivi*, Milano, Angeli. - Chicchi, F., Risi, E., Fisher, E., Armano, E. (eds.) (2014, forthcoming) Special Issue on “Free and unpaid work, gratuity, collaborative activity and precariousness. - Processes of subjectivity in the age of digital production”, *Sociologia del lavoro*. - Fleming, P. (2012) “Some might Call it Work . . . but We don’t”: Exploitation and the Emergence of Free Work*, **Research in the Sociology of Organizations**, vol. 37*, pp.105-128 - Kelty, C.M. (2008) *Two bits: The cultural significance of free software*, Durham, NC and London, Duke University Press Books. - Morini, C., Fumagalli, A. (2010) “Life put to work: towards a theory of life-value”, *ephemera: theory & politics in organization*, vol. 10, n. 3-4, pp. 234-252. If you have questions about the session, please feel free to contact the Session Organizers for more information.