Becoming A Platform In Europe

Emerging out of the collaborative work conducted within the Working Group “Mechanisms to activate and support the collaborative economy” of the COST Action “From Sharing to Caring: Examining Socio-Technical Aspects of the Collaborative Economy”, the book questions the varied set of organizational forms collected under the label of “collaborative” or “sharing” economy --ranging from grassroots peer-to-peer solidarity initiatives to corporate owned platforms-- from the perspective of what is known as the European social values: respect for human dignity and human rights (including those of minorities), freedom, democracy, equality, and the rule of law. Therefore, the edited collection focuses on the governance of such economic activities, and how they organize labour, cooperation and social life. From individual motivations to participating, to platform use by local groups, until platform design in its political as well as technological dimensions, the book provides a comparative overview and critical discussion on the processes, narratives and organizational models at play in the collaborative economy. On such a basis, the volume offers tools, suggestions and visions for the future that may inform the designing of policies, technologies, and business models in Europe.

Emerging out of the collaborative work conducted within the Working Group "Mechanisms to activate and support the collaborative economy" of the COST Action "From Sharing to Caring: Examining Socio-Technical Aspects of the Collaborative Economy", the book questions the varied set of organizational forms collected under the label of "collaborative" or "sharing" economy --ranging from grassroots peer-to-peer solidarity initiatives to corporate owned platforms-- from the perspective of what is known as the European social values: respect for human dignity and human rights (including those of minorities), freedom, democracy, equality, and the rule of law. Therefore, the edited collection focuses on the governance of such economic activities, and how they organize labour, cooperation and social life. From individual motivations to participating, to platform use by local groups, until platform design in its political as well as technological dimensions, the book provides a comparative overview and critical discussion on the processes, narratives and organizational models at play in the collaborative economy. On such a basis, the volume offers tools, suggestions and visions for the future that may inform the designing of policies, technologies, and business models in Europe.

Overthrowing communism in 1989 and joining the European Union in 2004, the Polish people hold loyalties to region, country and now continent – even as the definition of what it means to be ‘European’ remains unclear. Paying particular attention to those who came of age in the earliest years of the neoliberal and democratic transformations, this book uses the life-story narratives of rural and urban southern Poles to reveal how ‘being European’ is considered a fundamental component of ‘being Polish’ while participants are simultaneously ‘becoming European’. Ultimately, this study demonstrates how the EU is regarded as both an idea and an instrument, and how ordinary citizens make choices that influence the shape of European identity and the legitimacy of its institutions.

The collection of well-researched essays assesses the uses and misuses of history 25 years after the collapse of Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe. As opposed to the revival of national histories that seemed to be the prevailing historiographical approach of the 1990s, the last decade has seen a particular set of narratives equating Nazism and Communism. This provides opportunities to exonerate wartime collaboration, casting the nation as victim even when its government was allied with Germany. While the Jewish Holocaust is acknowledged, its meaning and significance are obfuscated. In their comparative analysis the authors are also interested in new practices of ?Europeanness?. Therefore their presentations of Slovak, Hungarian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Bosnian, Croatian and Slovenian post-communist memory politics move beyond the common national myths in order to provide a new insight into transnational interactions and exchanges in Europe in general. The juxtaposition of these politics, the processes in other parts of Europe, the modes of remembering shaped by displacement and the transnational enable a close encounter with the divergences and assess the potential of the formation of common, European memory practices. ÿ

This edited volume provides an innovative contribution to the debate on contemporary European geopolitics by tracing some of the new political geographies and geographical imaginations emergent within - and made possible by - the EU's actions in the international arena. Drawing on case studies that range from the Arctic to East Africa, the nine empirical chapters provide a critical geopolitical reading of the ways in which particular places, countries, and regions are brought into the EU's orbit and the ways in which they are made to work for 'EU'rope. The analyses look at how the spaces of 'EU'ropean power and actorness are narrated and created, but also at how 'EU'rope's discursive (and material) strategies of incorporation are differently appropriated by local and regional elites, from the southern shores of the Mediterranean to Eastern Europe and the Balkans. The question of EU border management is a particularly important concern of several contributions, highlighting some of the ways in which the Union's border-work is actively (re)making the European space.

Social movements can improve the well-being of men and women but are frequently analysed through a gender-neutral lens. Taking an international and cross-disciplinary perspective, this book examines the impact of social movements on political and material well-being, self-definition and the capabilities to be gendered political actors in transnational political spaces.

A succinct, expert guide to how we got to Brexit After all the debates, manoeuvrings, recriminations and exaltations, Brexit is upon us. But, as Kevin O'Rourke writes, Brexit did not emerge out of nowhere: it is the culmination of events that have been under way for decades and have historical roots stretching back well beyond that. Brexit has a history. O'Rourke, one of the leading economic historians of his generation, explains not only how British attitudes to Europe have evolved, but also how the EU's history explains why it operates as it does today - and how that history has shaped the ways in which it has responded to Brexit. Why are the economics, the politics and the history so tightly woven together? Crucially, he also explains why the question of the Irish border is not just one of customs and trade, but for the EU goes to the heart of what it is about. The way in which British, Irish and European histories continue to interact with each other will shape the future of Brexit - and of the continent. Calm and lucid, A Short History of Brexit rises above the usual fray of discussions to provide fresh perspectives and understanding of the most momentous political and economic change in Britain and the EU for decades.