SASE annual conference, Lyon,

June 29 – July 1, 2017.

 

With the expansion of web platforms such as Airbnb.com, Craigslist.org, Etsy.com or Vizeat.com, people are encouraged to commodify their personal possessions as well as their domestic or leisure practices. More generally, this Mini-Conference scrutinizes the marketization of practices previously considered as recreational or domestic, such as cooking, doing handicrafts, blogging, taking care, raising pets, carrying a child, etc. The commodification of the attributes of the self – human body, personal data… – is also in the scope of this issue. The social dimensions of marketization will be of special interest: what social changes favor the commodification of previously non commodified activities? How do market and domestic orders of worth combine? Are markets used to achieve non economic ends? What about the distinction between legal activities and grey economy in such emerging markets? The main goal of the Mini-Conference is to
improve our understanding of the causes and effects – at individual and collective levels – of the extension of the market.

The following topics could be addressed:

1. Becoming an entrepreneur

By commodifying their domestic or leisure practices, amateurs or ordinary people turn themselves into entrepreneurs. They become concerned by financial investments, by the need to promote their products or services, and they have to learn how to engage in economic transactions as sellers. Such investments are expected to alter work-life articulation and to transform the meaning of their activity. Actually, different kinds of commitment in marketization, different profiles and finally different career paths can be identified in each domain.

2. Online platforms as new marketplaces

The marketization of everyday life is strongly supported by the development of technological devices that enable ordinary people to reach a large audience of potential “consumers”. Those platforms also allow people who share similar interests to locate each other and build communities of interest. They bring values that can be either close to the traditional market values (profit seeking, efficiency, optimal matching, etc.) or
seemingly of a new kind (community building, resource sharing, friendliness, etc.). Online platforms are thus interesting places to study in order to understand the transformations of contemporary capitalism.

3. The social status of newly commodified practices

Market rules are often considered as opposed to social and moral values. However, marketization could also be perceived as a means to improve social recognition, at individual and collective levels, since transactions are also providers of social relationships. Simultaneously, the marketization of specific practices could favor their social upgrading. These questions could be particularly scrutinized in a gender perspective, as they especially concern traditionally depreciated feminine practices.

4. Market regulation

The marketization of domestic and leisure activities blurs the boundaries between amateurs and professionals. Leisure and work are less and less differentiated. For example, bloggers tend to compete with journalists, private drivers with taxi drivers and so on. The public reactions of well-established professions towards the rise of new “competitors” express the disrupting effect of the commodification of domestic or leisure practices. This phenomenon also questions the existing regulation of
professions.

Abstracts of no longer than 1000 words should be submitted by February 3, 2017.

Conference submission guidelines:  https://sase.org/ events/conference-submission-and-award-guidelines/

Acceptance notifications will be sent by March 1, 2017.

If accepted, a full paper will be required by June 1, 2017.

Queries can be sent to anne.jourdain@dauphine.fr; sidonie.naulin@iepg.fr