The politics of collective repair: examining object-relations in a postwork society

In this article we look at repair as an emergent focus of recent activism in affluent societies, where a number of groups are reclaiming practices of repair as a form of political and ecological action. Ranging from those that fight for legislative change to those groups who are trying to support ecological and social change through everyday life practices, repair is beginning to surface tensions in everyday life and as such poses opportunities for its transformation. We survey a few of the practices that make up this movement in its various articulations, to take stock of their current political import. While we suggest that these practices can be seen as an emergent lifestyle movement, they should not be seen as presenting a unified statement. Rather, we aim to show that they articulate a spectrum of political positions, particularly in relation to the three specific issues of property, pedagogy and sociality. These three dimensions are all facets of current internal discrepancies of repair practices and moreover express potential bifurcations as this movement evolves. Drawing on a diverse methodology that includes discourse analysis and participant observation, we suggest some of the ways in which this growing area of activity could play a significant role in resisting the commodification of the everyday and inventing postwork alternatives

Comfort radicalism and NEETs: a conservative praxis

Young people who are not in education, employment or training (NEET) are construed by policy makers as a pressing problem about which something should be done. Such young people's lack of employment is thought to pose difficulties for wider society in relation to social cohesion and inclusion and it is feared that they will become a 'lost generation'. This paper(1) draws upon English research, seeking to historicise the debate whilst acknowledging that these issues have a much wider purchase. The notion of NEETs rests alongside longstanding concerns of the English state and middle classes, addressing unruly male working class youth as well as the moral turpitude of working class girls. Waged labour and domesticity are seen as a means to integrate such groups into society thereby generating social cohesion. The paper places the debate within it socio-economic context and draws on theorisations of cognitive capitalism, Italian workerism, as well as emerging theories of antiwork to analyse these. It concludes by arguing that ‘radical’ approaches to NEETs that point towards inequities embedded in the social structure and call for social democratic solutions veer towards a form of comfort radicalism. Such approaches leave in place the dominance of capitalist relations as well as productivist orientations that celebrate waged labour

The autonomous city: towards a critical geography of occupation

This paper explores the recent resurgence of occupation-based practices across the globe, from the seizure of public space to the assembling of improvised protest camps. It re-examines the relationship between the figure of occupation and the affirmation of an alternative ‘right to the city’. The paper develops a critical understanding of occupation as a political process that prefigures and materializes the social order which it seeks to enact. The paper highlights the constituent role of occupation as an autonomous form of urban dwelling, as a radical politics of infrastructure and as a set of relations that produce common spaces for political action

Postanarchism and space: Revolutionary fantasies and autonomous zones

In this paper, I call for a re-consideration of anarchism and its alternative ways of conceptualising spaces for radical politics. Here I apply a Lacanian analysis of the social imaginary to explore the utopian fantasies and desires that underpin social spaces, discourses and practices – including planning, and revolutionary politics. I will go on to develop – via Castoriadis and others – a distinctly post-anarchist conception of political space based around the project of autonomy and the re-situation of the political space outside the state. This will have direct consequences for an alternative conception of planning practice and theory

Beyond NEET: precariousness, ideology and social justice - the 99%

This article addresses NEET (not in employment, education or training) as an ideological and discursive formation, lodging the discussion within its socio-economic context – one of increasing insecurity and precariousness. It argues that frequently quasi-political and ideological constructions of NEET can readily fold over into and articulate with discourses of the underclass and the broken society, as well as, paradoxically, social recession. Consequently, such arguments divert attention from processes of ‘othering’ and the secular changes facing society, as well as the spectre of a return to a form of nineteenth-century liberalism. Although the argument is located within the English context, it has a relevance to other Western societies in which similar tendencies can be discerned

Estimation of the effective orientation of the SHG source in primary cortical neurons

In this paper we provide, for the first time to our knowledge, the effective orientation of the SHG source in cultured cortical neuronal processes in vitro. This is done by the use of the polarization sensitive second harmonic generation (PSHG) imaging microscopy technique. By performing a pixel-level resolution analysis we found that the SHG dipole source has a distribution of angles centered at θe =33.96°, with a bandwidth of ∆θe = 12.85°. This orientation can be related with the molecular geometry of the tubulin heterodimmer contained in microtubules.This work is supported by the Generalitat de Catalunya and by the Spanish government grant TEC2006-12654. Authors also acknowledge The Centre for Innovacio i Desenvolupament Empresarial - CIDEM (RDITSCON07-1-0006), Grupo Ferrer and the European Regional Development Fund. This research has been partially supported by Fundació Cellex Barcelona.Peer reviewe