Speech Acts and Mobilisation for Social Change - Exploring the History of Collaborative Production in the UK

Elements of sharing and collaboration in economy are involving certain mobilisations or platforms forming the basis for collective action. Historically, such mobilisations have taken place in the context of social movements and as part of the purpose for social change, making collaborative collective action different from commercial contracts in profit-oriented production and markets. The mutuality of collaboration has arguably been an element for the set up of counter-competitive action in different social movements. The paper departs from an empirical study of historical material of movement journals debating and organising for cooperative economy, economic democracy and women’s collaborative economic participation in the UK. The aim of the paper is to theoretically and empirically explore how mobilisations of economic collaborations are set up by speech acts in relation to intentions for social change. The paper draws out conclusions about the relation between speech acts and moments of mobilisation, suggesting different types of conditions for mobilisation of collaboration and sharing in economy, such as contemplative and utopian mobilisations, articulations of shared material interests, or knowledge based mobilisation formed upon the pursuit for professional autonomy. The different forms of mobilisation are discussed in relation to contemporary cases of collaborative production and economy, such as open source software production, digital sharing platforms, (physical) hacker spaces and the maker movement.