Workshop Themes

The workshop considers spatial tensions in CSCW with the help of four broad themes. Participants are encouraged to articulate their interest in the workshop in connection to one or more of the following:

• The political and ethical challenges of scale. We look forward to contributions that examine and critique the role that scale plays in the design of tools and collaborative processes. Further, we encourage participants to explore how we might reshape our vocabulary to go beyond visions of scale and scaling as well as how infrastructures that scale might be managed so that localized action and decision-making remains possible.
• Modes of organizing, infrastructuring, and governing. We welcome contributions that advance and/or reflect on different modes of organizing, infrastructuring, and governing computer-supported cooperative activities and collectives. This can involve (but is not limited to) approaches such as federation, cooperatives, and localism in relation to platform-supported community organizing.
• (Inter)organizational aspects. When considering how grassroots initiatives and other computer-supported cooperative activities may proliferate and morph over time, issues of scale and long-term sustenance become entangled with questions of institutionalization, be it in the form of partnerships or formalizing the initiative/activity itself into a different type of an organization. Returning to a conversation started at CSCW 2020, we see a number of open questions regarding engagement with and/or transformation into alternative organizational forms (public organizations, NGOs, cooperatives, etc.) so as to support the longer-term sustenance of (the aims of) grassroots initiatives. We invite participants to explore the processes and dynamics underlying such (inter)organizational transformation.
• Place and care. Two key threads in the workshop themes are the notions of place and care. Here, we are particularly interested in contributions that address the importance of spatial and care-ful considerations in computer-supported cooperative activity and how these may come into tension – or even outright conflict – with the logic of scaling. We welcome contributions that illustrate the localized work, partnerships, processes, and ecological relations whereby care for place is fostered and accomplished.
• Theoretical frameworks. We encourage authors to discuss theoretical aspects that reflect both the ethics of place and the ethics of care. We are interested in the analytical relevance of these approaches, as well as their generative value in designing and assessing the role of digital technology in fostering bounded spaces of our imagining and making.