I am a social science researcher, teacher, and PhD candidate (ABD) in the Programme in Social and Political Thought at York University in Toronto, Canada. I am nearing the completion of my doctoral work with a dissertation entitled There’s No Stopping the Workers: Autogestión and Argentina’s Worker-Recuperated Enterprises. I am also a Research Associate at the Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean and the International Secretariate for Human Development (both also at York University), an adjunct member of the Applied Communication Laboratory (ACTLab) at Simon Fraser University’s School of Communication, a co-organizer and member of the Toronto School of Creativity & Inquiry, and serve on the board of the Canadian Association for Studies in Co-operation. Son of Italian immigrants, I was born in Quilmes, Argentina, grew up in Vancouver, Canada, and currently call Toronto, Canada my home-base. For most of 2011, I have been living and writing in Villa de Leyva, Colombia. Starting in Jan. 2012, I will be Visiting Postdoctoral Researcher at the European Research Institute on Cooperative and Social Enterprises at the University of Trento, Italy.

I have an interdisciplinary intellectual background in alternative economics, social and solidarity economy studies, the sociology of work, political economy, critical theory, historical materialism, critical development studies, philosophy of technology, phenomenology, communication and media theory, and qualitative research methods. Currently, I am researching and publishing on the historical conditions, the political economic environments, and the lived experiences of the worker-recuperated enterprises of Argentina and the social and solidarity economies of Latin America. More broadly, I am interested in the prefigurative possibilities for alternative economic arrangements, as well as the socio-technological spheres within which alternative economies beyond capitalism emerge. Since 2005, I have also been actively involved in helping develop researcher and practitioner linkages between cooperative and social economy experiences in Canada and Latin America, especially between Canada and Argentina and, increasingly, Canada and Cuba.

In recent years, I have published articles and book chapters on the social economy and alternative economics, cooperativism, worker coops, Argentina’s worker-recuperated enterprises,  the sociology of work, alternative technologies, computer-mediated communication and Internet studies, and the critical theory of Herbert Marcuse in academic journals and critical magazines such as: Labor Studies Journal, a special issue on “Social Movement Learning” for Studies in the Education of Adults, Affinities: A Journal of Radical Theory, Culture, and Action, ANSER Journal, Strategies of Critique, Iowa Journal of Communication, Comunicar, Relay, and New Socialist. Forthcoming papers I have written or co-authored on critical theory and social movements and the philosophy of technology and media will appear soon in ephemera: Theory & Politics in Organization, Explorations in Media Ecology, and a special issue on Marshall McLuhan in the American Communication Journal. Several book chapters I have recently written or co-written on my areas of interest can be found in: Businesses with a Difference (Jack Quarter, Laurie Mook, & Sherida Ryan, eds., Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012); Alternative Work Organizations (Maurizio Atzeni, ed., Houndmills, Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); and Co-Operatives in a Global Economy: The Challenges of Co-Operation Across Borders (Darryl Reed & JJ McMurtry, eds., Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2009).

Since 2006 I have been collaborating extensively with a team of anthropologists, sociologists, and political scientists doing work with and research on Argentina’s worker-recuperated enterprises at the Open University program out of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, University of Buenos Aires and the Center for Advanced Studies at the National University of Córdoba. In August of 2009, the Open University program team (who also run the ERT Documentation Center out of the worker-recuperated graphics shop Chilavert) came out with a collaboratively written book on the ERT phenomenon in Argentina and Latin America entitled Las empresas recuperadas: Autogestón obrera en Argentina y América Latina (The Recuperated Enterprises: Workers’ Self-Management in Argentina in Latin America), published by the Facultad de Filosofía y Letras (UBA) press. I have two chapters in this book, one on the the ERTs as workers’ coops and the other on the social innovations of ERTs. With this team, I have helped organize three conferences on self-management and the workers’ economy: the First International Gathering of the Workers’ Economy: Self-Management and the Distribution of Wealth in Jul. of 2007, the Second International Gathering of the Workers’ Economy: Work and Self-Management in Times of Global Crisis in Aug. of 2009, and the Third International Gathering of the Workers’ Economy: Analyzing and Debating a New Economy from the Perspective of Workers and Self-Management in June 2011 in Mexico City.

I have also engaged in many educational activities, conferences, and as invited lecturer in Argentina, Canada, Cuba, the UK, Colombia, Brazil, Mexico, and the US.

                                             +++

Go here for a brief abstract of my research objectives and methods.

Go here for a detailed outline of my PhD research project.