Marcelo Vieta

Marcelo Vieta is a PhD candidate (ABD) in the Graduate Programme in Social and Political Thought York University (Toronto, Canada). Since 2005, Marcelo has been researching the historical and political economic backdrop of Argentina’s empresas recuperadas por sus trabajadores (worker-recuperated enterprises, or ERTs), their redesigned labour processes as workers’ cooperatives, as well as workers’ lived experiences of self-management. He recently completed his fieldwork with various ERTs in Argentina and will be defending his dissertation in the spring of 2011. Since 2009, Marcelo has also been a researcher in two projects with the Southern Ontario Social Economy Node: “The Social Economy and Economies of Solidarity: Emerging Initiatives from Latin America” (led by Daniel Schugurensky) and “Fair and Ethical Trade and the Local Public Procurement Policies in Canada” (led by JJ McMurtry and Darryl Reed).

Together with the Extension Program of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters at the University of Buenos Aires and several other research and activist organizations from the Americas, since 2007 Marcelo has co-organized two conferences in Buenos Aires, Argentina on the theme of the possibilities and realities of the workers’ economy, attended by progressive academics, workers, and workers organizations from five continents. He also guest-edited volume 4, issue 1 of Affinities: A Journal of Radical Theory, Culture, and Action on the theme of “the new cooperativism” and has recently taught a fourth year seminar in York University’s Business and Society Program (Department of Social Science) entitled “Alternative Economic Firms and Organizations

Besides being a graduate research associate at York University’s International Secretariet for Human Development, Marcelo is also on the board of the Canadian Association of Studies in Co-operation, a research fellow in Prof. Andrew Feenberg’s Applied Communication and Technology (ACT) lab at Simon Fraser University’s School of Communication, and a co-founder and current member of the autonomous educational project Toronto School of Creativity and Inquiry (TSCI).

Select Publications

Peer Reviewed Journal Articles

Manuel Laraburre, Marcelo Vieta, & Daniel Schugurensky, “Informal Learning in the ‘New Cooperativism’: Socialist Production Units (Venezuela) and Workers-Recuperated Enterprises (Argentina)” (under review).

Marcelo Vieta & Daniel Schugurensky, “Formal and Non-Formal University Programs and the Social and Solidarity Economy in Argentina” (under review).

Marcelo Vieta, “Hope for Our Technological Inheritance? From Substantive Critiques of Technology to Marcuse’s Post-Technological Rationality”, Strategies of Critique: A Graduate Journal of Social and Political Thought (Fall 2010, forthcoming).

Marcelo Vieta, “The Social Innovations of Autogestión in Argentina’s Worker-Recuperated Enterprises: Cooperatively Organizing Productive Life in Hard Times”, Labor Studies Journal, vol. 35, issue 4 (prepublished online Jul. 13, 2009 – DOI: 10.1177/0123456789123456, scheduled to be published in print form in December 2010).

Marcelo Vieta, “Rethinking Life Online: The Interactional Self as a Theory for Internet-Mediated Communication”, Iowa Journal of Communication, vol. 37, no. 1 (Spring/Fall 2005).

Laureano Ralon, Marcelo Vieta, & Lucia Vasquez, “(De)formación en línea: acerca de las desventajas de la educación virtual” [“Online (De)formation: On the Disadvantages of Online Education”], Comunicar, issue 22 (Jan. 2005).

Maria Cristina Ezeiza, Laureano Ralon, Marcelo Vieta, & Vanessa Ruocco, “(De)formacion virtual: Una mirada crítica a las desventajas de la educación que se viene” [Virtual (De)formation: A Critical Look at the Disadvantages of the Education to Come”], Educ.ar (Buenos Aires: Ministerio de Educación, Oct. 2003).

Peer Reviewed Book Chapters

Marcelo Vieta, “Chapter 9: From Managed Employees to Self-Managed Workers: The Phenomenological Transformations and Social Innovations in Argentina’s Worker-Recuperated Enterprise”, in Alternative Work Organizations (M. Atzeni, Ed., Houndmills, Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave MacMillan, 2011).

Marcelo Vieta, Manuel Larrabure, & Daniel Schugurensky, “Businesses With a Difference in Latin America: The Cases of Argentina’s Worker-Recovered Enterprises and Venezuela’s Socialist Production Units”, in Businesses with a Difference: Balancing the Social and the Economic (J. Quarter, L. Mook, & S. Ryan, Eds., Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010).

Florence Chee, Marcelo Vieta, & Richard Smith, “Online Gaming and the Interactional Self: Identity Interplay in Situated Practice”, in Gaming as Culture: Essays on Reality, Identity, and Experience in Fantasy Games (J. Patrick Williams, Sean Q. Hendricks, and W. Keith Winkler, Eds., Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2005).

Other Publications

Marcelo Vieta, “‘There’s no Stopping the Workers’: Recent Experiments with Self-Management in Argentina”, Relay: A Socialist Project Review, issue 31 (Toronto, Canada, July 2010).

Marcelo Vieta, “Capítulo 10: Desafíos e innovaciones sociales en las empresas recuperadas por sus trabajadores” [Chapter 10: The Challenges and Social Innovations in the Worker-Recuperated Enterprises”], in Las empresas recuperadas: Autogestión obrera en Argentina y Latinoamérica (A. Ruggeri, Ed., Buenos Aires: Univeristy of Buenos Aires Press, 2009).

Marcelo Vieta & Andrés Ruggeri, “The Worker-Recovered Enterprises as Workers’ Cooperatives: The Conjunctures, Challenges, and Innovations of Self-Management in Argentina and Latin America”, in Co-operatives in a Global Economy: The Challenges of Co-operation Across Borders (J.J. McMurtry & Darryl Reed, Eds., Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2009).

Marcelo Vieta, “‘The Bloggy Way of Doing Things’: An Assessment of Blogs through the Social Interactions of Bloggers”, in proceedings of the 4th annual conference of Chinese Internet Communication, (Wuhan, China: Huazhong University of Science and Technology, October 12-14, 2007).

Greig de Peuter, Christine Shaw, & Marcelo Vieta (interviews and assemblage), “Recovering and Recreating Spaces of Production: A Virtual Roundtable with Protagonists of Argentina’s Worker-Recovered Enterprises Movement”, Affinities: A Journal of Radical Theory, Culture, and Action, vol. 1, no. 1 (Jan. 2007).

Adrian Blackwell, Greig de Peuter, Christine Shaw, & Marcelo Vieta, “Entangled Territories”, Space and Culture Journal (2008).

Marcelo Vieta, “Argentina’s Worker-Recovered Enterprises Movement: Reconstituting Working Lives,” New Socialist Magazine, issue 57 (Toronto, Canada, 2006).

Select Awards

  • The Amy and Tim Dauphinee Scholarship of the Canadian Association of Studies in Co-operation, the Canadian Co-operative Association, and the Ontario Credit Union Charitable Foundation (Spring/Summer 2009).
  • Faculty of Graduate Studies Research Fellowship (Summer 2009).
  • Ontario Graduate Scholarship (2008-2009).
  • The Michael Baptista Award, Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean (CERLAC), York University. “Honourable Mention” for essay “The Worker-Recovered Enterprises Movement in Argentina: Self-Management as a Potential Path to Recovering Work, Recomposing Production, and Recuperating Life” (February 2007).
  • Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Doctoral Fellowship (May 2006 – May 2008).
  • Graduate Fellowship, Simon Fraser University (Spring 2004).
  • Matching Deans Graduate Fellowship, Simon Fraser University (Spring 2004).
  • Canwest/Global Graduate Fellowship, Simon Fraser University (Fall 2002).
  • Cable Television Pioneer Graduate Scholarship, Simon Fraser University (Fall 2002).