A World in Common(s)
From Marxist Feminism to Solidarity Economy
18–24 August 2025,
Vármező/Câmpu Cetății (Romania)
Deadline for applications: 30 June
The purpose of this summer school is, first, to introduce theoretical frameworks such as Marxist feminism, world-systems analysis, and global labour studies to show how social reproduction is subordinated to endless capital accumulation in the capitalist world system. Second, it aims to explore what alternatives exist to this, i.e., how it is possible to engage in economic activities directly aimed at satisfying human needs.
The work done within the small-scale economic unit of the household is part of global labour–capital relations, and it plays its own role in the reproduction of existing economic conditions. Therefore, if we want to understand the given constraints of the formal labor market, we need to look at the political economy of the household. Furthermore, since the household is the place where the formal and the informal converge, we also discuss “informality” and its structural role within capitalism, especially in peripheral and semiperipheral places, where households absorb many of the risks and social costs of modernization efforts and capitalist investments.
At the same time, from households through tribes, neighbourhoods, or settlements to overarching translocal networks, systems that prioritize non-capitalist modes of production and reproduction have been present for millennia and continue to exist throughout the capitalist world system. Whether by structurally demolishing the domains of capitalist domination in our own reproduction and everyday lives or by challenging the underlying capital accumulation and financialization by building an economy based on commoning and solidarity, such practices can offer alternatives for a world in common(s).
The school is aimed at undergraduate, graduate and doctoral students from faculties of social sciences and humanities. There is no application fee and the school offers free accommodation and meals. Send us your application (with a short introduction about yourself and your interest in the summer school) by June 30 to: szilagyi@tranzit.org.
“A World in Common(s)” is organized by tranzit .ro/Cluj and Working Group for Public Sociology “Helyzet”.
Programme:
18 August
Arrival and introductions
19 August
Marxist feminism and the domestic labour debate in the 1970s – Gergely Csányi
Informality as a political economic concept – Gergely Csányi
Housewifisation, digital labour, and cultural labour – Emília Barna
20 August
Interwar workers’ housing for households with different income portfolios – Sára Bagdi
Informality in Eastern Europe – second economy and small entrepreneurship (Hungary, Poland, Romania) – Emília Barna
Householding the avant-garde – Sára Bagdi
21 August
New Enclosures and commoning – Balázs Bekker
A feminist reading of debt (resistance) – Anna Ürmössy
22 August
Social and Solidarity Economy and expansion of commoning – Áron Mikus & Balázs Bekker
Commons in practice: The case of housing cooperatives – Anna Ürmössy
Cooperatives in the world system – Áron Mikus
23 August
Avoiding degeneration – how cooperatives can avoid cooptation – Áron Mikus
Exilic spaces, autonomous communities: everyday life organized around mutual aid and non-capitalist modes of reproduction – Balázs Bekker
Panel discussion TBA
24 August
Roundtable discussion and farewells
The main partner of tranzit .ro/Cluj is ERSTE Foundation.
