The politics of transforming social relations of work: making sense of a coworking hub in an outer-urban region

This paper investigates the efforts of a group of residents of an outer-metropolitan council area to develop a grassroots coworking hub that would improve the working lives of members and support a more inclusive, connected and sustainable local economy. It considers the collective sense-making required to stabilise new sets of social relations, at work, in an era of 'reforming capitalism'. Using a CCO and governmentality approach, we focus on the rhetorics in play and foreground the interests, agency and decisions of these residents. Bringing the politics of transforming social relations of work to the fore contributes to understanding changes in how work is organised and governed, and understanding the constitutive role of organisational communication. The paper argues a rhetoric of community is problematic for bringing into being a coworking organisation aiming for significant change to work and the economies in which it is embedded.