publications

2025

1. 

   The role of proximity coworking spaces in the post-pandemic platform urbanism

   Alessandro Gerosa and Cecilia Manzo

   Space and Polity, 2025

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   This article investigates how Community Workspace managers in Milan conceptualize their role within urban governance and space. Based on qualitative interviews, it identifies three ideal-typical relationships with local institutions: beneficiaries, partners, and policy providers. These situated perspectives reveal how CWS navigate tensions between market logic, civic engagement, and territorial embeddedness, often positioning themselves as intermediaries between grassroots actors and public authorities. The article contributes to debates on platform urbanism by introducing the notion of CWS as Local Collective Cooperation Goods, highlighting both their potential and the challenges of integrating private actors into post-neoliberal governance frameworks grounded in proximity and cooperation.

2. 

   A proposito di economia neo-artigianale.

   Alessandro Gerosa

   Polis, 2025

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   Despite their marginalisation during the twentieth century, artisanal production and consumption are experiencing renewed significance. This article briefly reconstructs a genealogy of the recent debate on craft, examining in particular the distinctive features of the «neo-craft economy», marked by a strong symbolic dimension and a search for authenticity. The article identifies three key tensions within today’s neo-artisanal economy: the conflict with large-scale industries seeking to exploit the symbolic value of artisanal products for profit; the material and symbolic barriers preventing substantial components of the wider population from participating in the neo-craft economy in socially recognised and legitimate ways; the impact of the neo-craft economy on urban transformations. Ultimately, the neo-craft economy appears marked by a fundamental tension inherent in its nature: it serves as a potential frontier of resistance against industrial capitalism while also being a phenomenon that potentially perpetuates economic and social inequalities.

2024

1. 

   The Hipster Economy: Taste and Authenticity in Late Modern Capitalism

   Alessandro Gerosa

   2024

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   Today, being authentic has become an aspiration and an imperative. The notion of authenticity shapes the consumption habits of individuals in the most diverse contexts such as food and drinks, clothing, music, tourism and the digital sphere, even leading to the resurgence of apparently obsolescent modes of production such as craft. It also significantly transforms urban areas, their local economies and development. The Hipster Economy analyses this complex set of related phenomena to argue that the quest for authenticity has been a driver of Western societies from the emersion of capitalism and industrial society to today. From this premise, the book advances multiple original contributions. First, it explains why and how authenticity has become a fundamental value orienting consumers’ taste in late modern capitalism; second, it proposes a novel conceptualisation of the aesthetic regime of consumption; third, the book constitutes the first detailed analysis of the resurgence of the neo-craft industries, their entrepreneurs, and the economic imaginary of consumption underpinning them, and fourth, it analyses how the hipster economy is impacting the urban space, favouring new logic of urban development with contrasting outcomes.

2. 

   Un approccio metodologico allo studio degli algoritmi di personalizzazione su TikTok.

   Laura Bruschi, Alessandro Gandini, Giulia Giorgi, and 1 more author

   Sociologia Italiana, 2024

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   Questo articolo riflette sugli approcci epistemologici utili allo studio degli algoritmi di personalizzazione e raccomandazione dei contenuti sui social media. A questo scopo, propone un protocollo metodologico per indagare la personalizzazione dei contenuti sulla piattaforma TikTok, basato sulla creazione di nuovi account TikTok e sull’interazione controllata con i contenuti personalizzati proposti dalla piattaforma a partire da questi due account. L’articolo riflette sulle possibilità e i limiti del protocollo proposto, offrendo indicazioni utili per lo sviluppo di metodologie di ricerca innovative adatte allo studio del funzionamento di questi strumenti.

3. 

   The Loop of Loops: The Recursive Dynamics of Videos on Social Media

   Giulia Giorgi and Alessandro Gerosa

   Lo Squaderno, 2024

   Publisher: Professionaldreamers

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   After the global, outstanding success of the Chinese-owned TikTok in 2020, most social media platforms have adopted the short video format as their preferred way of engaging users and generat-ing content, such as Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts and Facebook Watch. These videos are typically proposed to the user in dedicated sections of the platform, in the form of an endless flow of videos, categorised and distributed according to algorithmically calculated user preferences. The emergence of short videos marks a significant novelty compared to previously phases in social media led by image or textual content. Indeed, the new peculiar functioning of Tik Tok, based on memetic forms of imitation and replication rapidly adopted by other platforms, has been compared to the ‘end of the social networks’ as we knew them from the beginning of their story (The Economist, 2024). This brief piece critically discusses the algorithmically prompted recursive mechanism that underpins the ways in which social media platforms distribute visual content, and specifically short videos, to users.

4. 

   Regimes of visibility: Unravelling media, conflict, and hegemony in place branding processes

   Alessandro Gerosa

   In Responsible Marketing for Well-being and Society, 2024

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2023

1. 

   What is Neo-Craft Work, and Why it Matters

   Alessandro Gandini and Alessandro Gerosa

   Organization Studies, 2023

   Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd

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   Existing research has highlighted a global return into fashion of craft work in the new century. Within this context, the term ‘neo-craft’ work has been used to identify innovative craft work practices characterized by an aura of ‘coolness’, which promise a less alienated form of work; yet, the specific contours of this new form of work remain uncertain. In this article we develop a theoretical conceptualization of neo-craft work. We define it as an emergent form of post-industrial craft work whereby work that was previously considered low-status, or performed by the working class, is: (a) ‘resignified’ into status-producing activity through the integration of craft practices and values; and (b) conferred new meaningfulness as the outcome of a specific process of discursive materiality, by which the intra-action of discursive and material practices provides meaning to work activity. Neo-craft work, we contend, finds roots in the cultural milieu of hipster culture, where extenuating cultural negotiations around authenticity and ‘the particular’ constitute the baseline for a quest for social status based on practices of ‘marginal distinction’, and sets itself as an alternative not only to industrial work but, primarily, to the precarious, low-paid or otherwise unsatisfactory ‘bullshit jobs’ of the knowledge and creative economy.

2. 

   ’Tracce’ di opinione pubblica algoritmica: il caso dell’infodemia

   Silvia Keeling and Alessandro Gerosa

   In Tracce digitali e ricerca sociologica, 2023

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3. 

   Subjectivity and algorithmic imaginaries: the algorithmic other

   Alessandro Gandini, Alessandro Gerosa, Luca Giuffrè, and 1 more author

   Subjectivity, 2023

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   Despite their marginalisation during the twentieth century, artisanal production and consumption are experiencing renewed significance. This article briefly reconstructs a genealogy of the recent debate on craft, examining in particular the distinctive features of the «neo-craft economy», marked by a strong symbolic dimension and a search for authenticity. The article identifies three key tensions within today’s neo-artisanal economy: the conflict with large-scale industries seeking to exploit the symbolic value of artisanal products for profit; the material and symbolic barriers preventing substantial components of the wider population from participating in the neo-craft economy in socially recognised and legitimate ways; the impact of the neo-craft economy on urban transformations. Ultimately, the neo-craft economy appears marked by a fundamental tension inherent in its nature: it serves as a potential frontier of resistance against industrial capitalism while also being a phenomenon that potentially perpetuates economic and social inequalities.

2022

1. 

   The hidden roots of the creative economy: a critical history of the concept along the twentieth century

   Alessandro Gerosa

   International Journal of Cultural Policy, 2022

   Publisher: Routledge

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   This article delineates a critical history of the economic imaginary of the creative economy. Applying the Cultural Political Economy analytical framework, the article looks at the turning points during the twentieth and twenty-first century in which different but connected discourses over creativity in the economic sphere emerged. Multiple contributions derive from the results. First, the research adds analytical depth to the existing literature, recovering the thought of Patten and the economic and political debate about creativity during the fifties and the sixties. This operation allows the integration of these discourses and more recent ones about the creative city, creative industries, and creative class under a common framework. Overall, a clear pattern emerges, consisting of two phases: a first phase of germination, in which academic and intellectual circles conceptualise the discourses, and a second phase of dissemination, in which political figures appropriate and spread those discourses. Lastly, we argue that the discourses composing the creative economy imaginary, taken together, can be interpreted as the attempt of Western economies to trigger a new successful cycle of economic accumulation, able to replace the Fordist one.

2. 

   The algorithmic public opinion: a literature review

   Alessandro Gandini, Alessandro Gerosa, Beatrice Gobbo, and 6 more authors

   2022

   Publisher: SocArXiv

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   In the context of a society where digital technologies have come to pervasively intermediate most social, cultural and economic processes, algorithms represent an important socio-technical component of ‘the social’. Unsurprisingly, algorithms also hold an important role in the formation of public opinion. The way people access news and informational content, thus forming their political and social views, is now largely mediated by social media platforms. Their algorithms represent new types of gatekeepers that contribute in decisive ways to shape individual and collective access to information. In this literature review, we discuss the most relevant research concurring to the existence of what we define as an ’algorithmic public opinion’, from an interdisciplinary perspective that brings together the sociology of media, critical algorithm studies and information design.

3. 

   The resurgence of craft retailing: marketing and branding strategies in the food and beverage sector

   Alessandro Gerosa

   In The Artisan Brand: Entrepreneurship and Marketing in Contemporary Craft Economies, 2022

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   The twentieth century saw a decline in the social prestige and role of shopkeepers, stripped of their historical double function of retailers and artisans. Indeed, they lost their role as cultural actors, becoming relegated to mere economic intermediaries between mass production and consumers. However, recently the demise of Fordist economy and the development of the neo-craft industries paved the way to a resurgence of artisanal retailing, which relevance is confirmed both by a peculiar category of workers and shops and by the permeating brand of artisanal production in retailing. This chapter firstly contextualises and explains the cultural and economic processes that made this resurgence possible. Then, based on ethnographic research composed of participant observation notes and interviews with food and beverage micro-entrepreneurs, analyses the fundamental features of marketing and branding strategies enacted in the food and beverage neo-craft retailing.

4. 

   #BRNBQ: le estetiche della teppa urbana nella \guillemotleftpiazza digitale\guillemotright di instagram

   Giulia Giorgi and Alessandro Gerosa

   In Le strade della teppa, 2022

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5. 

   New working spaces and COVID-19: Analyzing the debate through Twitter

   Alessandro Gerosa and Irene Manzini Ceinar

   In The COVID-19 Pandemic and the Future of Working Spaces, 2022

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2021

1. 

   Cosmopolitans of regionalism: dealers of omnivorous taste under Italian food truck economic imaginary

   Alessandro Gerosa

   Consumption Markets & Culture, 2021

   Publisher: Routledge

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   Cultural omnivorousness has gained relevance as a suitable theory to explain contemporary patterns of consumption, but the actual dealing of omnivorous taste by economic actors and businesses has been mostly overlooked. Through ethnographic research, this article explores how Italian gourmet food truck operators concretely produce claims of authenticity for omnivorous seekers. First, the adoption of the perspective of food truck operators highlights the reflexive and market-bounded nature of the omnivorous taste reproduction. Moreover, “being authentic” becomes an imperative for tastemakers, imposed by the economic imaginary. Finally, the centrality of regionalism in the Italian production of authenticity suggests that localism, too, has been subsumed by global food imaginaries and that regionalism expresses a cosmopolitan attitude. Taken together, these findings allow the integration of existing theory of food cultural omnivorousness: “gourmet” food must be authentic to be recognised by omnivores and distinctive to be successful on markets.

2. 

   The Bottom-up Place Branding of a Neighborhood: Analyzing a Case of Selective Empowerment

   Alessandro Gerosa and Maria Tartari

   Space and Culture, 2021

   Publisher: SAGE Publications

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   This article analyzes the entanglement of social impacts of bottom-up urban branding processes on local hyperdiverse communities, through an ethnography of a neighborhood of Milan recently named by a group of residents as “NoLo.” Indeed, existing literature has broadly investigated urban rebranding as a tool used by policy makers to foster social change and economic capital, imposing top-down transformations. Nevertheless, a gap in the bottom-up place rebranding processes exists. We inspect it through the aforementioned case study and by combining place branding literature, the loss of place identity and theories on empowerment. Empirically, we analyze the socioeconomic processes and the actors that enabled the rebranding, discussing the positive externalities and the criticalities in terms of marginalization of weaker social groups and cultural hegemony. As for the theory, we contribute to the literature arguing that a bottom-up process is not enough to avoid a loss of place identity, as it can lead to selective empowerment.

3. 

   Il lavoro condiviso: La trasformazione degli spazi di coworking durante l’emergenza Covid-19

   Alessandro Gerosa, Cecilia Manzo, and Ivana Pais

   In MILANO 2021 Rapporto sulla città. Ripartire: il tempo della cura, 2021

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4. 

   The Memetic Cult of Personality of Politicians During the Pandemic

   Alessandro Gerosa and Giulia Giorgi

   Comunicazione politica, 2021

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   Our contribution aims at conceptualising the notion of «memetic cult of personality», which originates from the memetic production surrounding political figures, especially during periods of intense media coverage, like that triggered by the Coronavirus outbreak. To do so, we focus on two case studies from the Italian political sphere: former Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and Governor of Campania Region Vincenzo De Luca, both prominent media figures during the first lockdown. Relying on digital methods for the data collection, our empirical inquiry focuses on a corpus of static image memes, memetic videos and newspaper articles collected across different platforms. By adopting a combination of automated visual analysis and discourse analysis, we demonstrate that memetic cults show some of the traits traditionally attributed to personality cults, while displaying unique features as well. At a general level, it is maintained that memetic cults are co-constructed by users participating in the collaborative practices of memetic production and circulation. Leveraging the ambiguous logic of meme culture, we also illustrate how these cults fuel doppelganger characters and alternative narratives, in which support and mockery are blended together.

2020

1. 

   Il quartiere NoLo, un caso di rebranding dal basso: tra creatività, innovazione sociale e criticità

   Maria Tartari and Alessandro Gerosa

   In Costellazione Milano, 2020

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2019

1. 

   Alcohol and the city

   Alessandro Gerosa

   Lo Squaderno, 2019

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