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- Convenors:
-
Manuela Bojadzijev
(Humboldt University Berlin)
Tsvetelina Hristova (Southampton University)
Moritz Altenried (Leuphana Universität Lüneburg)
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- Discussant:
-
Brett Neilson
(Western Sydney University)
- Formats:
- Panels Network affiliated
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 22 July, -
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
Short Abstract:
Digital labour platforms function as a central infrastructure that mediates, organises and controls flexible work. The panel aims to discuss anthropological perspectives on global platform labour, its genealogies as well as its embeddedness into diverse histories, local contexts and power relations.
Long Abstract:
Digital platforms are not only transactional spaces which create different modes of connection, but also central infrastructures for the global circulation of goods, data and the reconfiguration of labour. Labour platforms of the so-called gig economy such as Deliveroo or Upwork function not only as mediators between capital and labour, they also reorganize, redistribute and regulate flexible labour - and thereby remind us of older but still existing infrastructures for the mediation of labour such as the putting out system for home-based work or the traditional street corner for day labourers.
Thinking through the platform as an infrastructure that mediates, organises and controls labour therefore allows to move beyond the notion of platforms as completely new and disruptive actors. Anthropological perspectives on platforms could illuminate the complex genealogy of flexible and contingent labour and stress the embeddedness of platform labour into diverse histories, local contexts and power relations.
The panel aims at analysing how platforms (re-)organise flexible labour relations in different socio-economic, political and cultures contexts. While many studies focus on platform labour in the Global North, a recent study indicates that around 30 million platform workers are located in the Global South (Fair Work 2019). We therefore especially invite papers focusing on platform labour in diverse geographical locations, going beyond frequently studied gig economy platforms and reflecting on topics such as:
• Platforms as infrastructures
• Platform labour and social reproduction
• Digital labour and mobility/migration
• Platform labour in relation to other forms of contingent work
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 22 July, 2020, -Paper short abstract:
The paper explores the role of intimacy in digital labour on crowdwork platforms. It asks whether this concept can help us to understand the spatio-temporal reconfiguration of labour through digital platforms and its effects on daily working life and the private home as a workplace.
Paper long abstract:
Contrary to location-dependent platform work such as cleaning services, crowdworkers work remotely, mostly from their private homes and do not have to interact with their clients in person.
The paper explores how intimacy nevertheless plays a crucial role in this form of digital labour. Based on research on two different types of crowdwork platforms - one that involves direct contact between clients and workers (e.g. Upwork) and one where the latter are mostly invisible (e.g. Appen) - I aim to understand different dimensions of "intimacy at work" (Broadbent). In the first case, I look at how online freelancers who are working as virtual assistants, ghostwriters or recruiters maintain relationships with their clients while navigating different levels of intimacy. In the second case, I analyse how intimacy becomes commodified on platforms hiring crowdworkers to record videos or speech of themselves and their surroundings as well as to evaluate intimate content of other workers for the purpose of improving training data for AI.
Building upon research on the invasion of work into the home (Gregg), new digital intimacies (Dobson) and social reproduction theory, I ask whether the concept of intimacy can help us to understand the spatio-temporal reconfiguration of labour through crowdwork platforms and its effects on daily working life and the private home as a workplace. How is the platform mediating and regulating intimacy? And how are workers navigating different levels of intimacy in digital working cultures?
Paper short abstract:
Crowdworkers performing so-called macro-tasks have to put in additional unpaid work to manage their online identities. To come across as competent and trustworthy, they have to anticipate clients' wishes, interact with the infrastructure of the work platform, and adhere to certain cultural codes.
Paper long abstract:
Crowdwork is often associated with so-called micro-tasks mediated by platforms like Amazon Mechanical Turk. In my presentation, I shift the perspective to graphic designers using crowdwork platforms to gain access to more complex and specialized work. While micro-tasks are often characterized by a high degree of anonymity and interchangeability of workers, my research partners have to prove they are the best candidate in a global crowd of good ones.
I argue that these workers have to put in additional labour evoking trust and establishing an emotional connection with their clients. While this was the case especially for freelance workers before, digital platforms introduce new dimensions: in addition to anticipating what clients like, crowdworkers have to interact with the infrastructure of the digital platform. They need to make sure clients find their profile and work with the affordances and constraints of the interface the platform offers them to strategically create and manage their profiles.
Moreover, in a globalised labour market dominated by the Global North, negotiating professional identities gains a cultural dimension, especially for crowdworkers from the Global South. Crowdworkers' nationalities influence their chances of being hired even for very simple tasks, as studies have shown. I argue, however, that this effect is even stronger with macro tasks. To come across as competent and trustworthy, crowdworkers have to adapt to cultural codes that feel familiar to their clients.
Empirically, I draw on my autoethnographic analysis of several crowdwork platforms as well as interviews and participant observations with Indian crowdworkers.
Paper short abstract:
Based on fieldwork in South Africa and the UK, this paper brings into dialogue works on platform labour and digital education. Connecting discussions of academic precarity and care to the study of a growing reserve army of online academics, I discuss new divisions and vulnerabilities in academia.
Paper long abstract:
Over the last decade the literatures on digital higher education and platform work have expanded, albeit rarely in conversation. This paper aims to bridge this gap. Building on my fieldworks on academic labour and care (Ivancheva et al 2019) and on 'unbundled' higher education in South Africa and the UK (Ivancheva et al f.c.) I discuss how academic labour has been reorganised through the entry of online platforms into the higher education market worldwide. Online Program Management (OPM) platform providers partner with selected universities based on their global ranking, and reinforce (instead of rehabilitating, as they promise) old class and racial divisions in and between the Global North and South. In the paper, I discuss how this dynamic is reflected in the everyday practices of university workers. Expanding their offer from overcrowded campuses to emergent markets of off-campus students, 'elite' universities and their OMP partners rely not only on contingent, but also on outsourced, fragmented and piecemeal online academic labour. The latter is performed predominantly by women and academics in the Global South in need of flexible employment and/or extra income. Thus, increasingly expensive online programs targeting professional middle classes in the Global South rely on a cheap and precarious academic reserve army who offers not only education but also pastoral care for a complex and alienated online student population. Through this empirical study, I revisit works on platform labour and digital education, in attempt to theorise these complex new divisions and vulnerabilities in the academic profession.
Paper short abstract:
The paper use the example of platform-based services to discuss how the Berlin night is transformed by platform-driven digitisation and what social figures this new digitized, urban night produces. It aims to understand the transformation of the urban night through the shift to the smart city.
Paper long abstract:
Digitisation not only fundamentally changes the city and thus the public space, but also enables a fundamental transformation of the urban night through technological infrastructures and the ubiquity of platform-based services.
This paper offers ethnographic insight into labour under digital conditions and its relationship to the hybridization of night and day, which is inseparably interwoven with transformations of work and leisure time.
The change of the urban night and digitised platform work in the social and cultural sciences has only been considered separately so far and not from the perspective of the shift to smart cities and platform work.
The focus of my study is a crowdwork platform, a food delivery platform and a mobility platform in Berlin. Crowdworkers carry out so-called micro tasks to optimise ICT infrastructures. Accordingly, their work, often at night, is fundamental to the expansion of the smart city. Through their work, Crowdworkers support the nightly social reproduction of city dwellers. So-called "juicers" load, maintain and distribute e-scooters at night, and I am investigating their work as an example for the nightly maintenance of (mobility) infrastructures in the city. These three different approaches create a multidimensional picture of the transformation of Berlin's night.
Building upon research from the emerging field of the night studies (Shaw 2018/ Crary 2013) and studies regarding the so-called platform economy (Altenried, Aniemento 2017) I ask: How do platform workers interact with the night? What (technological) infrastructures are required for the platform labour of the night?