Paper Short Abstract:

This paper advocates an anthropological view of work futures beyond sociological constraints, exploring situated work lives. Ethnographic research unveils tech visions' effect on workers navigating automation, stressing the role of a future-oriented perspective in grasping future work complexities.

Paper Abstract:

In this paper, I argue for an anthropological approach to work futures that goes beyond the constraints posed by sociological categorisations of labour, particularly the repertoire of resistance and precarity and the orientation to the past, keeping the horizon of work as reestablishing previous configurations (Weber, 2009; Weston, 2012), by focusing on the situated work lives and disposition and emerging values in work transformation. As exploring futures becomes increasingly crucial for anthropologists, developing new conceptual and methodological tools and modes of engagement is critical to understanding the ongoing transformations concerning work. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork with workers from two distinct industries in Spain and Australia: platform workers and health practitioners dealing with the challenges and the envisioned opportunities posed by the exposure to automation in their workspaces. I analyse how the visions of automated work futures provided by the tech industry and media manifest in everyday work life, propagating notions of value emancipated from production and attributed to innovation and individual action (Lanzeni & Pink, 2021) within the traditional industrial sectors. This analysis offers valuable insights into how workers navigate technological changes in different work settings and highlights how an orientation to futures can contribute to a deeper understanding of the complexities that encompass work futures.