Short Abstract

Focusing on the goods and bads of outsourcing this panels asks: what is made (in)visible in delegating parts of work to a different geographical location, social group or species? Are there limits to what is outsourceable? What kind of relations are formed/disrupted? What costs occur along the way?

Long Abstract

What have hiring a live-in care worker, paying somebody else to walk your dog, training rats to identify mines in former civil war regions in common with surrogate mothers and copy editors in India, or car parts production in Mexico? These all involve modes of outsourcing in which specific tasks are delegated to places or actors who assumedly can perform the work at a lower cost or risk. The examples share an element of geographical arbitrage - strategically juggling distance, income differences, legal codes and labour costs to reduce production costs. Power disparities, unequal geographies of capital accumulation and privilege, shadows of colonial and center/periphery hierarchies and histories loom large here, in particular when concerning ‘3D’ jobs (dirty, dangerous and demeaning). Fragmenting also matters in the examples: parts of a greater whole are delegated elsewhere, (often rendering the greater whole challenging to apprehend).

We invite ethnographically and/or theoretically informed papers which deal with the following (or other) outsourcing-related questions, taking also dynamics of increasing polarization into account: What is made (in)visible in delegating parts of work to a different geographical location, a different social group or species? Are there limits to what is outsourceable? What is the difference between delegation and outsourcing? Can we outsource “upwards” to a higher status group, more highly skilled personnel, or/and economically richer place? What kind of infrastructures are indispensable for outsourcing? What forms of detachment/attachment happen when work is outsourced that also entails emotional labour? What kind of relationships are formed/disrupted through outsourcing? What frictional losses and transaction costs occur along the way?

We are specifically interested in the following lines of inquiry:

• offshoring and outsourcing of (in)tangible work

• the strategic value and risks of compartementalizing work in tangible/intangible, productive/emotional

• the everyday ethics, or goods and bads of outsourcing.

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