[Linganth] CFP - Looking for a last minute addition ("Learning to Labor in the Digital Economy")

[Matthew Hale]

Hi folks, I've nearly got a full docket for the panel I'm organizing. I'm
looking for one (could potentially do two) additional paper(s) for panel
listed below.


Call for papers

“Learning to Labor in the Digital Economy"

AAA 2016, November 16-20, Minneapolis, MN


Organizer: Matthew Hale (Indiana University/Kennesaw State University)
Discussant: Mary L. Gray (Microsoft Research/Indiana University)


This panel critically examines the transformation of labor within the
twenty-first century. The new millennium brought with it many advances in
digitaltechnology—exponential increases in computational power and
connectivity, the emergence of a new digital infrastructure, the
proliferation of mobile devices and the rise of social media, a rapid
growth in digital commerce, cloud computing, and the formation of the
so-called “sharing” or “access” economy. These seismic shifts in
production, exchange, and consumption derived from and propelled a
fundamental transformation of the nature of labor and the status, power,
and agency of workers worldwide.


In a world of crowdsourcing, automated and algorithmically-derived data
collection and marketing, neoliberal deregulation, and labor surplus,
theworker has become disposable. They are no longer an asset, but rather
represent an impediment to the maximization of surplus value. Just as Marx
argued that the worker became but a cog in a machine under the forces of
industrial capitalism, within emerging systems of always-on,
hyperconnected, and on-demand interactive technologies, highly contingent
forms of labor—a kind of always-on, on-demand labor (contract, temporary,
and freelance employment and under-or-unpaid labor)—is fast becoming one of
the dominant forms of employment within the global workforce.


This panel will draw on a range of theoretical perspectives and approaches
in order to understand, critique, and address these emerging social
configurations and the problems that workers face within the twenty-century.


We invite papers that address, but are not limited to, the following
questions:

  *How has digital technology changed how, when, and where work gets done?
  *How have corporations used new technologies to shift from long-term or

     permanent employment to highly contingent positions that undermine
workers’
     rights?
  *How do workers imagine themselves—both as individuals and as collectives—
     within the digital economy? And how have or might they effectively
mobilize to
     affect social change and combat injustice?
  *How does digital or “immaterial labor” differ from traditional material
forms of
     work?
  *How have always-on communication technologies eroded the traditional
division
     between leisure and labor?
  *How do individuals and communities employ new media to create
opportunities
     for themselves and to develop new forms of labor?
  *What might anthropologists bring to and gain from studying the changing
nature
     of work?


We welcome contributions from all sub-fields and encourage proposals from
any geographic region or culture.


Please submit a 250 word abstract to: matthew.hale0009 at gmail.com ASAP.
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