[Linganth] CFP: “Learning to Labor in the Digital Economy"

[Matthew Hale]

CALL FOR PAPERS  – Learning to Labor in the Digital Economy

AAA 2016, November 16-20, Minneapolis, MN

Organizer: Matthew L. 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
digital technology—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, the
worker 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 by April
1, 2016. Please include the title of the paper, author’s name, affiliation,
and email address.

Notice of acceptance will be sent out April 5, 2016.
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