Dynamics of Virtual Work – serie

In the digital age tasks are increasingly modularised and consumers are increasingly becoming prosumers. Replacing digital labour and prosumption within an American context and the wider political economy, this volume presents a critical account of the forces which shape contemporary subjects, networks, and labour practices.

This volume approaches questions about gender and the politics of appearance from a new perspective by developing the notion of aesthetic labour. Bringing together feminist writing regarding the ‘beauty myth’ with recent scholarship about new forms of work, the book suggests that in this moment of ubiquitous photography, social media, and 360 degree surveillance, women are increasingly required to be 'aesthetic entrepreneurs’, maintaining a constant state of vigilance about their appearance. The collection shows that this work is not just on the surface of bodies, but requires a transformation of subjectivity itself, characterised by notions of personal choice, risk-taking, self-management, and individual responsibility. The book includes analyses of online media, beauty service work, female genital cosmetic surgery, academic fashion, self-help literature and the seduction community, from a range of countries.  Discussing beauty politics, postfeminism,neoliberalism, labour and subjectivity, the book will be of interest to scholars and students with an interest in Gender, Media Studies, Cultural Studies, Sociology, Social Psychology and Management Studies.“This highly engaging, smart, and wide-ranging collection analyzes how, under the self-governing mandates of neoliberalism, the demands that girls and women regulate and control their bodies and appearance have escalated to new, unforgiving levels.  A special strength of the book is its emphasis on the rise of ‘aesthetic labour’ as a global, transnational and ever-colonizing phenomenon that seeks to sweep up women of all races, ages and locales into its disciplinary grip.  Highly recommended.”-Susan  J Douglas, University of Michigan, USAthe inherited responsibility that remains women’s particular burden to manage.”-Melissa Gregg, Intel Corporation, USA“This book incisively conceptualizes how neo-liberalist and postfeminist tendencies are ramping up pressures for glamour, aesthetic, fashion, and body work in the general public. In a moment when YouTube ‘makeup how to’ videos receive millions of hits; what to wear and how to wear it blogs clock massive followings; and staying ‘on brand’ is sold to us as the key to personal and financial success, ‘aesthetic entrepreneurship’ is bound to become a go-to concept for anyone seeking to understand the profound shifts shaping labor and life in the 21st century.”-Elizabeth Wissinger, City University of New York, USA

This volume explores current interventions into the digital labour theory of value, proposing theoretical and empirical work that contributes to our understanding of Marx's labour theory of value, proposes how labour and value are transformed under conditions of virtuality, and employ the theory in order to shed light on specific practices.

The emerging world of virtual work is not tied to physical workplaces or particular locations, but is dispersed and footloose. It is frequently precarious, and blurs the boundaries between work and non-work, production and consumption.Contributors to this wide-ranging volume of case studies identify the growing and diverse army of virtual workers. Building from an overarching introduction which discusses the salient features of virtual work, this collection considers the challenges in analysing the class position of virtual workers. Virtual Workers and the Global Labour Market features international examples of emerging occupations and working conditions in new media, gaming, journalism, advertising and branding, software development and offshore services. Cross-disciplinary insights from across the social sciences inform contributions on labour market entry, employment relations, precariousness, the dynamics of virtual teams, and cyberbullying, in order to illustrate the diversity of virtual work, its circumstances and its labour force.

This edited volume seeks to enhance our understanding ofthe concepts of space and place in the study of digital work. It argues thatwhile digital work is often presented as 'placeless', work always takes placesomewhere with a certain degree of local embeddedness. Contributors to thiscollection address restructuring processes that bring about delocaliseddigital work and point out limitations to dislocation inherent in the workitself, and the social relations or the physical artefacts involved.Exploring the dynamics of global value chains and shiftsin the international division of labour, this book explores the impact thesehave on employment and working conditions, workers' agency in shaping andcoping with changes in work, and the new competencies needed in virtualorganisational environments. Combining different disciplinary perspectives,the volume teases out the spatial aspects of digital work at different scalesranging from team level to that of globalproduction networks.

In this long-awaited book, Ursula Huws brings together the results of decades of prescient research on labour market transformation to provide an authoritative overview of the impacts of technological, economic, social and political change on working life in the 21st century.Placing current upheavals in global labour markets firmly in their historical context, she debunks myths about the impacts of artificial intelligence on labour, pointing to the processes whereby new employment is created, as well as old jobs destroyed, while never underestimating the contradictory impacts of digitalisation on work organisation, resistance, adaption and innovation.This book is underpinned by a clear conceptual framework, that analyses the dynamics of the restructuring of capitalism and labour, taking full account of unpaid social reproductive work, and integrating a feminist analysis whilst also pointing to new forms of commodification that will shape the future. Labour in Contemporary Capitalism will be an invaluable resource and point of reference for students and scholars studying the sociology of labour, economic structures, technology, and globalisation.

This volume explores current interventions into the digital labour theory of value, proposing theoretical and empirical work that contributes to our understanding of Marx's labour theory of value, proposes how labour and value are transformed under conditions of virtuality, and employ the theory in order to shed light on specific practices.

This volume approaches questions about gender and the politics of appearance from a new perspective by developing the notion of aesthetic labour. Bringing together feminist writing regarding the ‘beauty myth’ with recent scholarship about new forms of work, the book suggests that in this moment of ubiquitous photography, social media, and 360 degree surveillance, women are increasingly required to be 'aesthetic entrepreneurs’, maintaining a constant state of vigilance about their appearance. The collection shows that this work is not just on the surface of bodies, but requires a transformation of subjectivity itself, characterised by notions of personal choice, risk-taking, self-management, and individual responsibility. The book includes analyses of online media, beauty service work, female genital cosmetic surgery, academic fashion, self-help literature and the seduction community, from a range of countries.  Discussing beauty politics, postfeminism,neoliberalism, labour and subjectivity, the book will be of interest to scholars and students with an interest in Gender, Media Studies, Cultural Studies, Sociology, Social Psychology and Management Studies.“This highly engaging, smart, and wide-ranging collection analyzes how, under the self-governing mandates of neoliberalism, the demands that girls and women regulate and control their bodies and appearance have escalated to new, unforgiving levels.  A special strength of the book is its emphasis on the rise of ‘aesthetic labour’ as a global, transnational and ever-colonizing phenomenon that seeks to sweep up women of all races, ages and locales into its disciplinary grip.  Highly recommended.”-Susan  J Douglas, University of Michigan, USAthe inherited responsibility that remains women’s particular burden to manage.”-Melissa Gregg, Intel Corporation, USA“This book incisively conceptualizes how neo-liberalist and postfeminist tendencies are ramping up pressures for glamour, aesthetic, fashion, and body work in the general public. In a moment when YouTube ‘makeup how to’ videos receive millions of hits; what to wear and how to wear it blogs clock massive followings; and staying ‘on brand’ is sold to us as the key to personal and financial success, ‘aesthetic entrepreneurship’ is bound to become a go-to concept for anyone seeking to understand the profound shifts shaping labor and life in the 21st century.”-Elizabeth Wissinger, City University of New York, USA

WINNER of The Gertrude J. Robinson Book Prize, awarded by the Canadian Communication Association, and the Canadian Association of Work and Labour Studies, Book of the Year Award. This book examines the striking rise of call centres over the past quarter century through the lens of the resistance and collective organizing generated by workers along the digital assembly lines. Drawing on field research in Atlantic Canada, Ireland, Italy, and New Zealand, Enda Brophy investigates the contested making of the transnational call centre workforce and its integration into the circuits of global capitalism. Moving beyond depictions of call centre labour as either entirely liberated or utterly subordinated, Language Put to Work inquires into the forms of work refusal and insubordination provoked by the spread of these communicative workplaces, including informal strategies of quitting, slacking and sabotage, conventional trade union activity, tactical innovations at the margins of the labour movement, and forms of self-organization forged by workers outside of the established trade union movement. Weaving rich empirical evidence together with political-economic analysis and theories of resistance, this book argues that the submission of language to the production of value in the call centre is a process of proletarianization rather than professionalization, and that the new working class has widely opposed this transformation.

This book details qualitative research focusing on Internet startups, digital entrepreneurship, race and sex discrimination, and the sharing economy. Addressing the intersections between issues of gender, age, ethnicity and class, the author interviews startup founders, including many husband and wife teams, in order to understand the working and private lives of digital entrepreneurs in and from Taiwan who utilise Internet and mobile technologies, against a backdrop of the country’s political, social and economic history. It investigates contemporary debates about entrepreneurship as they are experienced by new generations of start-uppers who challenge existing social and cultural norms by becoming creative workers and embracing the precarity that exists in the volatile digital economy.

This book is situated in the nexus between technology, labour and politics. It focuses on contradictions as heuristic devices that uncover struggles, frictions and ambiguities of digitalization in work and labour environments. Topics include contradictions in automation, internet platforms, digital practices, creative industries, communication industries, human interaction, democratic participation and regulation. Three cross-cutting themes can be identified within the diverse chapters represented in the book. First, many authors argue that labour and economic valorisation occur outside of the traditional concept of working space and time. Second, digital technology is not fixed under capital. It is malleable and mouldable. Third, many political tensions are occurring without organized awareness or dissent. The book will, therefore, be of interest to researchers and students in the fields of sociology of work, media studies, cultural studies, gender studies, science and technology studies and Critical Theory as well as to trade-unionists and policy makers.

Creative hubs have become a cornerstone of economic and cultural policy with only the barest amount of discussion or scrutiny. This volume offers the first interrogation of creative hubs, with ground-breaking critical writing from a combination of established scholars and new voices. Looking across multiple sites trans-nationally, and combining theoretical and empirical reflections, it asks: what are creative hubs, why do they matter, and are they making the world a better place?Creative Hubs in Question discusses creative hubs in relation to debates about creative cities, co-working spaces and workers' co-operatives. Featuring case studies from Argentina to the Netherlands, and Nigeria to the UK, the contributions address how hubs are situated in relation to projects of equality and social justice, and whether and in what ways they change the experiences of the creatives who work in them. Drawing on a range of disciplinary perspectives including sociology,geography, economics, media and communications, culture and creative industries, critical policy studies, gender studies, race and ethnicity, and urban studies, this collection will be of interest to policy makers, academics, scholars, students and practitioners across these fields.

Why do ordinary people who used to engage in domestic and leisure activities for free now try to make a profit from them? How and why do people commodify their free time? This book explores the marketization of blogging, cooking, craftwork, gardening, knitting, selling second-hand items, sexcamming, and more generally the economic use of free time. It outlines how the development of web platforms, the current economic context and post-Fordist values can account for this extension of market and labor.Drawing on a range of interviews, ethnographic observations, and quantitative surveys, the contributors question the empowering effects of commodification, with a specific focus on how gender and class inequalities affect the social meanings of extra money. Ultimately, the collective findings demonstrate how commodification pervades even the most mundane social activities. This research will be invaluable to scholars and students with a focus on gender and digital sociology,the sociology of work and labour, and the marketization of leisure.

Why do ordinary people who used to engage in domestic and leisure activities for free now try to make a profit from them? How and why do people commodify their free time? This book explores the marketization of blogging, cooking, craftwork, gardening, knitting, selling second-hand items, sexcamming, and more generally the economic use of free time. It outlines how the development of web platforms, the current economic context and post-Fordist values can account for this extension of market and labor.Drawing on a range of interviews, ethnographic observations, and quantitative surveys, the contributors question the empowering effects of commodification, with a specific focus on how gender and class inequalities affect the social meanings of extra money. Ultimately, the collective findings demonstrate how commodification pervades even the most mundane social activities. This research will be invaluable to scholars and students with a focus on gender and digital sociology,the sociology of work and labour, and the marketization of leisure.

“Matching the rigour of the analysis with an extraordinary pedagogical capacity, the authors unveil all the arcana of the ‘openness’ capitalism model and digital labour. Essential for scholars and students across the social and economic sciences.” (Carlo Vercellone, Université de Paris 8, France)“This vital book is an objective and detailed assessment of the private capture of common value, concluding with an in-depth survey of what commons-friendly public authorities could do to defend the new 'common-wealth'.” (Michel Bauwens, Founder of the P2P Foundation, The Netherlands)“An outstanding analysis of how digital capital uses openness as principle of capital accumulation and exploitation.  A must-read for everyone who wants to understand what the internet and digital media are all about.” (Christian Fuchs, University of Westminster, UK)This book tackles the concept of openness (as in open source software, open access andfree culture), from a critical political economy perspective to consider its encroachment by capitalist corporations, but also how it advances radical alternatives to cognitive capitalism.Drawing on four case studies, Corporate Capitalism’s Use of Openness will add to discussion on open source software, open access content platforms, open access publishing, and open university courses. These otherwise disparate cases share two fundamental features: informational capitalist corporations base their successful business models on unpaid productive activities, play, attention, knowledge and labour, and do so crucially by resorting to ideological uses of concepts such as “openness”, “communities” and “sharing”.The authors present potential solutions and alternative regulations to counter these exploitative and alienating business models, and to foster digital knowledge commons, ranging from co-ops and commons-based peer production to state agencies' platforms. Their research and findings will appeal to students, academics and activists around the world in fields such as sociology, economy, media and communication, library and information science, political sciences and technology studies.

“Matching the rigour of the analysis with an extraordinary pedagogical capacity, the authors unveil all the arcana of the ‘openness’ capitalism model and digital labour. Essential for scholars and students across the social and economic sciences.” (Carlo Vercellone, Université de Paris 8, France)“This vital book is an objective and detailed assessment of the private capture of common value, concluding with an in-depth survey of what commons-friendly public authorities could do to defend the new 'common-wealth'.” (Michel Bauwens, Founder of the P2P Foundation, The Netherlands)“An outstanding analysis of how digital capital uses openness as principle of capital accumulation and exploitation.  A must-read for everyone who wants to understand what the internet and digital media are all about.” (Christian Fuchs, University of Westminster, UK)This book tackles the concept of openness (as in open source software, open access andfree culture), from a critical political economy perspective to consider its encroachment by capitalist corporations, but also how it advances radical alternatives to cognitive capitalism.Drawing on four case studies, Corporate Capitalism’s Use of Openness will add to discussion on open source software, open access content platforms, open access publishing, and open university courses. These otherwise disparate cases share two fundamental features: informational capitalist corporations base their successful business models on unpaid productive activities, play, attention, knowledge and labour, and do so crucially by resorting to ideological uses of concepts such as “openness”, “communities” and “sharing”.The authors present potential solutions and alternative regulations to counter these exploitative and alienating business models, and to foster digital knowledge commons, ranging from co-ops and commons-based peer production to state agencies' platforms. Their research and findings will appeal to students, academics and activists around the world in fields such as sociology, economy, media and communication, library and information science, political sciences and technology studies.

This book is a timely and innovative exploration of the vital relationship between sex and capitalism in the digital age. It provides a lively, provocative analysis of how specifically digital forms of capitalist accumulation and labour shape and discipline the contemporary sexual body. Rebecca Saunders focuses on pornography in order to investigate the impact of digital forms of capitalism on contemporary sexuality and reveals the centrality of pornography to the digital attention economy, affective economics, the information economy, the creative industries and neoliberalism.  Saunders uncovers a fundamental shift in the aesthetics and meaning of pornographic film, from a genre concerned with representing sexual pleasure to one that has become focused on representing sex as labour. Contemporary pornographic film is therefore read as a sign and symptom of how digital forms of capitalism regulate the twenty-firstcentury sexual body through digital interfaces and technologies. Bodies of Work analyses major porn studios, dominant streaming platforms, significant directors and performers and queer and alternative pornographies, and presents new and significant concepts such as sexual datafication, the labour of visibility and interventionist pornography. Discussing pornographic film, sexuality, digital culture, labour and capitalism, this book will be of interest to students and scholars across gender studies, media and cultural studies, digital humanities and economics.

This book is a timely and innovative exploration of the vital relationship between sex and capitalism in the digital age. It provides a lively, provocative analysis of how specifically digital forms of capitalist accumulation and labour shape and discipline the contemporary sexual body. Rebecca Saunders focuses on pornography in order to investigate the impact of digital forms of capitalism on contemporary sexuality and reveals the centrality of pornography to the digital attention economy, affective economics, the information economy, the creative industries and neoliberalism.  Saunders uncovers a fundamental shift in the aesthetics and meaning of pornographic film, from a genre concerned with representing sexual pleasure to one that has become focused on representing sex as labour. Contemporary pornographic film is therefore read as a sign and symptom of how digital forms of capitalism regulate the twenty-firstcentury sexual body through digital interfaces and technologies. Bodies of Work analyses major porn studios, dominant streaming platforms, significant directors and performers and queer and alternative pornographies, and presents new and significant concepts such as sexual datafication, the labour of visibility and interventionist pornography. Discussing pornographic film, sexuality, digital culture, labour and capitalism, this book will be of interest to students and scholars across gender studies, media and cultural studies, digital humanities and economics.

In an ever-changing working environment, customer and workplace demands have brought new challenges to how we organize and manage work. Increasingly, this is addressed by the idea of 'agility.' From its beginning, agile work has claimed to be a radically different approach which allows organisations to react flexibly to changing environmental demands whilst also offering a ‘people' centered approach to management.While the literature often examines agile instruments from a business perspective, this edited collection advances the discussion of the efficacy of agile working,  by applying a more critical social science perspective.The chapters scrutinize whether agility is just a discursive imperative, or whether it is in fact a genuine organizational and institutional strategy that is meant to better deal with complexity and volatility. The answers to these questions can vary at different levels, and the editors therefore examine agility at the level of teams, organizations and societies. By assembling different perspectives on the sustainability and virtue of agile instruments, and by bringing together international scholars from a variety of disciplines, the project stimulates a comparative discussion.

This book provides a unique contribution to the controversial discussion that surrounds the digitalisation and virtualisation of work. With a focus on the new formation of space and place, it critically discusses the idea that places in the context of work are increasingly losing their importance, and becoming more arbitrary with new technical possibilities. Theoretical considerations that deal conceptually with the understanding of space and work are taken into account, as well as empirical results from different professional and work fields across various regions of our globalised world. The book is applicable to researchers and students of sociology of work, media and communications, organization studies, workplace studies, labour process studies, economics, human geography, anthropology and learning sciences.Chapter 1, 4 and 11 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

This book provides a unique contribution to the controversial discussion that surrounds the digitalisation and virtualisation of work. With a focus on the new formation of space and place, it critically discusses the idea that places in the context of work are increasingly losing their importance, and becoming more arbitrary with new technical possibilities. Theoretical considerations that deal conceptually with the understanding of space and work are taken into account, as well as empirical results from different professional and work fields across various regions of our globalised world. The book is applicable to researchers and students of sociology of work, media and communications, organization studies, workplace studies, labour process studies, economics, human geography, anthropology and learning sciences.Chapter 1, 4 and 11 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

This book compiles empirical evidence on both the challenges raised by neo-liberal policies and the internet to trade unions, and the development of more flexible forms of worker organisation and collective representation. The relationship with digital devices seems inevitably to contribute to differentiating trends, simultaneously acting as an internal and external constraint on organisation. Gathering academics and experts from European and Brazilian universities, this book is recommended for researchers and  students in the fields of sociology of work, labour studies and collective action, as well as practitioners and others interested in worker interest organisations and collective representation in the early 21st Century.

In this edited volume, scholars from Mumbai, Bengaluru, Jakarta, Cape Town, Sao Paulo and other cities of the global South explore the complex relationship between platformization and informality through a different lens. Drawing on extensive theoretical, quantitative and qualitative scholarship, they provide both a useful overview and insights into the lived realities of gig work for platforms covering a range of skills, working conditions, and forms of algorithmic management. Platform work has attracted considerable attention from scholars in the global North, who have tended to view it as a form of casualisation of work that was previously regulated. But what about the global South, where most employment, especially that of women and migrant workers was historically already informal?Beyond a focus on livelihoods, employment, and work, the authors show how labour platforms take on powers that bring about broader impacts, including those affecting identity and personal wellbeing. They also illustrate the impact of platformization on the governance of affected sectors by public agencies, thus affecting political power, and how public data infrastructures contribute to further platformization. The purpose of this pioneering work is to lay bare these interactions to then rebuild our understanding of platformization and its social, political, cultural and economic impacts. Its insights are attentive to gender and ethnic differences, as well as geographical ones.

In this edited volume, scholars from Mumbai, Bengaluru, Jakarta, Cape Town, Sao Paulo and other cities of the global South explore the complex relationship between platformization and informality through a different lens. Drawing on extensive theoretical, quantitative and qualitative scholarship, they provide both a useful overview and insights into the lived realities of gig work for platforms covering a range of skills, working conditions, and forms of algorithmic management. Platform work has attracted considerable attention from scholars in the global North, who have tended to view it as a form of casualisation of work that was previously regulated. But what about the global South, where most employment, especially that of women and migrant workers was historically already informal?Beyond a focus on livelihoods, employment, and work, the authors show how labour platforms take on powers that bring about broader impacts, including those affecting identity and personal wellbeing. They also illustrate the impact of platformization on the governance of affected sectors by public agencies, thus affecting political power, and how public data infrastructures contribute to further platformization. The purpose of this pioneering work is to lay bare these interactions to then rebuild our understanding of platformization and its social, political, cultural and economic impacts. Its insights are attentive to gender and ethnic differences, as well as geographical ones.

This book reorients the lens of global creative economies in order to focus on ecological articulations of cultural production ecosystems. While numerous volumes and studies exist of how cities and regions all over the world produce culture, this volume uses a creative ecosystems perspective to articulate and underpin examples of sustainable growth and development with respect to cultural production.This volume offer a distinctive, in-depth understanding of how creative and cultural policy works in cities from around the world – not solely from academic or policy perspectives but including practitioners as well. The book aims to question and reformulate policy as it has been developed through creative industries approaches and instead offer up different examples and approaches to regional development with a focus on cultural production. The book carves a creative economy policy-oriented path of development that reflects the real world.

This book reorients the lens of global creative economies in order to focus on ecological articulations of cultural production ecosystems. While numerous volumes and studies exist of how cities and regions all over the world produce culture, this volume uses a creative ecosystems perspective to articulate and underpin examples of sustainable growth and development with respect to cultural production.This volume offer a distinctive, in-depth understanding of how creative and cultural policy works in cities from around the world – not solely from academic or policy perspectives but including practitioners as well. The book aims to question and reformulate policy as it has been developed through creative industries approaches and instead offer up different examples and approaches to regional development with a focus on cultural production. The book carves a creative economy policy-oriented path of development that reflects the real world.

This book is a study of workers in India’s Informational Technology sector, and focuses on how the past three decades of neoliberal economic reforms have impacted the efforts to organize the workers in the sector given the socio-political and economic setbacks encountered by the broader labour movement. In doing so, the book explores the role of privatization, changing gender relations inside and outside the workplace, new organizational forms created by IT workers to advance their interests, and the increasingly precarious nature of IT work. By exploring how the growth of the IT sector in India has amplified and reproduced discrimination against unskilled and marginalized elements of the labour force, the book shows the ways in which other social and political divisions create considerable barriers when it comes to the ability of IT workers to successfully collaborate with other sectors within the Indian labour movement The book will be of interest to students and researchers of sociology, labour studies, political economy and gender studies.

This book is a study of workers in India’s Informational Technology sector, and focuses on how the past three decades of neoliberal economic reforms have impacted the efforts to organize the workers in the sector given the socio-political and economic setbacks encountered by the broader labour movement. In doing so, the book explores the role of privatization, changing gender relations inside and outside the workplace, new organizational forms created by IT workers to advance their interests, and the increasingly precarious nature of IT work. By exploring how the growth of the IT sector in India has amplified and reproduced discrimination against unskilled and marginalized elements of the labour force, the book shows the ways in which other social and political divisions create considerable barriers when it comes to the ability of IT workers to successfully collaborate with other sectors within the Indian labour movement The book will be of interest to students and researchers of sociology, labour studies, political economy and gender studies.

This book explores the gig economy and the role of migrant workers, which has been widely documented, but under-researched. In the last forty years work and employment in the advanced economies has undergone profound transformations and, more recently, a key role has been played by the development of platform capitalism and the gig economy as a way of organising work and providing services. There are still huge gaps in research on how platform-mediated gig work impacts the structural vulnerability of migrant workers and how this can be addressed by welfare policies. The aim of this book is to address some of these issues. It includes empirical and theoretical contributions from across the globe on topics such as migrant workers and digitalised work, artificial Intelligence and work, digitalisation and work-related policy, digital surveillance, labour struggles in the digitalised service sector, unionism and self-organisation in the gig economy. It will be of great interest to scholars and students of work and employment, the future of work, social movements, migration and labour studies.