Digital Work in the Planetary Market
Published on 14. June 2022
336 pages
978-0-262-36981-7 (ISBN)
Description
Understanding the embedded and disembedded, material and immaterial, territorialized and deterritorialized natures of digital work.
Many jobs today can be done from anywhere. Digital technology and widespread internet connectivity allow almost anyone, anywhere, to connect to anyone else to communicate and exchange files, data, video, and audio. In other words, work can be deterritorialized at a planetary scale. This book examines the implications for both work and workers when work is commodified and traded beyond local labor markets. Going beyond the usual "world is flat" globalization discourse, contributors look at both the transformation of work itself and the wider systems, networks, and processes that enable digital work in a planetary market, offering both empirical and theoretical perspectives.
The contributors-leading scholars and experts from a range of disciplines-touch on a variety of issues, including content moderation, autonomous vehicles, and voice assistants. They first look at the new experience of work, finding that, despite its planetary connections, labor remains geographically sticky and embedded in distinct contexts. They go on to consider how planetary networks of work can be mapped and problematized, discuss the productive multiplicity and interdisciplinarity of thinking about digital work and its networks, and, finally, imagine how planetary work could be regulated.
Contributors
Sana Ahmad, Payal Arora, Janine Berg, Antonio A. Casilli, Julie Chen, Christina Colclough, Fabian Ferrari, Mark Graham, Andreas Hackl, Matthew Hockenberry, Hannah Johnston, Martin Krzywdzinski, Johan Lindquist, Joana Moll, Brett Neilson, Usha Raman, Jara Rocha, Jathan Sadowski, Florian A. Schmidt, Cheryll Ruth Soriano, Nick Srnicek, James Steinhoff, Jara Rocha, JS Tan, Paola Tubaro, Moira Weigel, Lin Zhang
Many jobs today can be done from anywhere. Digital technology and widespread internet connectivity allow almost anyone, anywhere, to connect to anyone else to communicate and exchange files, data, video, and audio. In other words, work can be deterritorialized at a planetary scale. This book examines the implications for both work and workers when work is commodified and traded beyond local labor markets. Going beyond the usual "world is flat" globalization discourse, contributors look at both the transformation of work itself and the wider systems, networks, and processes that enable digital work in a planetary market, offering both empirical and theoretical perspectives.
The contributors-leading scholars and experts from a range of disciplines-touch on a variety of issues, including content moderation, autonomous vehicles, and voice assistants. They first look at the new experience of work, finding that, despite its planetary connections, labor remains geographically sticky and embedded in distinct contexts. They go on to consider how planetary networks of work can be mapped and problematized, discuss the productive multiplicity and interdisciplinarity of thinking about digital work and its networks, and, finally, imagine how planetary work could be regulated.
Contributors
Sana Ahmad, Payal Arora, Janine Berg, Antonio A. Casilli, Julie Chen, Christina Colclough, Fabian Ferrari, Mark Graham, Andreas Hackl, Matthew Hockenberry, Hannah Johnston, Martin Krzywdzinski, Johan Lindquist, Joana Moll, Brett Neilson, Usha Raman, Jara Rocha, Jathan Sadowski, Florian A. Schmidt, Cheryll Ruth Soriano, Nick Srnicek, James Steinhoff, Jara Rocha, JS Tan, Paola Tubaro, Moira Weigel, Lin Zhang
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Mark Graham | Fabian Ferrari
Digital Work in the Planetary Market
Book
06/2022
MIT Press
€71.00
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Persons
Mark Graham is Professor of Internet Geography at the Oxford Internet Institute, and Faculty Fellow at the Alan Turing Institute. He is the editor of Digital Economies at Global Margins (MIT Press and IDRC). Fabian Ferrari is a doctoral candidate at the Oxford Internet Institute.
Content
Acknowledgments vii
1 Introduction 1
Mark Graham and Fabian Ferrari
I Grounding Planetary Networks
2 Moving beyond Shanzhai? Contradictions of Platformized Family Production in the Planetary Network of E-Commerce Labor 23
Lin Zhang
3 How Do Workers Survive and Thrive in the Platform Economy? Evidence from China and the Philippines 41
Julie Chen and Cheryll Ruth Soriano
4 "Follower Factories" in Indonesia and Beyond: Automation and Labor in a Transnational Market 59
Johan Lindquist
5 Moderating in Obscurity: How Indian Content Moderators Work in Global Content Moderation Value Chains 77
Sana Ahmad and Martin Krzywdzinski
6 Digital Livelihoods in Exile: Refugee Work and the Planetary Digital Labor Market 97
Andreas Hackl
II Mapping Planetary Networks
7 Working the Digital Silk Road: Alibaba's Digital Free Trade Zone in Malaysia 117
Brett Neilson
8 The Planetary Stacking Order of Multilayered Crowd-AI Systems 137
Florian A. Schmidt
9 In Search of Stability at a Time of Upheaval: Digital Freelancing in Venezuela 157
Hannah Johnston
10 Human Listeners and Virtual Assistants: Privacy and Labor Arbitrage in the Production of Smart Technologies 175
Paola Tubaro and Antonio A. Casilli
11 The Proletarianization of Data Science 191
James Steinhoff
III Dissecting Planetary Networks
12 Organizing in (and against) a New Cold War: The Case of 996.ICU 209
JS Tan and Moira Weigel
13 Planetary Potemkin AI: The Humans Hidden inside Mechanical Minds 229
Jathan Sadowski
14 Data, Compute, Labor 241
Nick Srnicek
15 Cellular Capitalism: Life and Labor at the End of the Digital Supply Chain 263
Matthew Hockenberry
IV Reimagining Planetary Networks
16 An International Governance System for Digital Work in the Planetary Market 283
Janine Berg
17 Righting the Wrong: Putting Workers' Data Rights Firmly on the Table 291
Christina J. Colclough
18 Fair Work, Feminist Design, and Women's Labor Collectives 303
Payal Arora and Usha Raman
19 Tilt the Scroll to Repair: Efficient Inhuman Workforce at Global Chains of Care 319
Joana Moll and Jara Rocha
Contributors 329
Index 331
1 Introduction 1
Mark Graham and Fabian Ferrari
I Grounding Planetary Networks
2 Moving beyond Shanzhai? Contradictions of Platformized Family Production in the Planetary Network of E-Commerce Labor 23
Lin Zhang
3 How Do Workers Survive and Thrive in the Platform Economy? Evidence from China and the Philippines 41
Julie Chen and Cheryll Ruth Soriano
4 "Follower Factories" in Indonesia and Beyond: Automation and Labor in a Transnational Market 59
Johan Lindquist
5 Moderating in Obscurity: How Indian Content Moderators Work in Global Content Moderation Value Chains 77
Sana Ahmad and Martin Krzywdzinski
6 Digital Livelihoods in Exile: Refugee Work and the Planetary Digital Labor Market 97
Andreas Hackl
II Mapping Planetary Networks
7 Working the Digital Silk Road: Alibaba's Digital Free Trade Zone in Malaysia 117
Brett Neilson
8 The Planetary Stacking Order of Multilayered Crowd-AI Systems 137
Florian A. Schmidt
9 In Search of Stability at a Time of Upheaval: Digital Freelancing in Venezuela 157
Hannah Johnston
10 Human Listeners and Virtual Assistants: Privacy and Labor Arbitrage in the Production of Smart Technologies 175
Paola Tubaro and Antonio A. Casilli
11 The Proletarianization of Data Science 191
James Steinhoff
III Dissecting Planetary Networks
12 Organizing in (and against) a New Cold War: The Case of 996.ICU 209
JS Tan and Moira Weigel
13 Planetary Potemkin AI: The Humans Hidden inside Mechanical Minds 229
Jathan Sadowski
14 Data, Compute, Labor 241
Nick Srnicek
15 Cellular Capitalism: Life and Labor at the End of the Digital Supply Chain 263
Matthew Hockenberry
IV Reimagining Planetary Networks
16 An International Governance System for Digital Work in the Planetary Market 283
Janine Berg
17 Righting the Wrong: Putting Workers' Data Rights Firmly on the Table 291
Christina J. Colclough
18 Fair Work, Feminist Design, and Women's Labor Collectives 303
Payal Arora and Usha Raman
19 Tilt the Scroll to Repair: Efficient Inhuman Workforce at Global Chains of Care 319
Joana Moll and Jara Rocha
Contributors 329
Index 331
