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Rationale
I propose this course for students who already have an understanding of broader concepts in Sociology and come from this discipline or related fields such as Anthropology, Industrial Relations, Human Resources or others. From this course, I would like students to gain an understanding of the main questions that are posed in the fields of Technology and Labour through the most seminal anthropological and sociological literature and present them with a set of approaches and methodological tools available to formulate their own questions. We will achieve this purpose through an emphasis on the connections within the labour markets that involve not only conventional indicators such as unemployment rates or cyclical economic conditions but also the role of structural phenomena relating to the functioning of the labour markets and their links with globalisation, offshoring and technological change, robotisation. The purpose of the course I offer is to account for these processes and introduce a global perspective on labour and technological change in today’s labour markets. Methodologically, I emphasise the fruitfulness of combining theories of the Labour Process and Studies of Technology and Science as avenues for reaching higher analytical scales. For this purpose, I will bring case studies from Europe, the US, Brazil, South Africa, Russia and Ukraine.
Correspondingly, the course consists of the following three parts. In part I, students will become familiar with the main theoretical and methodological approaches to studying technology in social production and reproduction on and beyond the shop
floor (classical anthropological studies of labour, labour process theory, critical management studies, extended case method, production chain studies). The second part will give an overview of the main problems and topics in this area of knowledge (various forms of exploitation at the intersection with technology: ‘free’ and unfree labour, labour migration, gendered labour, and informal and precarious labour). Part III presents case studies on labour-related issues focused on the transformation of the labour process and labour regulation in Europe, the US, Brazil, North Africa, Russia, and Ukraine.
The three parts of the course should generate creative tensions in the community of enquiry in my class and prompt students to develop their own approaches and toolkits to analysing work in contemporary realities. As an exercise for this, after having completed these parts, students will be asked to pick a topic we discussed or a topic relevant to the course interests and give a presentation using the key concepts discussed during class.
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| Literatur |
Provisional list of literature:
Fernández-Macías, E., 2018. Automation, digitalisation and platforms: Implications for work and employment.
Cséfalvay, Z., 2023. As “robots are moving out of the cages”–toward a geography of robotization. Eurasian Geography and Economics, 64(1), pp.89-119.
Braverman, Harry. 1998. "The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century." In Labor and Monopoly Capital. The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century, 317-325. New York: Monthly Review Press.6589624
Burawoy, M. 2008. "The Public Turn from Labor Process to Labor Movement." Work and Occupations no. 35 (4):371-387.
Vidal, M., 2019. Contradictions of the labour process, worker empowerment and capitalist inefficiency. Historical Materialism, 28(2), pp.170-204.
Law, J., 2008. On sociology and STS. The sociological review, 56(4), pp.623-649.
Aksoy, C.G., Özcan, B. and Philipp, J., 2021. Robots and the gender pay gap in Europe. European Economic Review, 134, p.103693.
Ruggles, S., 2015. Patriarchy, power, and pay: The transformation of American families, 1800–2015. Demography, 52(6), pp.1797-1823.
Autor, D., Dorn, D. and Hanson, G., 2019. When work disappears: Manufacturing decline and the falling marriage market value of young men. American Economic Review: Insights, 1(2), pp.161-178.
Denning, M., 2010. Wageless life. New left review, 66(6), pp.79-97.
Standing, G. and Jandric, P., 2015. Precariat, education and technologies: Towards a global class identity. Policy Futures in Education, 13(8), pp.990-994.
Bauwens, M. and Niaros, V., 2017. The Emergence of Peer Production: Challenges and Opportunities for Labour and Unions.
Bunders, D.J., Arets, M., Frenken, K. and De Moor, T., 2022. The feasibility of platform cooperatives in the gig economy. Journal of Co-Operative Organization and Management, 10(1), p.100167.
Smith, J., 2015. “Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century” Monthly Review, 68:3, https://monthlyreview.org/2015/07/01/imperialism-in-the-twenty-first-century/
Carolan, M., 2020. Automated agrifood futures: Robotics, labor and the distributive politics of digital agriculture. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 47(1), pp.184-207.
Klerkx, L. and Rose, D., 2020. Dealing with the game-changing technologies of Agriculture 4.0: How do we manage diversity and responsibility in food system transition pathways?. Global Food Security, 24, p.100347.
Oesch, D. and Piccitto, G., 2019. The polarization myth: Occupational upgrading in Germany, Spain, Sweden, and the UK, 1992–2015. Work and Occupations, 46(4), pp.441-469.
Fernandez-Macias, E., Klenert, D. and Anton, J.I., 2021. Not so disruptive yet? Characteristics, distribution and determinants of robots in Europe. Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, 58, pp.76-89.
Acemoglu, D. and Autor, D., 2011. Skills, tasks and technologies: Implications for employment and earnings. In Handbook of labor economics (Vol. 4, pp. 1043-1171). Elsevier.
Moreschi, B., Pereira, G. and Cozman, F.G., 2020. The Brazilian Workers in Amazon Mechanical Turk: dreams and realities of ghost workers. Contracampo, 39(1).
Giddy, J.K., 2022. Uber and employment in the Global South–not-so-decent work. Tourism Geographies, 24(6-7), pp.1022-1039.
AgTech News. John Deere Tractors Stolen by Russia in Ukraine Remotely Disabled. Available online: https://www.thedrive.com/news/john-deere-tractors-stolen-by-russia-in-ukraine-remotely-disabled (accessed on 14 June 2024)
Carolan, M. (2017). Agro-Digital Governance and Life Itself: Food Politics at the Intersection of Code and Affect. Sociologia Ruralis, 57(S1), 816–835. https://doi.org/10.1111/soru.12153
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