The Sage Handbook of Digital Labour is a comprehensive exploration of the multifaceted and evolving concept of digital labour. Originally coined in Marxist analyses to explain the exploitation of user data in the digital economy, the term has since expanded to encompass a wide range of paid work influenced by digital technologies. This includes traditional jobs transformed by platforms, new roles emerging in today's digital society, and cultural producers like influencers and online creators. The handbook also addresses the material aspects of digital labour, highlighting its dependence on traditional manufacturing and manual labour. This volume brings together leading scholars from diverse disciplines to examine the intersections of labour and digital technologies. It approaches digital labour as an interdisciplinary field of inquiry, exploring the material and ideological conditions of work in contemporary society. The handbook aims to chart the extensive territory of digital labour studies, covering theoretical traditions, key concepts, emblematic sites of production, normative cultures, and worker subjectivities. It also showcases the spectrum of worker organizing repertoires and tactics across the world. The handbook is organized into seven sections. Section 1 highlights major theoretical traditions, while Section 2 focuses on the material sites along production chains. Sections 3 and 4 delve into key concepts and sites of production, and Section 5 explores normative cultures and worker subjectivities. Section 6 examines worker organizing tactics, and Section 7 introduces research methods for scholars in the field. The volume concludes with discussions on how digital labour studies can provide unique perspectives to imagine digital futures. The Sage Handbook of Digital Labour is an essential resource for scholars, practitioners, and students seeking to understand the complexities of digital labour. It provides a comprehensive and nuanced exploration of the field, equipping readers to engage with the theoretical and practical aspects of digital labour in a rapidly changing world. Part 1: Theoretical Traditions Part 2: Material Sites of Production Part 3: Key Concepts in Digital Labour Part 4: Emblematic Sites of Production Part 5: Normative Cultures and Worker Subjectivities Part 6: Worker Organizing Repertoires and Tactics Part 7: Research Methods in Digital Labour Studies
Ergin Bulut is an Associate Professor at Koc University's Media and Visual Arts Department. He researches in the areas of political economy of media and cultural production, videogame studies, media, affect, and politics, and critical theory. He is the author of the award-winning A Precarious Game: The Illusion of Dream Jobs in the Video Game Industry (Cornell UP, 2020). Julie Yujie Chen is Assistant Professor in the Institute of Communication, Culture, Information, and Technology (ICCIT) at the University of Toronto, Canada. She is the co-author of Media and Management (University of Minnesota Press, 2021) and Super-sticky WeChat and Chinese Society (Emerald, 2018). She is also a founding editor of Platforms & Society. Her research explores the transformation of work and worker's subjectivity in relation to digital technology, capitalism, and globalisation. Rafael Grohmann is an Assistant Professor of Media Studies (Critical Platform Studies) at the University of Toronto. He is leader of DigiLabour initiative and Research Associate at the University of Oxford. He is leading projects on worker-owned platforms, digital solidarity economies in Latin America, data work, cultural labor and artificial intelligence (AI). He is also a founding editor of Platforms & Society. Kylie Jarrett is Professor in the School of Information and Communication Studies at University College Dublin. She is author of Digital Labor (2002, Polity), Feminism, Labour and Digital Media: The Digital Housewife (2016, Routledge) and co-author of #NSFW: Sex, Humor and Risk in Social Media (2019, MIT Press) and Google and the Culture of Search (2013, Routledge) along with various studies of the digital political economy. She is also editor of Dialogues on Digital Society.
Introduction: Digital Labour as a Field of Inquiry - Ergin Bulut; Julie Yujie Chen; Rafael Grohmann; Kylie Jarrett Section One: Foundations of Digital Labour Section One Introduction - Ergin Bulut; Julie Yujie Chen; Rafael Grohmann; Kylie Jarrett Chapter 1: Globalization and Information Work - Marcos Dantas Chapter 2: The Social Factory of Data Capitalism: Cybernetics, Logistics, Labour - Ned Rossiter; Soenke Zehle Chapter 3: Digital Labour, Precarity, and Employment Status: Continuity Through Change - Nicole Cohen Chapter 4: Retooling ethics for a critical and just digital future - Aphra Kerr; Marguerite Barry Chapter 5: Race, Digital Labor, and Gig: Concepts, Histories, and Solidarities for the Why (and How) We Study Race - Sareeta Amrute Chapter 6: Platform Work and Gender Equality - Mayo Fuster Morell Section Two: Digital Labour Infrastructures Section Two Introduction - Ergin Bulut; Julie Yujie Chen; Rafael Grohmann; Kylie Jarrett Chapter 7: An Infrastructural Optic to Digital Labour - Abel Guerra Chapter 8: Mining for Digital Culture: Dispossessed lives through the lens of art - Evelyn Wan Chapter 9: Data centers and labor politics: Political economy, geopolitics, and narratives of labor - Paola Ricaurte Chapter 10: Materialities of Everyday Digital Labour - Prince K. Guma Chapter 11: The Rise of Independent Work and the Challenges of Realizing Autonomy - Melissa Mazmanian; Maggie Jack; Ingrid Erickson Chapter 12: Platform Mobilities: Migration and Digital Labor - Mira Wallis; Manuela Bojadzijev; Moritz Altenried Section Three: Labour Transformations Section Three Introduction - Ergin Bulut; Julie Yujie Chen; Rafael Grohmann; Kylie Jarrett Chapter 13: Value Struggles in Digital Taylorism: Scientific Management and Social Mediation - Harry Pitts Chapter 14: Rethinking Industrial Automation: Marxist Perspective - Yu Huang Chapter 15: Dynamics of surveillance: Unveiling Surveillance in Workspaces and Work Management - Fabricio Barili Chapter 16: Redefining skills in a digital age: Fragmentation and underutilization - Uma Rani; Raghav Mehrotra; Sona Mewati Chapter 17: Affective computing, algorithmic affect management, and the quantified worker - Phoebe Moore; Gwendolin Barnard Chapter 18: Labor's Odyssey Through Algorithmic Systems - Aneesh Aneesh; Shiv Issar Chapter 19: Studying the gig economy 'beyond the gig': A research agenda - Niels van Doorn; Aaron Shapiro Section Four: Sites of Production Section Four Introduction - Ergin Bulut; Julie Yujie Chen; Rafael Grohmann; Kylie Jarrett Chapter 20: Digital Labour Platforms and the Future of Care Work(ers) - Sai Amulya Komarraju Chapter 21: Platformization and digitalization of journalists' work in Brazil - Roseli Figaro; Claudia Nonato Chapter 22: Designing for Global Data Work - Mary L. Gray; Saiph Savage Chapter 23: Silver Halmeoni Influencers in the Social Media Spotlight: Navigating Geriatric Cuteness, Labor, and Ageism - Jin Lee; Crystal Abidin Chapter 24: Digital sex work and the contested boundaries of material and immaterial digital labour - Lorena Caminhas Chapter 25: Digital labor and the inconspicuous production of artificial intelligence - Antonio Casilli Chapter 26: Digitalisation and resistance in logistics work - Eric Florence; Juan Sebastian Carbonell Chapter 27: Navigating the Sociotechnical Imaginaries of Brazilian Tech Workers - Kenzo Soares Seto Section Five: Organisational Cultures Section Five Introduction - Ergin Bulut; Julie Yujie Chen; Rafael Grohmann; Kylie Jarrett Chapter 28: Seed Sowing in Nollywood: Labour, Precariousness, and the Promises of the Streaming Video Market in Nigeria - Godwin Simon; Kevin Sanson Chapter 29: The Pain of Love: Passionate Work and Spousal Support as Digital Labor - Renyi Hong Chapter 30: Play-at-Home Jobs: A Critical Feminist Viewership of Labour, Leisure & Livestreaming on Twitch - Christine H. Tran Chapter 31: Qualculative practices of 'hustle' in platform labor - Cheryll Soriano Chapter 32: The life/work mishmash in platform labour: Towards a livelihood approach - Ana Alacovska Chapter 33: Professional Identity Formation of Social Media Creators - Tugce Bidav Chapter 34: Digital Labour and Uneven Developments - Amir Anwar Section Six: Workers' Organising Section Six Introduction - Ergin Bulut; Julie Yujie Chen; Rafael Grohmann; Kylie Jarrett Chapter 35: Unionisation of digital labour - Kurt Vandaele Chapter 36: Turkopticon: From Software to Organizing (2009-2024) - Lilly Irani Chapter 37: New Realms, New Responses: Alternative Worker Collectivization after Platforms - Noopur Raval Chapter 38: Cooperatives for Worker Empowerment in the Digital Economy - Denise Kasparian; Sain Lopez-Perez Section Seven: Researching Digital Labour Section Seven Introduction - Ergin Bulut; Julie Yujie Chen; Rafael Grohmann; Kylie Jarrett Chapter 39: Action-Research: The Fairwork Project - Oguz Alyanak, Alessio Bertolini, Funda Ustek-Spilda, Jonas Valente, Robbie Warin, Mark Graham Chapter 40: Workers' Inquiry: A User's Guide - Callum Cant; Zeynap Karlidag; Clark McAllister; George Briley; Dante Philp Chapter 41: Codigo Domestico in the flesh: Feminist oral history methodologies for digital care work research - Kruskaya Hidalgo Cordero Chapter 42: Confronting methodological and ethical challenges in the study of algorithms and digital labour - Tiziano Bonini; Emiliano Trere Chapter 43: Exploring Imaginaries on Digital Labour - Arturo Arriagada; Vanessa Richter Chapter 44: Worker Advocacy and Data Collection: Methodological Sensibilities for Studying Digitally Mediated Work - Vera Khovanskaya Conclusion: Digital Futures - Ergin Bulut; Julie Yujie Chen; Rafael Grohmann; Kylie Jarrett
This timely volume lays out in expansive detail the scope of digital labour studies--a field that draws from a range of interdisciplinary perspectives and a multiplicity of sites, both geographical and conceptual. By going beyond the confines of a technological definition of digital labour, the essays in the volume point to the many ways in which work shaped by digital infrastructures--in terms of form, place, product, and governance--needs to be studied and understood, if we are to re-imagine and mobilize for a just future of work. -- Usha Rahman
