Labor and Technology

The Labor and Technology series aims to fill a gap in scholarly and public discussions about the digital capacities and infrastructures that are affecting how we work. The series promotes critical analysis of dynamics such as digitization, automation, mobile computing, surveillance, the gig economy, precarity, care work, crowdsourcing, outsourcing, and more. It brings a deep and contextual analysis to accounts of new and unrecognized forms of labor by asking: Who are the workers being left out of the story? How is labor fundamentally connected to systems of inequality based on, for example, race, class, gender, and sexuality? How are technologies of labor rooted in political economies, legal systems, state regulations, and social ideologies—especially beyond the US and Europe, and particularly in the Global South? How are different groups shaping technology from the ground up, with grassroots initiatives? The goal of the series is to provide a space for a nuanced, multidimensional, and research-informed conversation. In doing so, the series attempts to tie together discussions that have been sprinkled across myriad disciplines, creating a cohesive site for analyses of the digitization of work and an anchor for future debates.