Keeping Up: Web Design Skill and The Reinvented Worker

Kotamraju, Nalini P.

doi:10.1080/13691180110117631

Cited by 48 publications

(42 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…For immaterial labor, skill development and reskilling appear as constant features of work (Deuze 2007;Huws 2014;Kotamraju 2002). In post-bureaucratic organizations wherein knowledge work tends to take place, management occupies a diminished role (Sewell 2005) and control over work (and thus over skill deployment) stems from the labor market (Adler 2001), professionalism (Abbott 1988), the demands of networking (Anderson-Gough et al 2006), and the constraints imposed by socio-technical networks (Damarin 2013).…”

Section: Skill Technology and Controlmentioning

confidence: 99%

Control from on High: Cloud-Computing, Skill, and Acute Frustration among Analytics Workers in the Digital Publishing Industry

Siciliano¹

2016

Research in the Sociology of Work

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Abstract:This article addresses research on worker skill, technology, and control over the labor process by focusing on routine immaterial labor or knowledge work. Based on participant observation conducted among analytics workers at a digital publishing network, I find that analytics workers appear paradoxically autonomous and empowered by management while being bound by everevolving, calculative cloud-based information and communication technologies (ICTs). Workers appear free to "be creative," while ever-evolving ICTs exert unpredictable control over work. Based on this finding, I argue that sociology's tendency to take organizational boundaries and technological stability for granted hampers analyses of contemporary forms of work. Thus, sociologists of work must extend outward -beyond communities of practice, labor markets, and the state -to include ever-evolving, infrastructural socio-technical networks in which work and organizations are embedded. Additionally, research on the experience of immaterial labor suggests that ICTs afford pleasurably immersive experiences that bind workers to organizations and their fields. Complicating this emerging body of research, I find workers acutely frustrated by these unpredictable, ever-evolving, cloud-based ICTs.

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Section: Skill Technology and Controlmentioning

confidence: 99%

Control from on High: Cloud-Computing, Skill, and Acute Frustration among Analytics Workers in the Digital Publishing Industry

Siciliano¹

2016

Research in the Sociology of Work

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“…These projects are appealing to those among us who fear being left behind in the 'global race', hence frantically grasp at all opportunities however unproven the benefits may be. From this perspective, the 'DVR teacher' is an entity that promotes commoditised, pick-and-mix selfimprovement (Ashton, 2011;Kotamraju, 2002), by recruiting digitisation technologies and the growing demand for 'upgrades to the self' (Perrotta, 2014). Either shallow grazing or fretful, inconstant self-improvement, dysfunctional patterns of MOOC attendance clearly demand critical and sociological types of investigation, rather than being swiftly dismissed as irrelevant given the low costs of MOOC instruction and the 'massive' quality of overall attendance, where even a fraction of completing students may count in the thousands (Koller at al.…”

Section: Watching Tv Watching Moocsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The rise of the video-recorder teacher: the sociomaterial construction of an educational actor

Perrotta

Czerniewicz

Beetham

2015

British Journal of Sociology of Education

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This paper draws on Actor Network Theory (ANT) and on the sociology of cultural consumption to examine the phenomenon of corporate Massive Open Online Courses (X-MOOCs). Through the analysis of texts available in the public domain, the paper argues that over a short period (between 2012 and 2013) digitisation technology became associated with the emergence of a hybrid 'actor': the DVR (Digital Video Recorder) Teacher. A parallel is drawn between the 'interactive affordances' of digital instruction and the playback and cataloguing options that have contributed to shifts in TV viewing habits. The DVR teacher is described as an artefact in the service of a postmodern project of self-improvement through cultural consumption, which recruits digitisation to meet a growing demand for 'upgrades to the self'. In the conclusion, the paper explores how the study of digital education could benefit from an interface between sociomaterial studies and the sociology of culture.

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“…web designer, artist, fashion designer); an attitudinal mindset that is a blend of bohemianism and entrepreneurialism; informal work environments and distinctive forms of sociality; and profound experiences of insecurity and anxiety about finding work, earning enough money and 'keeping up' in rapidly changing fields (Banks, 2007;Batt et al, 1999;Caves, 2000;Christopherson, 2002Christopherson, , 2003Christopherson & van Jaarsveld, 2005;Gill, 2002Gill, , 2007Jarvis & Pratt, 2006;McRobbie, 2002McRobbie, , 2003O'Connor, Banks, Lovatt, & Raffo, 2000;Perrons, 2007;Taylor & Littleton, 2008a;Milestone, 1997;Richards & Milestone, 2000;Kotamraju, 2002;Neff, Wissinger, & Zukin, 2005;Ross, 2003;Ursell, 2000;Kennedy, 2008). Structurally, research has also pointed to the preponderance of youthful, able-bodied people in these fields, marked gender inequalities, high levels of educational achievement, complex entanglements of class, nationality and ethnicity, and to the relative lack of caring responsibilities undertaken by people involved in this kind of creative work (in ways that might lend support to Beck's arguments about individualization as a 'compulsion', the drive in capitalism towards a moment in which subjects can work unfettered by relationships or family (see also Adkins, 1999) There seem to be a number of potentially productive areas of overlap or resonance between research on cultural labour and the ideas of the Italian autonomist school and the precarity activism discussed so far.…”

Section: Precariousness Precarity and Creative Labourmentioning

confidence: 99%

In the Social Factory?

Gill

Pratt

2008

Theory, Culture & Society

946

143

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This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. The paper is divided into three sections. It starts by introducing the ideas of the autonomous Marxist tradition, highlighting arguments about the autonomy of labour, informational capitalism and the 'factory without walls', as well as key concepts such as multitude and immaterial labour. The impact of these ideas and of Operaismo politics more generally on the precarity movement is then considered in the second section, discussing some of the issues that have animated debate both within and outside this movement, which has often treated cultural workers as exemplifying the experiences of a new 'precariat'. In the third and final section of the paper we turn to the empirical literature about cultural work, pointing to its main features before bringing it into debate with the ideas already discussed. Several points of overlap and critique are elaborated --focusing in particular on issues of affect, temporality, subjectivity and solidarity. Permanent repository link

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Keeping Up: Web Design Skill and The Reinvented Worker

Cited by 48 publications

References 7 publications

Control from on High: Cloud-Computing, Skill, and Acute Frustration among Analytics Workers in the Digital Publishing Industry

Control from on High: Cloud-Computing, Skill, and Acute Frustration among Analytics Workers in the Digital Publishing Industry

The rise of the video-recorder teacher: the sociomaterial construction of an educational actor

In the Social Factory?

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