Algorithms That Divide and Unite: Delocalization, Identity, and Collective Action in ‘Microwork’

Book section

Marx posited that labour is "disciplined, united, organized by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production" (1906: 836-37). The regimented nature of factory work and life in an industrial community provided the material basis for collective action and for the shared identity required to support it. But is this still true of the mechanisms of 21st-century informational capitalism? Castells notes that in informational capitalism, "[t]he work process is globally integrated, but labor tends to be locally fragmented" (Castells 2000: 18). The exploitation of global wage, skill, and regulatory differentials means that workers are often physically, temporally, and administratively detached and desynchronized from each other (Ashford et al. 2007). In the extreme case, coordination of workers' efforts is achieved algorithmically, that is, by automated data and rule based decision making (O'Reilly 2013), leaving no opportunity for human-to-human communication. Under such dispersal and disconnection, it would seem difficult for a common identity, let alone effective organization, to arise among workers. Yet algorithms can also unite. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have long been used to construct 'sites of resistance' that bring together people prevented from organizing via conventional means (Ho and Zaheer 2002). Sites or communities formed online can offer potent identification experiences that rival the degree of identification with conventional workplaces (Lehdonvirta and Räsänen 2011). ICTs are used as part of almost any campaign of political mobilization today, at least in the industrialized countries (Karpf 2010, Wells 2014). To what extent, then, can dispersed informational labourers make use of ICTs to re-establish links, develop shared identities, and mobilize for collective action? In this chapter, we will examine both the dynamics of dispersal as well as the dynamics of unification in informational labour, and the technological, organizational, and identity processes that underlie them. These topics are examined via an empirical study of 'microwork', an extreme example of commodified and delocalized knowledge work. We study three different 'microwork platforms', or companies that provide microwork opportunities, and their workers.

Authors: Lehdonvirta, V

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Reviewed (other)
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Host title: Space, Place and Global Digital Work
• Place of publication: London
• Publication date: 2016-07-15
• DOI: 10.1057/978-1-137-48087-3
• ISBN: 9781137480866
• Keywords: SBTMR