tripleC Special issue: Philosophers of the World Unite! Theorising Digital Labour and Virtual Work

tripleC Special issue: Philosophers of the World Unite! Theorising Digital Labour and Virtual Work – Definitions, Dimensions and Forms
Edited by Marisol Sandoval, Christian Fuchs, Jernej A. Prodnik, Sebastian Sevignani, Thomas Allmer
in context of the COST Action Dynamics of Virtual Work http://dynamicsofvirtualwork.com/ 

tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique 12 (2): 464-801 (pdf and html)
http://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/issue/view/29

This special issue of tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique aims to contribute to building a theoretical framework for the critical analysis of digital labour, virtual work, and related concepts that can initiate further debates, inform empirical studies, and inspire social struggles connected to work and labour in and beyond digital capitalism. The papers collected in this special issue (a) provide systematic definitions of digital labour, (b) analyse its specific dimension, and (c) discuss different forms of digital labour.
The papers collected in this special issue theorise digital labour as a multifaceted field characterised by exploitation, alienation, precariousness, power, inequality, ideology, and struggle. These problems of digital labour are however not inherent to digital technology as such but result from its inclusion and application in capitalist relations of production.
Theorising digital labour, as labour that produces or makes use of digital technologies, can help to understand its problems, limits, potentials, and contradictions. It can therefore highlight the need for social change and inspire political action. However, the act of freeing digital technology from being an instrument for the domination of labour requires to go beyond just interpreting the world and to engage in social struggles that want to change it.

 

TOC:

Introduction: Philosophers of the World Unite! Theorising Digital Labour and Virtual Work—Definitions, Dimensions, and Forms
Marisol Sandoval, Christian Fuchs, Jernej A. Prodnik, Sebastian Sevignani, Thomas Allmer

Work and Labour as Metonymy and Metaphor
Olivier Frayssé

Digital Workers of the World Unite! A Framework for Critically Theorising and Analysing Digital Labour
Christian Fuchs, Marisol Sandoval

Circuits of Labour: A Labour Theory of the iPhone Era
Jack Linchuan Qiu, Melissa Gregg, Kate Crawford

Concepts of Digital Labour: Schelling’s Naturphilosophie
Kevin Michael Mitchell

Digital Labour and the Use-value of Human Work. On the Importance of Labouring Capacity for understanding Digital Capitalism
Sabine Pfeiffer

The Ideological Reproduction: (Free) Labouring and (Social) Working within Digital Landscapes
Marco Briziarelli

Alienation and Digital Labour—A Depth-Hermeneutic Inquiry into Online Commodification and the Unconscious
Steffen Krüger, Jacob Johanssen

Production Cultures and Differentiations of Digital Labour
Yujie Chen

Digital Labour in Chinese Internet Industries
Bingqing Xia

Will Work For Free: The Biopolitics of Unwaged Digital Labour
Brian Brown

Toward a Political Economy of ‘Audience Labour’ in the Digital Era
Brice Nixon

Playing, Gaming, Working and Labouring: Framing the Concepts and Relations
Arwid Lund

Cover image:
By Jonny White (G20 April 1st) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons