Additional Labors of the Entrepreneurial Self

Abstract

Workers are increasingly expected to take on the responsibility and effort of preparing for employment in the new economy, where digital technologies play a central role in bridging access to resources, connections, and opportunity. Drawing from multi-year studies of entrepreneurs in Accra and Detroit, two cities that continue to experience high rates of inequality and persistently low incomes for the majority of their residents, this article highlights three key challenges to self-entrepreneurialization in the digital age: self-upgrading, maintaining technology, and overcoming exclusion. Locating these challenges at the intersection of (1) two powerful global discourses of entrepreneurialism and technology upgrade and (2) class frictions and racial dynamics, this paper uncovers ways in which CSCW might support entrepreneurialism in the new economy, particularly given that it is becoming a de facto space of work and mode of living.

Reddit as a Forum for Social Service Workers

“…One participant noted spending 25–30% of their day completing paperwork, while another noted that of their daily work, “pretty close to 70‐75% is record keeping in some way shape or form.” Complaints surrounding this work included having to duplicate information within multiple systems, outdated computers breaking down frequently, and systems logging out in the middle of creating a report and losing information. It became apparent in our interviews and observation that some individuals are trying to minimize these challenges through attaching themselves to an entrepreneurial mindset, echoing findings by Avle et al, (2019). One participant described starting a social work consultancy business focusing on IT as a way of addressing what they saw as problems in the field.…”

Tech labor

“…Both highlight the continued importance of place-how particular sites work to interrogate taken-forgranted ideas about technology, society, and labor-and nudge us toward more-nuanced thinking about continuities and frictions of tech labor and what Anna Tsing [7] calls our "collective survival" in a rapidly changing world. The goal of specifying work from the Global South is not to reify unhelpful distinctions between the "affluent north" and the "poor south," but rather, as some recent HCI and CSCW [8] work has done, to show that particular labor and working conditions transcend geographic borders and are linked by powerful discourses of technology and labor, and sustained by longstanding issues of race, gender, class, and sex, among others. As Raval argues, a "fundamentally decolonial cosmopolitan ethic" is necessary for theorizing and problem-solving on a more human level, one that, as Qadri shows, is attuned to local, national, and regional contexts and contemporary geopolitics and histories of capitalism.…”

Decolonizing posthumanism: Indigenous material agency in generative STEM

“…On the one hand, a content agnostic position can leave commodification forces unchecked. For example, Avle, Hui, Lindtner, and Dillahunt (2019) show how maker exercises can be embedded in regimes where the creation of an “entrepreneurial self” disempowers local communities. On the other hand, there have been studies showing demonstrable advantages in student motivation and learning in the context of physical making (Vongkulluksn, Matewos, Sinatra, & Marsh, 2018).…”