The quantified self: What counts in the neoliberal workplace

Abstract

Bio: Trained as a social scientist Dr Moore is one of the sole scholars in the area of international political economy to write about the ever-changing worlds of work and labour and the impact of technology and changing regulation within the global neoliberal political economy. Phoebe is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Law and Politics at Middlesex Univeristy London and has published several pieces on corporeal capitalism and the quantified self; peer to peer production; labour struggle in East Asia; and global governance over 'decent work'. She is the Primary Investigator for the British Academy/Leverhulme project entitled Agility, Work and the Quantified Self (2015Self ( -2017 and is writing her third monograph on the Quantified Self at Work (Routledge). Co-author: Dr Andrew RobinsonIndependent Scholar, ldxar1@gmail.com Bio: Andrew Robinson is an activist, precarian, and independent scholar, currently based in Nottingham. He is coauthor of Power, Conflict and Resistance in the Contemporary World (with Athina Karatzogianni, 2010) and solo or joint author of over 20 articles and chapters on topics including autonomous social movements, everyday resistance, post-left anarchy, militarist and securitised discourses, education, Negri, Sartre, Zizek, Stirner, Deleuze, Laclau, Spivak, and Gramsci, as well as a number of activist pieces dealing with issues such as precarity. His column In Theory appears intermittently in Ceasefire e-magazine. His current research interests focus on the intersection of neoliberalism, precarity, psychological insecurity, and autonomous social movements. AbstractImplementation of quantified self technologies in workplaces relies on the ontological premise of Cartesian dualism with mind dominant over body. Contributing to debates in new materialism, we demonstrate that workers are now being asked to measure our own productivity and health and wellbeing in art-houses and warehouses alike in both the global north and south. Workers experience intensified precarity, austerity, intense competition for jobs, and anxieties about the replacement of labour-power with robots and other machines as well as, ourselves replaceable, other humans. Workers have internalized the imperative to perform, a subjectification process as we become observing, entrepreneurial subjects and observed, objectified labouring bodies. Thinking through the implications of the use of wearable technologies in workplaces, this article shows that these technologies introduce a heightened Taylorist influence on precarious working bodies within neoliberal workplaces.

Pragmatism, Critical Theory and Business Ethics: Converging Lines

“…The case generally confirms suspicions about the effects of the capitalist system on the possibilities for human self-realization, cooperative inquiry and intelligent problem-solving within and through organizations. While in many aspects a seemingly extreme case, it does not appear to be far removed from recent developments in industrial and retail organizations across the world (e.g., Moore and Robinson 2016;Peck 2013). …”

Regulating wellbeing in the brave new quantified workplace

“…WSTT data could be used for intensified performance management and monitoring: a significant step beyond other familiar workplace well-being initiatives like exercise classes or yoga provision. Tracking for workplace wellbeing could prove to be problematic if it does not capture other impacts of specific management approaches in the workplace, such as depression or anxiety and precarity (Moore and Robinson, 2015), that have been depicted by a range of epidemiologists and work psychologists to emerge in environments with what could be seen as overly invasive surveillance (see Aiello, 1993).…”

La transformación de la universidad y los dispositivos de cuantificación

“…Se remarcan efectos sobre los sujetos trabajadores tales como ansiedad acerca de su rendimiento e incertidumbre respecto de su posible sustitución y estabilidad en la organización (Moore & Robinson, 2015). También se ha documentado que la cuantificación del trabajo se asocia a la sensación crónica de estar al borde del colapso, la sobre estimulación y 'estrés de la atención' (Berardi, 2009).…”

“…Salmi (2009) ha denominado este fenómeno "voluntarismo mágico", correspondiente a una ideología que elude una realidad de exclusiones, competencias, precariedad de las condiciones laborales al insistir en una capacidad milagrosa de cada individuo. Y la creencia ciega de que los logros y desempeños de los trabajadores corresponden a una capacidad del sujeto y no de la organización (Moore & Robinson, 2015). De esta forma, frecuentemente bajo estos juegos de palabras se ocultan tecnologías de intensificación e híper responsabilización del trabajador.…”

“…Sin embargo, sus propios trabajadores no se reconocen en este lenguaje, en sus categorías ni en sus cuantificadores. Tal situación podría intensificar el malestar en los trabajadores académicos por la inadecuación con lo que ellos consideran relevante y por el endeudamiento permanente que lleva a una sensación de insuficiencia constante (Gill, 1995;Graeber, 2011;Moore & Robinson, 2015).…”