Whither labor geography and the rise of the robots?

Bissell, David; Casino, Vincent J. Del

doi:10.1080/14649365.2016.1273380

Cited by 43 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…Assemblage theory and other theories of power and performance that cut across the logics of representation and non‐representation empirically and theoretically interrogate emerging robotic futures, human cyborg relations, and other robotic possibilities. There are a number of critical developments that come to mind here, for instance, automation in manufacturing settings (Bissell and Del Casino ), the emergence and potential of 3‐D printing in education (Oswald et al ), and the increasing role of algorithmic objects in making and influencing decisions in fields across urban planning (Batty ), policing (Linder ), finance (Kear ), social media (Gieseking ), and environmental management (Bakker and Ritts ; also see Lockhart and Marvin ).…”

Section: The “Rise Of the Robots”mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Social Life of Robots: The Politics of Algorithms, Governance, and Sovereignty

et al. 2020

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This symposium aims to broaden the way scholars theorise and empirically treat the increasingly complex relationships between robots and social life, especially in the context of our historically anthropocentric human geographies. The authors of this symposium engage a range of diverse epistemological, ontological, and methodological commitments, but all in some way address the power dynamics and shifting political economies involved in human–robotic interactions as well as possibilities for resisting and overcoming particular forms of domination and oppression. At the same time, the papers present new avenues for conceptualising the rise of robots and robotics and the everyday socio‐spatial relations of contemporary algorithmic life. In a rapidly evolving present and future, where life is increasingly managed in relation to algorithmic imaginaries and automated fantasies, these papers demonstrate the potential for geographers to make significant interventions and contributions to investigate the limits, contradictions, and messy contingencies of socio‐technical assemblages, to trace the shifting spatialities and temporalities of the geographies of algorithmic governance, and to envision radical democratic, post‐capitalist, emancipatory alternatives. These futures are unlikely to be “robot free”, so the question remains how will we build a future set of geographies that acknowledges this reality while also claiming space for the diverse and rich expansion of all forms of life, both human and non‐human?

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Section: The “Rise Of the Robots”mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Social Life of Robots: The Politics of Algorithms, Governance, and Sovereignty

et al. 2020

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“…The visibility of the delivery rider as a boundary worker within a heteromated system has encouraged social scientists to ask questions about aspects of platform operations, namely those concerning the conditions in which these workers perform. Whilst such questions concerning labour are undoubtedly critically important, the market activity in which the goods produced through this labour participate is equally significant, and challenges any straightforward understanding of automation (Bissell ; Bissell and Del Casino ). An examination of markets explains how these conditions of labour occur, and further, how they are productive of and dependent upon broader social arrangements.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Platforms, Markets, and Contingent Calculation: The Flexible Arrangement of the Delivered Meal

Richardson

2019

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105

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UK online food delivery company Deliveroo has a platform that automates the coordination of meal delivery, creating a market for the delivered meal. This market indicates the necessity to examine the social arrangements produced through the platform beyond the labour of the delivery worker. Markets comprise heterogeneous actors that require their coordination to be calculated. Deliveroo, though, offers two competing views of markets. First, as interfaces in which supply and demand are represented as autonomous blocs that are articulated through the goods of the delivered meal whose constitution, including the labour of delivery, is black‐boxed. Second, as agencement—formatting collective arrangements—in which the goods of the delivered meal are contingently calculated as a flexible arrangement of riders, restaurants and customers whereby these actors have differing degrees of choice concerning their participation, and through which new service performances are emerging in the necessity for their contingent interaction.

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“…Historically, this has driven improvements in material consumption, as the reduced costs of goods and services encouraged the development of a consumer society and the continual creation of new jobs. The reproducibility of software and the development of machine learning, however, has vastly expanded the range of tasks that computers can and will be able to do (Brynjolfsson and McAfee ; Ford ; McChesney and Nichols ; in geography, see Bissell and Del Casino ; Pierce et al ).…”

Section: Technological Disemployment and Jobs Vs The Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond Jobs vs Environment: On the Potential of Universal Basic Income to Reconfigure Environmental Politics

Lawhon

McCreary

2020

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The tension between creating jobs and protecting the environment remains central to contemporary environmental politics. Critical scholars have reworked the "jobs vs the environment" problematique, but how people will secure livelihoods in various imagined futures remains unclear. We demonstrate how a Universal Basic Income (UBI) that enacts a revitalised politics of redistribution, in conjunction with an active state, has the potential to rupture the link between employment and income. We suggest that such a UBI is complementary to various postcapitalist politics that fundamentally reorganise relationships between people, ecology, and labour. Further, such a UBI can enable the cultivation of new economic subjectivities, as well as the time needed for greater democratic engagement. Where radical environmental politics often configure a fearful agent of change, motivated by a dystopian imaginaries, we propose new radical visions for socioecological futures in which people have time for leisure, community, and democratic participation.

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Whither labor geography and the rise of the robots?

Cited by 43 publications

References 32 publications

The Social Life of Robots: The Politics of Algorithms, Governance, and Sovereignty

The Social Life of Robots: The Politics of Algorithms, Governance, and Sovereignty

Platforms, Markets, and Contingent Calculation: The Flexible Arrangement of the Delivered Meal

Beyond Jobs vs Environment: On the Potential of Universal Basic Income to Reconfigure Environmental Politics

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