302
views
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
1 collections
    0
    shares

      Call for Papers: Hierarchies of domesticity – spatial and social boundaries. Deadline for submissions is 30th September, 2024Full details can be read here.

      Articles to be no longer than 6,000 words (excluding footnotes and bibliography) and submitted in two forms: an anonymised version in which all references to the authors’ institution and publications are omitted; and a full version including the authors’ titles and institutional affiliations. For complete instructions on style, formatting, etc., please consult: https://www.plutojournals.com/wp-content/uploads/WOLG-Instructions-for-Authors2023.pdf 

      scite_
       
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: found
      • Article: found
      Is Open Access

      I am a Driver-Partner

      research-article
      Work Organisation, Labour and Globalisation
      Pluto Journals
      Bookmark

            Abstract

            What does it mean to be a worker in the sharing economy? How is this subjectivity produced by the algorithmic performativities infused into these platforms and how, in turn, is this subjectivity negotiated with? To investigate this question, this article examines the particular algorithmic system of Uber, a labour platform which connects passengers with self-employed ‘Driver-Partners’. Using the notion of the machine, it explores the intentions and agencies embedded in two strategic intersections of matter. The Partner-Management-Messaging machine attempts to shape the behaviour of the Driver-Partner through an array of messaging and motivational techniques. The Driver-Partner responds ambivalently through strategies which both collaborate and conflict with these operational logics. The ViolentFlesh-Passenger machine delves into the informatic notion of the body which Uber maintains and the concrete processes that constantly reinforce this notion. However, this informatic identity fails to fully exhaust the possibilities of the corporeal, highlighting the disparity between this ostensibly ethereal and largely vestigial driver and the violent actions nevertheless carried out by bodies on other bodies. These cases exemplify the negotiations and contingencies which are ever present within algorithmically regulated systems of labour.

            Content

            Author and article information

            Journal
            10.13169
            workorgalaboglob
            Work Organisation, Labour and Globalisation
            Pluto Journals
            1745641X
            17456428
            Winter 2017
            : 11
            : 2
            : 7-20
            Article
            workorgalaboglob.11.2.0007
            10.13169/workorgalaboglob.11.2.0007
            718ef53b-239f-47ac-9680-14f4a024be46
            © Luke Munn, 2017

            All content is freely available without charge to users or their institutions. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles in this journal without asking prior permission of the publisher or the author. Articles published in the journal are distributed under a http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

            History

            Sociology,Labor law,Political science,Labor & Demographic economics,Political economics

            References

            1. Agence France-Presse in Delhi (2015) ‘Uber driver convicted of raping passenger in Delhi’, The Guardian , October, 20. Accessed October, 17, 2017 from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/oct/20/uber-driver-convicted-of-raping-passenger-delhi-shiv-kumar-yadav.

            2. , , , , , & . (2012) A History of Algorithms: From the Pebble to the Microchip . (ed.). Berlin: Springer Science & Business Media.

            3. (2016) ‘How Uber engineering increases safe driving with telematics’, Uber Engineering Blog , June 29. Accessed October, 17, 2017 from https://eng.uber.com/telematics/.

            4. (2016) ‘Woman claims Uber driver sexually assaulted her during ride to North Salt Lake’, FOX 13 Salt Lake City , May, 4. Accessed October, 17, 2017 from http://fox13now.com/2016/05/04/woman-claims-uber-driver-sexually-assaulted-her-during-ride-to-north-salt-lake/.

            5. (1999) Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century , New York: Monthly Review.

            6. (2011) ‘Two types of assemblages’, Larval Subjects , February, 20. Accessed October, 17, 2017 from https://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2011/02/20/two-types-of-assemblages/.

            7. (2012) ‘Machinic art: The matter of contradiction’, Larval Subjects , July, 24. Accessed October, 17, 2017 from https://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2012/07/22/machinic-art-the-matter-of-contradiction/.

            8. (2016) ‘How Uber uses behavior modification to control its drivers’, The Rideshare Guy Blog and Podcast , October, 17. Accessed October, 17, 2017 from http://therideshareguy.com/how-uber-uses-behavior-modification-to-control-its-drivers/.

            9. (2016) ‘Home’. Checkr. Accessed November, 19, 2016 from https://checkr.com/.

            10. (2014) ‘Transmediale 2014 afterglow: Post-digital research’, YouTube , April, 3. Accessed October, 17, 2017 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ciJtJUwcug.

            11. (2016) ‘Incident/investigation report’, by . Kalamazoo Police. Last modified February 22, 2016. https://www.scribd.com/doc/304723238/Jason-Dalton-s-Interview-With-Kalamazoo-Police.

            12. (1999) Questioning Technology , London: Routledge.

            13. (2017) What Algorithms Want: Imagination in the Age of Computing . Cambridge: MIT Press.

            14. Fox News Latino (2016) ‘Uber driver arrested for allegedly raping and robbing passenger in Mexico City’, May, 9. Accessed October, 17, 2017 from http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2016/05/09/uber-driver-arrested-for-raping-and-robbing-passenger-in-mexico-city/.

            15. (2015) ‘Software theory’, Interview by . Culture Machine Live , February, 25. Accessed October, 17, 2017 from http://culturemachinepodcasts.podbean.com/e/software-theory-federica-frabetti/.

            16. (2005) Media Ecologies: Materialist Energies in Art and Technoculture , Cambridge: MIT Press.

            17. & (2015). ‘Algorithms are not angels’, Lecture, Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, Austria, December 4.

            18. (2016) ‘The Uber killer: The real story of one night of terror’, GQ , August, 22. Accessed October, 17, 2017 from http://www.gq.com/story/the-uber-killer.

            19. (1983) The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling , Berkeley: University of California Press.

            20. (1943) ‘Recursive predicates and quantifiers’, Transactions of the American Mathematical Society , 53:41–73. doi:10.2307/2267986.

            21. (2016) ‘How Uber conquered London’, The Guardian , April, 27. Accessed October, 17, 2017 from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/27/how-uber-conquered-london.

            22. (1979) ‘Algorithm = logic + control’, Communications of the ACM , 22 (7), 424–36. doi:10.1145/359131.359136.

            23. (2016a) ‘Hawaii Uber driver charged with sexual assault of teenage passenger’, Observer , April, 20. Accessed October, 17, 2017 from http://observer.com/2016/04/a-hawaii-uber-driver-has-been-charged-with-raping-a-teenager/.

            24. (2016b) ‘Uber driver charged with strangling student in a dorm parking lot’, Observer , May, 23. Accessed October, 17, 2017 from http://observer.com/2016/05/an-uber-driver-has-been-charged-with-strangling-a-student-in-a-dorm-parking-lot/.

            25. , , and (2015) ‘Working with machines: The impact of algorithmic and data-driven management on human workers’, Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems – CHI '15 , April 18–23, 1603–12. doi:10.1145/2702123.2702548.

            26. (2016) ‘Kalamazoo shooting: Here's how Uber does its background checks’, Los Angeles Times , February, 22. Accessed October, 17, 2017 from http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-uber-background-check-20160222-story.html.

            27. , and (2014) ‘Gamification as behavioral psychology’ in and (eds) The Gameful World: Approaches, Issues, Applications , Cambridge: MIT Press: 81–105.

            28. , and (2008) The Communist Manifesto . Translated by , London: Pluto Press.

            29. (2016) ‘Uber driver arrested for attempting to shoot officers’, FOX5 DC , May, 25. Accessed October, 17, 2017 from http://www.fox5dc.com/news/local-news/145051389-story.

            30. (2015). ‘ETA phone home: How Uber engineers an efficient route’, Uber Engineering Blog , November, 3. Accessed October, 17, 2017 from https://eng.uber.com/engineering-an-efficient-route/.

            31. (2016) ‘How Uber engineering massively scaled global driver onboarding’, Uber Engineering Blog , September, 2. Accessed October, 17, 2017 from https://eng.uber.com/driver-onboarding/.

            32. (2015) ‘Uber's phantom cabs’, Motherboard , July, 27. Accessed October, 17, 2017 from http://motherboard.vice.com/read/ubers-phantom-cabs.

            33. & (2016) ‘Regional Diversity in autonomy and work: A case study from Uber and Lyft drivers’, Data & Society , October, 13. Accessed October, 17, 2017 from http://datasociety.net/pubs/ia/Rosenblat-Hwang_Regional_Diversity-10-13.pdf.

            34. (2016) ‘Uber drivers accused of 32 rapes and sex attacks on London passengers over the past year’, The Independent , May, 20. Accessed October, 17, 2017 from http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/uber-drivers-accused-of-32-rapes-and-sex-attacks-on-london-passengers-a7037926.html.

            35. (2017) ‘Evolving distributed tracing at Uber engineering’, Uber Engineering Blog , February, 2, 2017. Accessed October, 17, 2017 from https://eng.uber.com/distributed-tracing/.

            36. (2016) ‘Uber and Lyft hate fingerprinting drivers, but new data shows why they might be wrong’, CNBC , August, 23. Accessed October, 17, 2017 from http://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/23/uber-and-lyft-hate-fingerprinting-drivers-but-new-data-shows-why-they-might-be-wrong.html.

            37. (2014) ‘Red stack attack’ in & (ed.) #Accelerate: The Accelerationist Reader , Falmouth: Urbanomic Media Ltd, 379–399.

            38. (2011) Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other , New York: Basic Books.

            39. (2016) ‘Pittsburgh, your self-driving Uber is arriving now’, Uber Global , September, 14. Accessed October, 17, 2017 from https://newsroom.uber.com/pittsburgh-self-driving-uber/.

            40. (2016) ‘Uber driver charged following sexual assault of boy in Oshawa: Police’, Global News , June, 15. Accessed October, 17, 2017 from http://globalnews.ca/news/2763116/uber-driver-charged-following-sexual-assault-of-boy-in-oshawa-police/.

            41. (2012) ‘GPS basics’, SparkFun Electronics , December, 14. Accessed October, 17, 2017 from https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/gps-basics.

            Comments

            Comment on this article