Working online, living offline: labour in the Internet Age

Ursula Huws, null

doi:10.13169/workorgalaboglob.7.1.0001

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Work Organisation, Labour and Globalisation

Volume 7, Issue 1

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Working online, living offline: labour in the Internet Age

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Author(s): Ursula Huws

Publication date (Print): Summer 2013

Journal: Work Organisation, Labour and Globalisation

Publisher: Pluto Journals

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Abstract

This paper begins by tracing changes in employment patterns since the middle of the 20th Century, arguing that the mid 2000s marked the beginning of a fourth distinctive phase, the earlier ones having begun, respectively, after the end of World War II, after the 1973 oil crisis, and after the end of the Cold War, around 1990. In this new phase, dubbed here the ‘Internet Age’, various tendencies with their origins in earlier periods have reached critical mass. These include a developed international division of labour, in both manufacturing and services and an employment landscape dominated by large transnational corporations able to draw on this global labour pool, using ICTs to manage their increasingly elaborate value chains. Many of these corporations have grown on the basis of the commodification of activities which previously lay outside the scope of profit making, including public services. The paper then discusses how and why online workers are at the front line of many of these developments, before going on to introduce the contents of this volume.

Content

Author and article information

Journal

Journal ID (doi): 10.13169

Journal ID (publisher-id): workorgalaboglob

Title: Work Organisation, Labour and Globalisation

Publisher: Pluto Journals

ISSN (Print): 1745641X

ISSN (Electronic): 17456428

Publication date (Print): Summer 2013

Volume: 7

Issue: 1

Pages: 1-11

Article

Publisher ID: workorgalaboglob.7.1.0001

DOI: 10.13169/workorgalaboglob.7.1.0001

SO-VID: 7cd40ae8-fa2e-4967-b688-d613a4516ec7

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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

ScienceOpen disciplines: Sociology,Labor law,Political science,Labor & Demographic economics,Political economics

References

Andrejevic, M. (2009) ‘Exploiting YouTube: Contradictions of user-generated labour’, in P. Snickers & P. Vonderau (eds.), The YouTube Reader . Stockholm: National Library of Sweden.
Arvidsson, A. & E. Colleoni (2012) ‘Value in Informational Capitalism and on the Internet’, The Information Society, 28 (3): 135–150.
Banks, J. & S. Humphreys (2008) ‘The Labor of User Co-creators’, Convergence, 14 (4): 401–418
Caraway, B. (2010) ‘Online labour markets: an inquiry into oDesk providers’, Work Organisation, Labour and Globalisation , 4 (2):111–125.
Braverman, H. (1974) Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century , New York: Monthly Review Press.
Cnn.COM (2013) ‘Global 500’, CNN Money. Accessed on July 30, 2013 from: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/global500/2011/countries/China.html.
Forbes (2013) World's 500 Largest Corporations: In 2013 the Chinese are rising’, July 17. Accessed July 30, 2013 from: http://www.forbes.com/sites/panosmourdoukoutas/2013/07/17/worlds-500-largest-corporations-in-2013-the-chinese-are-rising/.
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Kücklich, J. (2005) ‘Precarious Playbour: Modders and the Digital Games Industry’, The Fibreculture Journal , 5.
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Huws, U. (2006) ‘What Will We Do?: The Destruction of Occupational Identities in the 'Knowledge-Based Economy’, Monthly Review , 57 (08):19–34.
Jessop, B. (1990) State Theory: Putting the Capitalist State in Its Place , Cambridge: Polity.
Lipietz, A. and D. Macey (1987) Mirages and Miracles: Crisis in Global Fordism , London: Verso.
Marglin, S. A. & J. B. Schor (1992), The Golden Age of Capitalism: Reinterpreting the Postwar Experience , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Perez, S. (2012) ‘Here's what “Post-PC” looks like: over half of info workers use 3 or More Devices’, Tech Crunch , February 23. Accessed on July 30, 2013 from http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/23/heres-what-post-pc-looks-like-over-half-of-info-workers-use-3-or-more-devices-at-work/.
Prahalad, C.K & Ramaswamy, V. (2000) ‘Co-Opting Customer Competence’, Harvard Business Review , January/February.
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Comments

Comment on this article

[1] Andrejevic, M. (2009) ‘Exploiting YouTube: Contradictions of user-generated labour’, in P. Snickers & P. Vonderau (eds.), The YouTube Reader . Stockholm: National Library of Sweden.

[2] Arvidsson, A. & E. Colleoni (2012) ‘Value in Informational Capitalism and on the Internet’, The Information Society, 28 (3): 135–150.

[3] Banks, J. & S. Humphreys (2008) ‘The Labor of User Co-creators’, Convergence, 14 (4): 401–418

[4] Caraway, B. (2010) ‘Online labour markets: an inquiry into oDesk providers’, Work Organisation, Labour and Globalisation , 4 (2):111–125.

[5] Braverman, H. (1974) Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century , New York: Monthly Review Press.

[6] Cnn.COM (2013) ‘Global 500’, CNN Money. Accessed on July 30, 2013 from: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/global500/2011/countries/China.html.

[7] Forbes (2013) World's 500 Largest Corporations: In 2013 the Chinese are rising’, July 17. Accessed July 30, 2013 from: http://www.forbes.com/sites/panosmourdoukoutas/2013/07/17/worlds-500-largest-corporations-in-2013-the-chinese-are-rising/.

[8] Fourastie, J. (1979) Les Trente Glorieuses, ou la révolution invisible de 1946 à 1975 , Paris: Fayard.

[9] Ft.com (2013) FT 500. Accessed on July 30, 2013 from: http://www.ft.com/indepth/ft500.

[10] Fuchs, C. (2008) Internet and society: social theory in the information age , New York: Routledge.

[11] Fuchs, C. (2009) ‘Information and communication technologies and society: a contribution to the critique of the political economy of the Internet’, European Journal of Communication , 24 (1): 69–87.

[12] Fuchs, C. (2012) ‘With or Without Marx? With or Without Capitalism? A Rejoinder to Adam Arvidsson and Eleanor Colleoni’, TripleC , 10 (2): 633–645.

[13] Kittur et al. (2013), ‘The Future of Crowd Work’. Accessed, March 18th, 2013 from: http://hci.stanford.edu/publications/2013/CrowdWork/futureofcrowdwork-cscw2013.pdf.

[14] Kücklich, J. (2005) ‘Precarious Playbour: Modders and the Digital Games Industry’, The Fibreculture Journal , 5.

[15] Hardt, M. & A. Negri (2004) Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire , New York: Penguin.

[16] Huws, U. (2006) ‘What Will We Do?: The Destruction of Occupational Identities in the 'Knowledge-Based Economy’, Monthly Review , 57 (08):19–34.

[17] Jessop, B. (1990) State Theory: Putting the Capitalist State in Its Place , Cambridge: Polity.

[18] Lipietz, A. and D. Macey (1987) Mirages and Miracles: Crisis in Global Fordism , London: Verso.

[19] Marglin, S. A. & J. B. Schor (1992), The Golden Age of Capitalism: Reinterpreting the Postwar Experience , Oxford: Oxford University Press.

[20] Perez, S. (2012) ‘Here's what “Post-PC” looks like: over half of info workers use 3 or More Devices’, Tech Crunch , February 23. Accessed on July 30, 2013 from http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/23/heres-what-post-pc-looks-like-over-half-of-info-workers-use-3-or-more-devices-at-work/.

[21] Prahalad, C.K & Ramaswamy, V. (2000) ‘Co-Opting Customer Competence’, Harvard Business Review , January/February.

[22] Raggett, D., J. Lam & I. Alexander (1996) HTML 3. Electronic Publishing on the World Wide Web , Boston: Addison-Wesley.

[23] Ross, A. (2012) ‘On the digital labour question’ in T. Scholz (ed) The Internet as Playground and Factory , New York: Routledge;.

[24] Scholz, T. (2012) The Internet as Playground and Factory, New York: Routledge.

[25] Terranova, T. (2000) ‘Free Labor: Producing Culture for the Digital Economy’, Social Text ,18(2):33–58.

[26] Toffler, A. (1980) The Third Wave , New York: Bantam Books.

[27] UNCTAD (2004): World Investment Report 2004. The Shift towards Services , United Nations, New York & Geneva: UNCTAD.