[P2P-F] Fwd: [Networkedlabour] Submission reminder - CfP: Philosophers of the World Unite! Theorizing Digital Labour and Virtual Work: Definitions, Forms and Transformations

Wed Jul 24 13:34:17 CEST 2013

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Christian Fuchs <christian.fuchs at uti.at>
Date: Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 5:05 PM
Subject: [Networkedlabour] Submission reminder - CfP: Philosophers of the
World Unite! Theorizing Digital Labour and Virtual Work: Definitions, Forms
and Transformations
To: networkedlabour at lists.contrast.org

CfP: Philosophers of the World Unite! Theorizing Digital Labour and Virtual
Work: Definitions, Forms and Transformations
Special issue of tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique

ABSTRACT SUBMISSION DEADLINE: JULY 31, 2013
CfP: http://www.triple-c.at/index.**php/tripleC/announcement/view/**14<http://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/announcement/view/14>

Supported by COST Action IS1202 “Dynamics of Virtual Work”-Working Group 3
“Innovation and the Emergence of New Forms of Value Creation and New
Economic Activities“
(http://dynamicsofvirtualwork.**com<http://dynamicsofvirtualwork.com>,
http://dynamicsofvirtualwork.**com/wg3/<http://dynamicsofvirtualwork.com/wg3/>
),
tripleC (http://www.triple-c.at): Communication, Capitalism & Critique.
Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society.

Editors: Marisol Sandoval, Christian Fuchs, Jernej A. Prodnik, Sebastian
Sevignani, Thomas Allmer

In 1845, Karl Marx (1845, 571) formulated in the 11th Feuerbach Thesis:
“The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the
point is to change it”. Today, interpretation of the world has become an
important form of labour that is expressed on and with the help of digital
media. It has therefore become common to talk about digital labour and
virtual work. Yet the changes that digital, social and mobile media bring
about in the world of labour and work have thus far only been little
theorized and theoretically interpreted. In order to change the information
society to the better, we first have to interpret digital labour with the
help of critical theories. Theorists of the world from different fields,
backgrounds, interdisciplines, transdisciplines and disciplines have to
unite for this collective philosophical task.

The overall task of this special issue of tripleC: Communication,
Capitalism & Critique is to gather contributions that help to an
understanding of how to critically theorize digital labour, virtual work
and related concepts. Theorizing digital labour requires us to provide
grounded 1) definitions of digital labour and virtual work, 2) systematic
distinctions and typologies of forms of digital labour and 3) theorizing
the transformations that digital labour is undergoing.

All submitted papers should be theoretical and profoundly engage with the
meanings of various concepts. Rather than presenting case studies, papers
should focus on fundamental theoretical concepts and discuss definitions.
They can also explore the relations between concepts, the historical
development of these concepts, typologies and the relevance of different
theoretical approaches. The special issue is interested in theorizing the
broader picture of digital labour.

We welcome submissions that cover one or more of the following or related
questions.

1) Concepts of Labour

* How should concepts such of work and labour be defined and what are the
implications of these definitions for understanding digital labour and
virtual work?
* Which theoretical or philosophical definitions of work and labour exist
and which of them are meaningful for understanding virtual work and digital
labour?
* What is the difference between labour and digital labour? What is part of
digital labour and what is not? Which online, offline, knowledge, physical,
industrial, agricultural etc forms of work are part of it or not part of
it? Is digital labour only knowledge labour that happens online or do we
have to extend the concept to the offline realms and physical labour? Where
is the demarcation line? Is digital labour also labour where digital
technologies are of vast importance or not? Does digital labour involve the
physical forms of work necessary for producing digital labour?
* Is there a difference between 'work' and 'labour' and if so, how does it
matter for the discussion of digital labour and virtual work?
* What is the role of Karl Marx’ theory of labour and surplus value for
understanding digital labour and virtual work?
* Is the traditional distinction between the material base and
superstructure in the realm of social media and digital labour still valid
or does it become blurred or undermined? Are new information and
communication technologies and social media, their production and use
(n)either part of the base (n)or the superstructure or are they part of
both?
*If in the agricultural and industrial age land and nature have been the
traditional objects of labour, how do the objects of labour and productive
forces look like in the world of digital media and digital labour and how
are these productive forces linked to class relations?

* What is meant by concepts such as digital labour, telework, virtual work,
cyberwork, immaterial labour, knowledge labour, creative work, cultural
labour, communicative labour, informational work, digital craft, service
work, prosumption, consumption work, online work, audience labour, playbour
(play labour) in the context of digital media? How should they be defined?
How are they related? How have they developed historically? How are these
concepts related to the wider social context and the existing capitalist
order? How can a systematic typology of the existing literature in this
research field be constructed? Should any of these concepts be rejected?
Why? Why not? Do any of these concepts especially matter? If so, why?
* What is the etymological history of concepts such as work and labour in
different languages and how have these concepts changed throughout history?
Which of these historically different meanings are important for
understanding digital labour and virtual work?
* What are historically new aspects of digital labour, what are
predecessors of digital work and which aspects of digital labour have
parallels to the pre-digital era?
* What is the role of the concept of value for understanding digital labour
and virtual work as well as “immaterial” labour, affective labour,
knowledge/communicative/**information work etc in the context of digital
media?

2) Forms of Labour

* What is the role of agricultural, industrial, service and knowledge work
in the world of digital labour and how are they related? How are different
modes of production related to each other in the world of digital labour?
* What are the important dimensions for constructing a typology of work
that takes place in online spaces (e.g. crowdsourcing, online gambling,
gold farming, turking, microwork, production of and trade with virtual
items, clickwork etc)?
* How can a typology of alternative forms of online work that rejects the
profit logic be constructed (e.g. free software development, creative
commons and copyleft publishing, Wikipedia collaboration, peer-production,
open access publishing, file sharing etc)?
* Which forms of labour are involved in the global value chain of digital
media, how do they differ from each other and how are they related (e.g.
mining, hardware assemblage, call centre work, software engineering,
transport labour, prosumer labour, e-waste labour etc)?

3) Transformations of Labour

* How can blurring boundaries between toil and play, labour and leisure
time, the factory and society, production and consumption, public and
private, the sphere of production and reproduction, economic value and
social wealth in the realm of digital media be conceptualized?
* What is the relationship between creativity, participation,
do-it-yourself culture on the one hand and exploitation, alienation and/or
emancipation on the other hand?
* What is the role of the concepts of the working class and the proletariat
for theorizing digital labour?
* How would the concepts of digital work and digital labour look like in a
post-capitalist society? Does the post-capitalist end of the working class
also mean the end of and abolition of digital work? Or just the end of
digital labour? What are the anthropologically constant and the
historically variable dimensions of productive human activities? How should
they be conceptualized and named? How are they related to the realm of
digital media? Do concepts such as anti-work, zerowork, the abolition of
work, post-work and the right to be lazy take the anthropological, creative
and productive aspects of human life that are expressed on digital media
into account? What are the elements of digital media activities that will
continue to exist in a post-capitalist society? What are the historically
continuous and discontinuous elements of digital labour?
* What has historically been the role of communications – including digital
communications – in labour transformations and in the construction of
global labour chains (e.g. global division of labour and social
interdependencies; the concept of collective worker / Gesamtarbeiter;
socialization of labour etc.)?

Deadlines:
Abstract submission: July 31, 2013
All abstracts will be reviewed and decisions on acceptance/rejection will
be communicated to the authors at the latest by the end of summer 2013.
Full paper submission: January 15, 2014

Please submit article titles, author names and contact data and abstracts
of 200-400 words to:
Marisol Sandoval, marisol.sandoval at uti.at

Marx, Karl. 1845. Theses on Feuerbach. In The German ideology, including
Theses on Feuerbach and Introduction to the critique of political economy,
569-571. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

About the Editors

Marisol Sandoval is Lecturer in Culture, Policy & Management at City
University London.

Christian Fuchs is Professor of Social Media at the University of
Westminster and editor of tripleC.

Jernej Amon Prodnik is PhD candidate at the University of Ljubljana’s
Faculty of Social Sciences.

Sebastian Sevignani is PhD candidate at the University of Salzburg's
Faculty of Cultural & Social Sciences and a research associate in the
Unified Theory of Information Research Group (UTI). Website:
http://sevignani.uti.at

Thomas Allmer is PhD candidate at the University of Salzburg and member of
the Unified Theory of Information Research Group. Website:
http://allmer.uti.at

About the Journal: tripleC

Editor: Christian Fuchs, University of Westminster
tripleC (http://www.triple-c.at): Communication, Capitalism & Critique.
Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society focuses on
information society studies and studies of media, digital media,
information and communication in society with a special interest in
critical studies in these thematic areas.
The journal has a special interest in disseminating articles that focus on
the role of information (cognition/knowledge, communication, cooperation)
in contemporary capitalist societies. For this task, articles should employ
critical theories and/or empirical research inspired by critical theories
and/or philosophy and ethics guided by critical thinking as well as relate
the analysis to power structures and inequalities of capitalism, especially
forms of stratification such as class, racist and other ideologies and
capitalist patriarchy.
tripleC is a transdisciplinary journal that is open to contributions from
all disciplines and approaches that critically and with a focus on power
structures analyze the role of cognition, communication, cooperation,
information, media, digital media and communication in the information
society. tripleC is indexed in the databases Communication and Mass Media
Complete and Scopus.

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