The Future of Work in the Postdigital Age
Papers and panels are invited for an interdisciplinary conference ‘The Future of Work in the Postdigital Age’, which will take place in Warsaw, 27-28 May 2019. The conference is organized by the Faculty of Artes Liberales at the University of Warsaw (Poland) and is part of the project Technology and Socialization.
Confirmed keynote speakers include:
EWA MAZIERSKA (University of Central Lancashire)
BERNARD STIEGLER (The Institut de recherche et d’innovation at the Centre Pompidou)
GREGG LAMBERT (CNY Humanities Corridor Humanities Center Syracuse University)
It is a widely acknowledged fact that work has undergone profound changes since the introduction of digital technologies, which coincided with the hegemony of neoliberalism. This is expressed by terms such as ‘digital labour’, ‘immaterial labour’, ‘biotechnologies’, ‘gift economy’ and ‘precariat’. However, the effect of development of digital technologies, its influence on the analogue spheres of human life and their relation to neoliberalism have received relatively little attention. For example, do the successes of companies such as Amazon and Uber rely mostly on their technological advancement or do they rather take advantage of deregulation and globalisation of economy, which allows capitalists to return to the 19th century models of workers’ exploitation? Given the high level of accumulation of capital and the perspective of most jobs being taken by robots, can we say that the current model of capitalism is exhausted and if so, what system will replace it? We hope to find answers to this and similar questions or at least clarify them during this conference.
The conference invites scholars and practitioners from all relevant disciplines, such as philosophy, anthropology, sociology, economy, IT studies, history, pedagogical studies, literary, film and media studies, to take part in a timely discussion about work in postdigital age.
Proposals are welcome on, but not limited to, the following topics:
- What are the meanings of the term ‘work in the postdigital age’?
- How does neoliberalism and (post)digitalisation affect different types of work: manual, intellectual, productive and service work and its relation to capital? What is the role of trade unions and other forms of organised labour in the new, deregulated and fluid landscape of labour?
- How have the boundaries between work, leisure and other forms of non-work been affected by digital technologies and neoliberalism?
- How is new and future work represented in literature, visual arts and different forms of the moving image?
- Do the works of the leading ‘philosophers of work’, such as Marx and Engels, Foucault, Bourdieu, and Hardt and Negri, need to be substantially updated in the light of the ‘postdigital’?