[Air-L] Quantified Workers in Precarity conference and two book launches.

[Phoebe Moore]

Quantified Workers in Precarity
<https://phoebevmoore.wordpress.com/2017/08/15/quantified-workers-in-precarity-2/>
Conference
and Two Book Launches Friday 13 October 2017. Sign up for a ticket on
Eventbrite
<https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/quantified-workers-in-precarity-tickets-36442187564>

*Final event for Dr Moore’s British Academy/Leverhulme project ‘Agility,
Work and the Quantified Self’.* *Funded by BA/Leverhulme
<http://www.britac.ac.uk/ba-leverhulme-small-research-grants> and
Conference of Socialist Economists <http://www.cseweb.org.uk/>*
*Email for more information: Dr Phoebe Moore p.moore at mdx.ac.uk
<p.moore at mdx.ac.uk> **and Christiana Rose c.rose@ mdx.ac.uk
<http://mdx.ac.uk>.  **H*osted by Social Policy Research Centre, *School of
Law, Middlesex University*

Dr Moore and co-editers Prof Martin Upchurch and Xanthe Whittaker will be
launching the book *Humans and machines at work: monitoring, surveillance
and automation in contemporary capitalism
<https://phoebevmoore.wordpress.com/2017/03/30/humans-and-machines-at-work/>*
(Palgrave Macmillan, Dynamics of Virtual Work series) and Moore will be
launching her monograph *The Quantified Self at Work, in Precarity: Work,
Technology and What Counts
<https://phoebevmoore.wordpress.com/2017/08/11/quantified-self-in-precarity-work-technology-and-what-counts/>
*(Routledge, Advances in Sociology).

Like earlier forms of capitalism which taught workers to act like machines,
the current wave of digitalised work, which includes tracking technologies,
automation and surveillance, means that we work with and alongside machines
and have even started to think like computers and to compete against them.
Machines largely self-manage, do not complain, do not call in sick and do
not make mistakes, but humans do all of these things.

Quantification, datafication and platformisation of work via new
technologies introduce unprecedented possibilities for stress and a range
of symptoms emerging from psychosocial violence (also tracked).

The precarity of the modern worker is central to understanding the
quantified self at work.

Precarity is the purest form of alienation where the worker loses all
personal association with the labour she performs. She is dispossessed and
location-less in her working life and all value is extracted from her in
every aspect of life. Because precarious workers are constantly chasing the
next ‘gig’, spatial and temporal consistency in life is largely out of
reach.

Capital encourages universal communication and machinic devices appear to
facilitate this communication within precarious conditions: but only in
quantified terms. Thus, anything that cannot be quantified and profiled is
rendered incommunicable – meaning it is marked and marginalized,
disqualified as human capital, denied privilege, and precarious (Moore and
Robinson 2015). Workers are compelled to squeeze every drop of labour-power
from our bodies, including work that is seen, or work that has always been
measured in Taylorist regimes; and increasingly, work that is unseen, such
as attitudes, sentiments, affective and emotional labour.

What are the impacts of technological change and precarity on workers? What
are we doing about it?
Some Project Findings. *Measuring and Tracking Affective and Emotional
Labour.*

For Moore’s *Work, Agility and the Quantified Self* funded project, working
alongside a company in the Netherlands, Dr Moore interviewed; and the
project team including Dr Lukasz Piwek carried out surveys; with 30 workers
who were given FitBits, RescueTime and daily lifelogging emails where
results were aggregated on personalised and shared dashboards, over the
course on one year, during a period of corporate merger.

The company sought to improve employees’ health and productivity, a project
that the company called The Quantified Workplace. Moore did not set up the
project, nor consult on it, but worked as lead social scientist alongisde
the project. Her findings demonstrate that workers began to take note of
affective and emotional labour in ways they had not previously done. While
findings showed increased self-awareness and subjective productivity toward
the beginning of the project, these tendencies decreased by the end of the
project. Findings show an increased sense of autonomy, desire for coaching
and support. Interestingly, workers’ sensitivity to privacy increased
(email Moore for further information). For the BA/Leverhulme funded
project, Dr Moore also carried out field work in car factories and
technology centres. Her next project will look at the risks of
psycho-social violence and harassment in digitalised working environments.

*Note: On 29th August, Claudia Hammond will be speaking about the
Quantified Workplace project and interviewed Dr Moore about this project
for the documentary ‘Every Step We Take’, on Radio 4 at 9 pm.*
*Keynote Speakers*

*Dr Phoebe Moore <https://phoebevmoore.wordpress.com/about/> ‘The
Quantified Self at Work, in Precarity’*

*Prof Rosalind Gill <https://www.city.ac.uk/people/academics/rosalind-gill>
‘The Quantified Selves of Academia’*

*Prof Martin Upchurch
<http://www.mdx.ac.uk/about-us/our-people/staff-directory/profile/upchurch-martin>
‘Is a Robot after your Job?’*

*Plenary Panels and Book Launch Roundtable*

Dr Ruth Cain <https://www.kent.ac.uk/law/people/academic/Cain,_Ruth.html>
Mental Health: the ‘recovery imperative’ and the new welfare-to-work

Dr John Danaher
<http://www.nuigalway.ie/business-public-policy-law/school-of-law/staff/johndanaher/>
Freedom and Domination in Quantified Work

Dr Kylie Jarrett
<https://www.maynoothuniversity.ie/media-studies/our-people/kylie-jarrett>
Valuing ’Er Indoors: Quantification, domestic work and digital labour

Dr Stevphen Shukaitis
<https://www1.essex.ac.uk/ebs/staff/profile.aspx?ID=2745> Knows No Weekend:
Class Composition & the Psychological Contract of Cultural Work in
Precarious Times

Dr Christopher Till
<http://www.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/staff/dr-christopher-till/> Precarious work
and the energy crisis in semiocapitalism

*Prof Sian Moore? Dr Mayo Fuster Morell?*

*Book Roundtable:
<https://phoebevmoore.wordpress.com/2017/03/30/humans-and-machines-at-work/>
*Penny Andrews <http://www.pennybphd.com/phd/>, Dr Julie Yujie Chen
<https://cuhk.academia.edu/YujieChen>, Dr Alessandro Gandini
<https://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/ddh/people/academic/gandini/gandini.aspx>,
Dr Winifred Poster, <http://www.winifredposter.com/> Prof Martin Upchurch
<http://www.mdx.ac.uk/about-us/our-people/staff-directory/profile/upchurch-martin>,
Xanthe Whittaker
<https://business.leeds.ac.uk/about-us/our-people/staff-directory/profile/xanthe-whittaker/>

*This event marks the end of Principle Investigator Dr Phoebe Moore’s
BA/Leverhulme project ‘Agility, Work and the Quantified Self’. Project
co-investigators will discuss some of the outcomes from the project with
Moore: Dr Ian Roper
<https://www.mdx.ac.uk/about-us/our-people/staff-directory/profile/roper-ian>
and Dr Lukasz Piwek
<http://www.bath.ac.uk/management/faculty/lukasz-piwek.html>*


*Books Launched: *

Quantified Self in Precarity: Work, Technology and What Counts *by Phoebe
Moore *(Routledge* Advances in Sociology*)
<https://phoebevmoore.wordpress.com/2017/08/11/quantified-self-in-precarity-work-technology-and-what-counts/>

*Humans and machines at work: monitoring, surveillance and automation in
contemporary capitalism edited by Phoebe Moore, Martin Upchurch, Xanthe
Whittaker
<https://phoebevmoore.wordpress.com/2017/03/30/humans-and-machines-at-work/>*
(
<https://phoebevmoore.wordpress.com/2017/08/11/quantified-self-in-precarity-work-technology-and-what-counts/>*Palgrave
Dynamics of Virtual Work)
<https://phoebevmoore.wordpress.com/2017/03/30/humans-and-machines-at-work/>*