Ursula Huws: Labour in the Global Digital Economy: Cybertariat Comes of Age

10/05/2015, 14h, Academy of Fine Arts, Zagreb, Croatia

School of Contemporary Humanities /// 8th Subversive Film Festival "Spaces of Emancipation: Micropolitics and Rebellions"

"In my lecture, I argue that the global division of labour since the financial crisis of 2007/2008 has entered a new phase during which several tendencies that were already present in the previous period reached their critical point. New industries arise from the commercialization of public services, arts and culture, biology and sociability. Aside from these new forms of accumulation of capital, new forms of labour occur as well, organized through online platforms, which provide access to a global reserve army of labour which is not subjected to state regulatory systems and systems of employment protection. This process strongly affects not only the quality of work, but everyday life as well."

Ursula Huws is Professor of Labour and Globalisation at the University of Hertfordshire. She is also the editor of Work Organisation, Labour and Globalisation. Ursula Huws has been researching and writing about the the changing international division of labour since the 1970s and has published and lectured widely around the world since then.She is currently Chair of COST Action IS 1202, the Dynamics of Virtual Work. Her latest book, Labor in the Global Digital Economy: the Cybertariat Comes of Age, was published in 2014 by Monthly Review Press (see:http://monthlyreview.org/books/pb4635/)