[Commlist] CFP: Disrupting Algorithms: Innovating Work and Life in the Digital Economy

CFP for an open panel at the 4S Conference (Society for Social Studies 
of Science, September 2019, New Orleans). Deadline for abstract 
submission: February 1, 2019. Apply at 
https://www.4s2019.org/accepted-open-panels/

Open panel 37: Disrupting Algorithms: Innovating Work and Life in the 
Digital Economy

Alessandro Delfanti, University of Toronto
Yujie Chen, University of Leicester

Work is increasingly shaped by algorithms and automated technologies 
that standardize and organize the labor process, incorporate managerial 
tasks, and contribute to new forms of value generation. While this is 
depicted as a smooth process of innovation, the field is ripe with 
frictions and tensions.

Studies on technology and workers have well-documented workers’ 
resistance to the introduction of new technologies on the shop floor 
from manufacturing to call centers. Building on this scholarly 
tradition, we aim to discuss how algorithmic power is confronted, 
negotiated, and disrupted by workers in today’s booming sectors of 
logistics, online crowdwork, or the so-called gig economy. The field of 
STS offers crucial concepts and tools to challenge the assumption of 
technology as an external force that single-handedly configures and 
controls the workforce. STS shed lights on how both the materiality and 
ideology of innovation are contested and practiced by specific actors.

We are interested in papers that deal with workers’ creative means of 
counteracting algorithmic control, from strikes and refusal to everyday 
resistance and coping, as well as new forms of worker-led organizations, 
in different geographical, social and cultural contexts. Perspectives 
rooted on user theory, political economy of technology, feminist theory 
of technology, and labour process theory are welcome among others. We 
also aim to solicit papers that document and study how workers alter, 
redefine, and regenerate meanings, opportunities, risks, and rewards 
other than those imposed by system algorithms and other technologies.





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