Article:
Digital Mediation, Soft Cabs, and Spatial Labour

dc.creatorAnderson, Donald N.
dc.date.accessioned2020-03-10T10:06:54Z
dc.date.available2020-03-10T10:06:54Z
dc.date.issued2017
dc.description.abstractCritics of digitally mediated labour platforms (often called the “sharing” or “gig economy”) have focused on the character and extent of the control exerted by these platforms over both workers and customers, and in particular on the precarizing impact on the workers on whose labor the services depend. Less attention has been paid to the specifically spatial character of the forms of work targeted by mobile digital platforms. The production and maintenance of urban social space has always been dependent, to a large degree, on work that involves the crossing of spatial boundaries – particularly between public and private spaces, but also crossing spaces segregated by class, race, and gender. Delivery workers, cabdrivers, day labourers, home care providers, and similar boundary-crossers all perform spatial work: the work of moving between and connecting spaces physically, experientially, and through representation. Spatial work contributes to the production and reproduction of social space; it is also productive of three specific, though interrelated, products: physical movement from one place to another; the experience of this movement; and the articulation of these places, experiences, and movements with visions of society and of the social. Significantly, it is precisely such spatial work, and its products, which mobile digital platforms seek most urgently to transform. Drawing on several recent studies of “ridesharing” (or soft cab) labour platforms, I interrogate the impact of digital mediation on the actual practices involved in spatial work. I argue that the roll-out of digital labour platforms needs to be understood in terms of a struggle over the production of social space.en
dc.identifier.doi10.25969/mediarep/13515
dc.identifier.urihttp://digicults.org/files/2019/11/dcs-2017-0205.pdf
dc.identifier.urihttps://mediarep.org/handle/doc/14441
dc.languageeng
dc.publishertranscript
dc.publisher.placeBielefeld
dc.relation.isPartOfissn:2364-2114
dc.relation.ispartofseriesDigital Culture & Society
dc.rightsCreative Commons Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives 4.0 Generic
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
dc.subjectmobilityen
dc.subjectlabouren
dc.subjectsocial spaceen
dc.subjectMobilitätde
dc.subjectArbeitde
dc.subjectRaumde
dc.subjectSozialer Raumde
dc.subject.ddcddc:306
dc.titleDigital Mediation, Soft Cabs, and Spatial Labouren
dc.typearticle
dc.type.statuspublishedVersion
dspace.entity.typeArticleen
local.coverpage2021-05-29T02:32:03
local.identifier.firstpublishedhttp://digicults.org/files/2019/11/dcs-2017-0205.pdf
local.source.epage75
local.source.issue2
local.source.issueTitleMobile Digital Practices
local.source.spage59
local.source.volume3

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