The DOI matches its Crossref record; 4 of the 4 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Networked but Commodified: The (Dis)Embeddedness of Digital Labour in the Gig Economy
Open accessAbstract
This article investigates the (dis)embeddedness of digital labour within the remote gig economy. We use interview and survey data to highlight how platform workers in Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa are normatively disembedded from social protections through a process of commodification. Normative disembeddedness leaves workers exposed to the vagaries of the external labour market due to an absence of labour regulations and rights. It also endangers social reproduction by limiting access to healthcare and requiring workers to engage in significant unpaid ‘work-for-labour’. However, we show that these workers are also simultaneously embedded within interpersonal networks of trust, which enable the work to be completed despite the low-trust nature of the gig economy. In bringing together the concepts of normative and network embeddedness, we reconnect the two sides of Polanyi’s thinking and demonstrate the value of an integrated understanding of Polanyi’s approach to embeddedness for understanding contemporary economic transformations.
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Citations
Cites
Precarious work, insecure workers: Employment relations in transition
Kalleberg, A. L. (2009) · American Sociological Review · doi:10.1177/000312240907400101 · Cited by 2,998
Gillespie, T. (2010) · New Media & Society · doi:10.1177/1461444809342738 · Cited by 2,522 · cited 1×
“…(or two sets of entrepreneurs), platforms in the gig economy manage to disembed themselves from labour regulations in a similar manner to how online content providers (such as YouTube) discursively frame themselves as a conduit rather than publisher of content to avoid regulation (Gillespie, 2010).”
BackgroundGlobal production networks and the analysis of economic development
Henderson, J., Dicken, P., Hess, M., Coe, N., & Yeung, H. W.-C. (2002) · Review of International Political Economy · doi:10.1080/09692290210150842 · Cited by 2,216
The cultural work of microwork
Irani, L. (2015) · New Media & Society · doi:10.1177/1461444813511926 · Cited by 568
Cited by
What Do Platforms Do? Understanding the Gig Economy
Vallas, S., & Schor, J. B. (2020) · Annual Review of Sociology · doi:10.1146/annurev-soc-121919-054857 · Cited by 1,354
Anwar, M. A., & Graham, M. (2021) · Competition & Change · doi:10.1177/1024529420914473 · Cited by 429
Self-citationRegulate, replicate, and resist – the conjunctural geographies of platform urbanism
Graham, M. (2020) · Urban Geography · doi:10.1080/02723638.2020.1717028 · Cited by 252
Self-citationThe ethical debate about the gig economy: A review and critical analysis
Tan, Z. M., Aggarwal, N., Cowls, J., Morley, J., Taddeo, M., & Floridi, L. (2021) · Technology in Society · doi:10.1016/j.techsoc.2021.101594 · Cited by 225
Kuhn, K. M., Meijerink, J., & Keegan, A. (2021) · Research in Personnel and Human Resources Management · doi:10.1108/s0742-730120210000039001 · Cited by 93
Embedded reproduction in platform data work
Posada, J. (2022) · Information, Communication & Society · doi:10.1080/1369118x.2022.2049849 · Cited by 89
A Relational Work Perspective on the Gig Economy: Doing Creative Work on Digital Labour Platforms
Alacovska, A., Bucher, E., & Fieseler, C. (2024) · Work, Employment and Society · doi:10.1177/09500170221103146 · Cited by 85
Dynamics of contention in the gig economy: Rage against the platform, customer or state?
Wood, A. J., Martindale, N., & Lehdonvirta, V. (2023) · New Technology, Work and Employment · doi:10.1111/ntwe.12216 · Cited by 80
Self-citationMaking it Work, or Not: A Longitudinal Study of Career Trajectories Among Online Freelancers
Blaising, A., Kotturi, Y., Kulkarni, C., & Dabbish, L. (2021) · Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction · doi:10.1145/3432925 · Cited by 57
Arriagada, A., Bonhomme, M., Ibáñez, F., & Leyton, J. (2023) · Digital Geography and Society · doi:10.1016/j.diggeo.2023.100063 · Cited by 56
Uberizing the Legal Profession? Lawyer Autonomy and Status in the Digital Legal Market
Yao, Y. (2020) · British Journal of Industrial Relations · doi:10.1111/bjir.12485 · Cited by 50
Dedema, M., & Rosenbaum, H. (2024) · Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology · doi:10.1002/asi.24868 · Cited by 49
“The competitive work arrangements designed to enable gig workers to view each other's bids are found to be a source of down-ward pressure on pay rates (Wood et al., 2019a).”
BackgroundFighting fatigue: A conceptual model of driver sleep in the gig economy
Crain, T. L., Brossoit, R. M., Robles-Saenz, F., & Tran, M. (2020) · Sleep Health · doi:10.1016/j.sleh.2020.02.004 · Cited by 35
Platform-mediated Markets, Online Freelance Workers and Deconstructed Identities
Munoz, I., Dunn, M., Sawyer, S., & Michaels, E. (2022) · Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction · doi:10.1145/3555092 · Cited by 31
Entangled Independence: From Labor Rights to Gig "Empowerment" Under the Algorithmic Gaze
Anjali Anwar, I., Garcia, P., & Hui, J. (2024) · Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction · doi:10.1145/3686916 · Cited by 5
Metadata
- Authors
- Wood, A. J., Graham, M., Lehdonvirta, V., & Hjorth, I.
- Venue
- Sociology
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2019-02-28
- Volume
- 53
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 931-950
- ISSN
- 0038-0385 (ISSN-L)
- 1469-8684
- OpenAlex
- W2918605963
- Cited by
- 377
- References
- 4
- FWCI
- 78.77
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
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