Delivering Food on Bikes: Between Machinic Subordination and Autonomy in the Algorithmic Workplace

Autor(en)

Benjamin Herr, Phoebe V. Moore, Jamie Woodcock

Abstrakt

In Chapter 3, ‘Delivering Food on Bikes: Between Machinic Subordination
and Autonomy in the Algorithmic Workplace’, Benjamin Herr takes a
Marxist Labour Process Theory approach to understanding the algorithms
used in food-delivery platforms. Drawing on empirical evidence, the chapter
focuses on the experience of people being managed by algorithms. As Herr
reminds us, ‘algorithms are consciously constructed and implemented in
the capitalist labour process to discipline and control labour’. The centring
of food-delivery workers’ experience provides a much needed focus on the
problems of the technology in practice. Herr builds on the argument of the
‘illusion of freedom’ (Waters and Woodcock 2017), analysing the operation
of the algorithm and workers’ experience of it. This understanding of how
the algorithm is made to work in practice is crucial for a critical analysis of
this kind of work. After all, as Herr notes, organising starts with workers and
Introduction‘how [they] perceive their work and the technology applied’. The chapter foreshadows some of the volume’s later discussions of resistance, providing an important backdrop for what follows.

Organisation(en)

Institut für Soziologie

Seiten

41-49

Publikationsdatum

2021

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

504002 Arbeitssoziologie

Link zum Portal

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/9028f4eb-cab8-4904-8da0-c7c83871dd5a