“Pehle dekhenge, samjhenge, phir jaayenge”: Waiting and Feminist Listening at the Labour Chowk - Society for the Anthropology of Work In this new series, scholars respond to SAW editors' call to reflect on innovative methods that are being devised by anthropologists of work to navigate the

In this new series, scholars respond to SAW editors’ call to reflect on innovative methods that are being devised by anthropologists of work to navigate the changing nature of work itself.

“Pehle dekhenge, samjhenge, phir jaayenge”: Waiting and Feminist Listening at the Labour Chowk - Society for the Anthropology of Work In this new series, scholars respond to SAW editors' call to reflect on innovative methods that are being devised by anthropologists of work to navigate the

In this new series, scholars respond to SAW editors’ call to reflect on innovative methods that are being devised by anthropologists of work to navigate the changing nature of work itself.

@anthropologyofwork.bsky.social

Hot off the presses! In this new piece, we trace neoliberal automation in bus transit—"driverless" pushes that accelerate class decomposition and weaken collective bargaining, masked as innovation. These threaten wages and safety, yet workers are resisting and advancing more just alternatives.

Anthropology of Work Review | AAA Labor Studies Journal | Wiley Online Library Being a bus operator has long meant access to middle class wages, quality benefits, and union membership, forms of security increasingly rare amid growing precarity. But transit is in trouble. In the...

🚍 What does the future of transit work look like?

This #openaccess piece shows how disinvestment and automation narratives are reshaping transit work and how workers are pushing back for dignity, safety, and control.

anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #anthropology #OA

Anthropology of Work Review | AAA Labor Studies Journal | Wiley Online Library Being a bus operator has long meant access to middle class wages, quality benefits, and union membership, forms of security increasingly rare amid growing precarity. But transit is in trouble. In the....

New article alert!

"Transit workers offer instead visions of a labor future centered on dignity, safety, and democratic control over technological change"

Check out "Futures of transit work Contesting Devaluation and Neoliberal Automation in Bus Transit" by Hunter Akridge & Sarah E. Fox

Employers are using your personal data to figure out the lowest salary you’ll accept Surveillance pricing came for your wallet — now it’s coming for your paycheck, too.

“Experts describe ‘surveillance wages’ as a system in which wages are based not on an employee’s performance or seniority, but on formulas that use their personal data, often collected without employees’ knowledge.”

A drawing of feet with painted toenails on top of all three volumes of Marx's Capital. Text at the top of the image reads How to increase AWR engagement on Onlyfans

Academic publishing is increasingly difficult and costly, relying on unpaid labor from authors, reviewers, & editors. In response to these precarious circumstances the AWR editorial collective is trialing a new approach to sustaining our journal through increased engagement.

“It did sound like, on probing, that their universities were all responding to the same market intelligence, provided by the same consultancies, using the same metrics.”

The educational geography of north & northeast Scotland is under threat- please share and sign www.change.org/p/open-lette...

A very easy step the Secretary of State could make is to shut down the use of consultancies in #UKHE. It leaks SO MUCH money out of the (public) sector to for-profit firms, is creating a truly dangerous monoculture, and is so seemingly obscure none outside the sector will be pissed off.

Please check out this new book featuring a chapter by one of the AWR editors @valuequestion.bsky.social that explores Malinowski's engagement with work and labour

Harbour Workers Rise: Hong Kong Seamen’s Strike Victory On this day, 8 March 1922, seamen in Hong Kong and Canton (now Guangzhou) won pay rises of 15-30%, ending their strike which began in January. The British colonial government had declared the strike illegal, brought in the army and tried to use scabs from the Chinese mainland, and forced labour to break the strike. But the strike spread, was joined by rail workers, dockers, cooks and servants, and workers set up an armed militia to blockade food to the island by rail or sea. Eventually bosses were forced to cave in. They did not agree to a union shop, but they gave substantial pay rises, legalised the Seaman's Union, freed imprisoned strike leaders and back paid half pay to workers for the strike days.  More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/10828/hong-kong-seamen's-strike-ends

📣 New Podcast! "Harbour Workers Rise: Hong Kong Seamen’s Strike Victory" on @Spreaker #1920s_seafarers #1922_chinese #asia_hong #china #dockworkers #history_1922 #history_early #hong #kong #labor #maritime #movement #protest_south #seamen #shipping #strike #strike_hong #union #unrest #workers

We may associate the planet’s vast oceans with mystery and adventure, but what’s the reality of life onboard cargo ships for the world’s maritime workers? Pallavi Sanil reviews Sea-Time: An Ethnographic Adventure by Helen Sampson.

buff.ly/rg844lL

Book cover for "Platform Extractivism: Data Work and the People Powering Artificial Intelligence" by Julián Posada. Set against a bright yellow background, three vertical photographic panels at the top depict a crowd with digital bounding boxes over faces, a person coding at a computer, and a dense rack of glowing server cables. The title is in large, bold black text, followed by the red subtitle and the author’s name in blue at the bottom.

With the cover now finalized, I am pleased to announce my forthcoming book: 𝐏𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦 𝐄𝐱𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐬𝐦: 𝐃𝐚𝐭𝐚 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐤 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐏𝐞𝐨𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐏𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐀𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞. Available this October from @ucpress.bsky.social s. 🧵 1/4

We're wrapping up 2025 by highlighting the most-read articles published this year! First up is "Unsettling the self: Autoethnography and related kin" by Christine J. Walley and Denielle Elliott. #OpenAccess #Anthropology

doi.org/10.1111/aman...

Global capitalist value chains exploit workers and the environment - LSE Review of Books In Capitalist Value Chains, Benjamin Selwyn & Christin Bernhold show how capitalist value chains (CVCs) intensify the exploitation of workers & the environment

Global capitalist value chains are exploiting workers and destroying the environment.

Capitalist Value Chains: Labour Exploitation, Nature Destruction, Geopolitics by Benjamin Selwyn and Christin Bernhold reviewed by @abieler.bsky.social @lsereviewofbooks.bsky.social @lseid.bsky.social

'AI Is African Intelligence': The Workers Who Train AI Are Fighting Back Kenyan workers are still the underpaid labor behind AI training, moderation, and sex chatbots. The Data Labelers Association is fighting back.

“AI can never be AI without humans. It is not artificial intelligence. It’s African intelligence...We are training our own death. We train ChatGPT and it’s killing us slowly.”
www.404media.co/ai-is-africa...

Afterlives of slavery are manifest in the global distribution of labor and infrastructure that is used to harvest human brainpower and convert it into “AI”

Screenshot of a Tweet by @TheChiefNerd inclusing an interview with Sam Altman. The text in the Tweet says: SAM ALTMAN: “We see a future where intelligence is a utility, like electricity or water, and people buy it from us on a meter.”

The whole "AI" industry is just based on the hope that they can deskill people fast enough that they'll have to rent back cognitive support systems. Forever.

It's like Uber. Just that they don't try to break existing transportation infrastructures but your brain.

Book Review: Tackling the Everyday - Society for the Anthropology of Work Tackling the Everyday: Race and Nation in Big-Time College Football, by Tracie Canada (2025). Oakland, CA: University of California Press.

Check out Xavier Smalls' review of Tackling the Everyday: Race and Nation in Big-Time College Football, by Tracie Canada

anthrowork.org/book-reviews...

"Ethnography Under Watch: Field Notes on Student Politics in Indian Universities" Aniruddha Mahajan at @saw-anthroofwork.bsky.social Exertions site: anthrowork.org/intervention...

Gig workers at risk as Israel–US–Iran war disrupts LPG and CNG supply chains Unions say fuel supply disruptions linked to the Israel-US-Iran war may reduce trips and delay deliveries for gig workers.

"According to the unions, the gig and platform economy is particularly vulnerable to fuel supply fluctuations."

www.siasat.com/gig-workers-...

We are releasing this report FULL of ways workers can have a voice in workplace tech as Gallup releases polling: “employees who say they have a lot of influence over tech adopted in their workplace are more than twice as likely to report high job satisfaction”
news.gallup.com/poll/692693/...

Migrant, Entrepreneur, Man: Platform Food Couriers’ Navigation of Precarity and Vulnerability - Cosmin Popan, 2026 Work on food delivery platforms is characterised by increasing vulnerability and a disproportionate representation of a racialised male workforce composed prima...

What it's like to "be a man" doing platform food deliveries when you're caught between entrepreneurial discourses and precarious work? My latest (open access) publication, for the Journal of Sociology.

journals.sagepub.com/eprint/HDW2T...

We cannot have a rational debate about technology. As long as we rely on screens rather than on forests and sunsets to soothe our pain, we will fight to defend the screens, not the forests.

This technology doesn't spring out of a hole in the ground. It's built on unsustainable resource extraction and the burning of fossil fuels, and used for monocropping. Farmland needs to be protected, and farm workers need dignity and collective ownership. Corporate tech is not going to get us that

Job Opening: Technology and Work Program Director (Full Specialist) The UC Berkeley Labor Center seeks applications for the position of Technology and Work Program Director.

They Labor Center is seeking candidates for the position of Technology and Work Program Director to oversee, develop, and conduct research, policy analysis, and training related to rapid technological change in the workplace. Learn more & spread the word!
laborcenter.berkeley.edu/job-opening-...

‘I wish I could push ChatGPT off a cliff’: professors scramble to save critical thinking in an age of AI As AI has upended the way students learn, academics worry about the future of the humanities - and society at large

I'm one of many professors quoted in this report from Alice Speri. I really appreciate The Guardian taking an angle which has basically eluded every other major outlet.

Labor scholars and students of the platform economy will want to check out my review of Kathleen Thelen's new book, *Attention Shoppers! American Retail Capitalism and the Origins of the Amazon Economy*

Herewith the link: www.wipsociology.org

Recommended!

We are delighted to invite you to take part in The Work of Mending workshops with @hunterianmuseum.bsky.social at The Royal College of Surgeons of England!

This series of creative workshops explores the meaning of hands and handwork, past and present.

Tickets: www.eventbrite.com/cc/the-work-...

The "Mock Calendar" and the Disposable Worker - JSTOR Daily How unstable scheduling practices keep low-wage workers economically insecure.

"Brian Halpin’s ethnography of a California catering company shows how managers treated workers as disposable not by firing them, but by manipulating their hours @jstordaily.bsky.social daily.jstor.org/the-mock-cal...