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This book traces how the current wave of industrial digitalization relates to processes of domination and emancipation. It aims to counter techno-deterministic narratives that would connect a perceived new 'industrial revolution' with clear-cut societal consequences. In order to do this, the volume intervenes into three ongoing discussions which pertain to emancipation and domination in the workplace, promises of emancipation through digital fabrication, and the idea of emancipating, configuring, and infrastructuring the users of industrial products. Within this framework it addresses topics including democratic participation, management thinking, gamification, the maker movement, reshoring, digital platforms, and the automation of healthcare.
List of contents
Chapter 1: Towards an Analytical Understanding of Domination and Emancipation in Digitalized Industries.- Part I. Emancipation and Domination int he Workplace.- Chapter 2: Democratic Labor in Digitalizing Industries: Emancipatory Potentials in Discourses on Technology and New Forms of Work?.- Chapter 3: From Lean Production to Industrie 4.0: More Autonomy for Employees?.- Chapter 4: "Designing Freedom": On (post-)Industrial Governmentality and its Cybernetic Fundaments.- Chapter 5: It's All in the Game: Emancipation in Digitalized Working Environments.- Part II: Promises of Emancipation Through Digital Fabrication.- Chapter 6: Concrete Utopias of Digitalization Compared: The Case of the Post-Work and the Maker Movements.- Chapter 7: Governing Labor in the Making? On the Relationship between Autonomy and Control in Innovation Processes.- Chapter 8: Unpacking Reshoring: The GE GeoSpring Case.- Part III: Emancipating, Configuring, and Infrastructuring Users.- Chapter 9: Digital Platforms: Producing Users in the Age of AirBnB.- Chapter 10: Governing the Old Body: Technocare Policy and Industrial Promises of Freedom.- Chapter 11: The Digitalization of Musical Instruments and Musical Practice.
About the author
Simon J. Schaupp is a PhD candidate and assistant at the chair for social structure analysis of the University of Basel, Switzerland. He published on the techno-politics of algorithmic management and cybernetization.
David Seibt is a PhD candidate at the Munich Center for Technology in Society at the Technical University of Munich, Germany. He works on the connection of digital fabrication, industrial organization, and the industrial configuration of users.
Uli Meyer is head of the Post-Doc Lab Reorganizing Industries at the Munich Center for Technology in Society, Technical University of Munich, Germany. He is acting professor for the Sociology of Digital Work at the Ruhr Universität Bochum, Germany. His research focuses on the reorganization of contemporary industries in the wake of the most recent wave of digitalization.
