Precarious work goes digital: Visions of a global immateriat

Edward Granter and Jeremy Aroles

Edward.granter@mbs.ac.ukJeremy.aroles@student.manchester.ac.uk

The global immateriat…

• Who? ‘Immaterial precariat’• Explosion of interest post 2000• Why? Technological changes and…• 2003 – Seattle G8 protests (Biffo 2009)• 2006 – French protests (Levaque Manty

2010)• Continuing social change…, also ‘crisis’

The immateriat and the postindustrial society

• Concept of PI society emerges 1960s USA.

• Bell, Marcuse, Kahn and Weiner• 1960s/70s France: Baudrillard, Lyotard

et al.• Social groups? Students/Nouvelle classe

ouvrier - (Mallet)

1973 and all that…

• Oil crisis• Neoliberal ‘response’• Social consequences – rising

unemployment and end of Fordist consensus, industrial decline

• Accelerated growth of immaterial sector in West, concomitant emphasis in social theory; PoMo etc.

The immateriat, the new ruling class?

Or: ‘live in an atmosphere of high anxiety, an anomic world of constant organizational restructuring, short term contracts, and uncertainty. By now even the well educated service sector worker with a portfolio of flexible skills knows that the vicissitudes of the global economy mean that they are never too far away from the next crash; from redundancy, foreclosure, indignity.’ (Granter 2009: 176).

Growth 1990-2000

• Scholarly interest in precarious immaterial work increases

• Social theoretical contributions focus: Gorz/Negri

• 1994 Mute; early web/journal contributions

Precarious Workers Brigade

http://precariousworkersbrigade.tumblr.com/

Precarious Workers’ Brigade

• From “Fragments toward an understanding of a week that changed everything” (2011).

• The class consciousness of “immaterial/precarious workers” can be seen through three different things:

• They mention the fact that artists, lecturers… have now become “active political agents”.

• They emphasize the importance of a movement: without a movement, “struggles were often isolated, disjointed and unheard”.

• “We are not just here to fight fees! We are here to fight philistinism”: this shows that they consider themselves as different, as a new class defined on the negation of what the rest is.

The promise of Internships

The example of Italy

• “The Milleuristi”• Made after the book

“Generazione 1000Euros”

• Aims at young precarious workers (especially young graduates)

• European issue

The case of France

• MNCP created in 1986 by Maurice Pagat

• Context of employment turmoil

• A movement of unemployed and precarious workers

• Gathers more than 40 associations

• Very active

Precari-Punx

• Dedicated to the punk movement

• Rejection of work and of capitalist principles

• Anarchist concepts and ideas

•Illustrates the fragmentation of the “precariat”

Blogs

And in higher education…

The Fibreculture Journal

• From Precarity to Precariousness and Back Again: Labour, Life and Unstable Networks by Brett Neilson and Ned Rossiter (2005).• On the Life and Deeds of San Precario, Patron Saint of Precarious Workers and Lives by Marcello Tarì and Ilaria Vanni (2005).• A playful Multitude? Mobilising and Counter-Mobilising Immaterial Game Labour by Greig de Peuter and Nick Dyer-Witheford (2005).

E-flux

• Fragments toward an understanding of a week that changed everything… by The Precarious Workers Brigade (2011).•Towards the Space of the General: On Labor beyond Materiality and Immateriality by Keti Chukhrov (2010).•Zombies of Immaterial Labour: The Modern Monster and the Death of Death by Lars Bang Larsen (2010).•Becoming Common: Precarization as Political Constituting by Isabell Lorey (2010).

Variant

• The presence of precarity, Self-employment as contemporary form by Gesa Helms (2011).•“We have decided not to die.” On taking and leaving the university by Marina Vishmidt (2010).• Re-thinking creative economy as radical social enterprise by Angela McRobbie (2011).•“Mashing-up”: Art + Labour (a public conversation) (2010).

Mute

• Interns are workers and should be paid! On Alan Milburn’s Social Mobility Report by the Carrot Workers Collective (2009).•Against Austerity: Youth Workers and Young People Standing Together by Tony Taylor (2010).•The Situationist City by Benedict Seymour (2004).

A new sphere of debate for a new social actor (comment on

websites/journals)

• Novel technology but inspired by past: • Situationists (Vaneighem &co.)• Sociologists (Foucault, Gorz) • Autonomists (Negri, Lazzarato, Bifo)• Key antecedent: Processed World

1980’s USA.• Underlying influence of Marx• Global cluster of contemporary writers

The case of the USA

From Processed World, Fall 2001, Farce or Figleaf: The promise of Leisure in the Computer Age.

• “Processed World”• Results of growing protestation• Underside of the Information Age• Only few journals denouncing precariousness• Historical justification• Vulnerability not understood as political (core difference with Europe)• “Vulnerability is naturalized” (Feldman and Steenbergen, 2001)

‘by the immateriat, for the immateriat’ – a new social actor?

YES:• Self defined as such• No longer ‘other’ but rather ‘normal’

“Precariousness is no longer a marginal and provisional characteristic, but it is the general form of the labor relation in a productive, digitalized sphere, reticular and recombinative” (Berardi, 2009: 32)

See also the work of Andre Gorz 1982 – 2007 Recent work by Standing (on precariat in general).

Yes, cont…

• Numerical increase……likely to continue

• Existential tipping point cf. Marx and the working class 19th century

• Not just ‘young’ workers• Communication, network and strategy

(our focus today)• Politically aware (anti cuts etc.)• Links with other precarious workers• Highly skilled and own means of production

No…Just a ‘youthful demimonde’

• Numerical overestimation• Group has always existed• ‘real’ precariat is 3rd world poor• A transitional group; hence ‘young’• Lack real organisation• Been here before – USA, UK, Germany, France

1968, Italy 1977.

Concluding thoughts

• The master’s tools cannot dismantle the master’s house…

• Echoes of Marx’s concept• Emergence of a new class awareness

From “Zeitgeist Spam”

“San Precario”