Overview

How is labour changing in the age of computers, the Internet, and ""social media"" such as Facebook, Google, YouTube and Twitter? In Digital Labour and Karl Marx, Christian Fuchs attempts to answer that question, crafting a systematic critical theorisation of labour as performed in the capitalist ICT industry. Relying on a range of global case studies--from unpaid social media prosumers or Chinese hardware assemblers at Foxconn to miners in the Democratic Republic of Congo--Fuchs sheds light on the labour costs of digital media, examining the way ICT corporations exploit human labour and the impact of this exploitation on the lives, bodies, and minds of workers.

Full Product Details

Author:   Christian Fuchs (University of Westminster, UK)
Publisher:   Taylor & Francis Ltd
Imprint:   Routledge
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 3.00cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.740kg
ISBN:  

9780415716154

ISBN 10:   0415716152
Pages:   408
Publication Date:   11 November 2013
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Tertiary & Higher Education ,  Undergraduate
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

1. Introduction 2. An Introduction to Karl Marx's Theory 3. Contemporary Cultural Studies and Karl Marx 4. Dallas Smythe and Audience Labour Today 5. Capitalism or Information Society 6. Digital Slavery: Slave Work in ICT-Related Mineral Extraction 7. Exploitation at Foxconn: Primitive Accumulation and the Formal Subsumption of Labour 8. The Division of Labour of the New Imperialism: Work in the Indian Software Industry 9. The Silicon Valley of Dreams and Nightmares of Exploitation: The Google Labour Aristocracy and its Context 10. Tayloristic, Housewifised Service Labour: The Example of Call Centre Work 11. Theorising Digital Labour on Social Media 12. Digital Labour and Struggles for Digital Work--The Occupy Movement as a New Working Class Movement? Social Media as Working Class Social Media? Glossary

Reviews

The field of cultural studies offers a natural window for looking more closely at the role of labor in digital media. Although some pioneers in cultural studies began important work with respect to labor, Fuchs carefully describes how cultural studies has increasingly distanced itself from questions of class. Fuchs does a remarkable job of using Marxist theory to reinvigorate the world of cultural studies. In short, the book is both encyclopedic and easily accessible. Summing Up: Highly recommended. - M Perelman, California State University, Chico, in CHOICE

Fuchs has written a rigorous, passionate, and deeply humane book... He successfully manages to demonstrate the need to revisit Marx's work in relation to digital labour... The book is demanding, yet suitable for both dedicated Marxist scholars and readers who are less well read in Marx's work. Fuchs is thorough in detailing his reading of Marx, which can be welcome for newcomers to the field, while the argument itself and the application of Marx's work will sustain the attention of those who are better versed in the quoted texts. - Vladimir Rizov, University of York, Marx and Philosophy Review of Books

Author Information

Christian Fuchs is professor of social media at the University of Westminster in London. He is the author of more than 180 academic publications in the fields of Internet studies, social media studies, critical social theory and information society studies. Among his publications are the books, Internet and Society, Foundations of Critical Media and Information Studies, and the collected volumes, Internet and Surveillance: The Challenges of Web 2.0 and Social Media and Critique, Social Media, and the Information Society.

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