[Air-L] DigiLabour Book Talks 2024

[Rafael Do Nascimento Grohmann]

Hi there!

I would like to invite you to two online book talks in April on the DigiLabour YouTube<https://youtube.com/digilabour> <https://youtube.com/digilabour> channel

1. Beyond Racial Capitalism: Co-operatives in the African Diaspora
April 10, 12PM EST (GMT-4)
with Caroline Hossein, Sharon Wright Austin, Kevin Edmonds, Salewa Olawoye-Mann and Silvane Silva
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C956sZQFVMU

Book Description: Knowledge-making in the field of alternative economies has limited the inclusion of Black and racialized people's experience. In Beyond Racial Capitalism the goal is close that gap in development through a detailed analysis of cases in about a dozen countries where Black people live and turn to co-operatives to manage systemic exclusion. Most cases focus on how people use group methodology for social finance. However, financing is not the sole objective for many of the Black people who engage in collective business forms; it is about the collective and the making of a Black social economy. Systemic racism and anti-Black exclusion create an environment where pooling resources, in kind and money, becomes a way to cope and to resist an oppressive system. This book examines co-operatives in the context of racial capitalism-a concept of political scientist Cedric J. Robinson's that has meaning for the African diaspora who must navigate, often secretly and in groups, the landmines in business and society. Understanding business exclusion in the various cases enables appreciation of the civic contributions carried out by excluded racial minorities. These social innovations by Black people living outside of Africa who build co-operative economies go largely unnoticed. If they are noted, they are demoted to an “informal” activity and rationalized as having limited potential to bring about social change. The sheer determination of Black diaspora people to organize and build co-operatives that are explicitly anti-racist and rooted in mutual aid and the collective is an important lesson in making business ethical and inclusive.

2. Algorithms of Resistance: The Everyday Fight Against Platform Power
April 17, 12PM EST (GMT-4)
with Tiziano Bonini and Emiliano Trere
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8z-rihSLw_8

Book Description: Algorithms are all around us, permeating more and more aspects of our daily lives. While accounts of platform power tend to come across as bleak and monolithic, Algorithms of Resistance shows how people can resist algorithms across a variety of domains. Drawing from rich ethnographic materials and perspectives from both the Global North and South, authors Tiziano Bonini and Emiliano Treré explore how people appropriate and reconfigure algorithms to pursue their objectives in three domains of everyday life: gig work, cultural industries, and politics. They reveal how forms of algorithmic agency and resistance are endemic and mundane and how the platform society is a contested battleground of contrasting forces. Bonini and Treré begin by outlining their key theoretical framework of moral economies. This framework argues that algorithms exist on a continuum. At its two extremes are two competing moral economies: the user moral economy and the platform moral economy. From here, Algorithms of Resistance chronicles the various inventive ways that individuals can work to achieve agency and resist the ubiquitous power of algorithms. Casting a wide net with a diverse range of case studies, Bonini and Treré reveal the moral imperative for all of us—from delivery drivers to artists to social movements—to resist algorithms.


Turn on the bell notification on YouTube and see you there!

best,

Rafael


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dr. Rafael Grohmann

Assistant Professor of Media Studies

Department of Arts, Culture and Media<https://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/acm/rafael-grohmann>

Faculty of Information<https://ischool.utoronto.ca/profile/rafael-grohmann/>

University of Toronto



Leader, DigiLabour<https://digilabour.com.br/>

Principal Investigator, Fairwork<https://fair.work/> Brazil<https://fair.work/>

International Experts Coordinator, Platform Work Inclusion Living Lab<https://pwill.eu/>