The Limits of Robot Dreams: The Entangled Material and Sociocultural Dimensions of Automation

• In Event: 2451 - Economic Sociology and the Valuation of Work

Abstract

This paper broadens the sociological inquiry of automation. Existing studies tend to see automation as a self-propelling process shaped by economic interests and technological availability, and assume a generally seamless transition to flexible automation. Yet the case of Foxconn, the world’s largest contract electronics manufacturer and China’s largest private employer, presents a puzzle. Despite the company’s commitment to automation—including the explicit goal of building a labor pool of one million robots and hiring as few humans as possible—Foxconn has achieved remarkably limited progress and, indeed, been forced to reconsider the entire project. Understanding this, I argue, requires looking at the entangled material and sociocultural dimensions of automation, particularly the iterative process through which different groups of actors assign value to various forms of labor and the logics they use to do so. Analyzing in-depth interviews and ethnographic data, I compare how managers, engineers, and workers perceive, value, and engage with the materiality of products, robots, and human bodies. I show how the company’s automation efforts have led, ironically, to a new valuation of robots as fixed capital, a rediscovery of bodily capital, renewed demands that work respect and afford human dignity, and the dashing (at least for now) of Foxconn’s robot dreams.

Author

• Ya-Wen Lei, Harvard University