Uncovering Emotional Labor and Care Work in Gig Economy Systems

Abstract

The gig-economy is typically understood to comprise two forms of work: crowdwork, e.g., Mechanical Turk and CrowdFlower, and work-on-demand via app, e.g. Airbnb and Uber. These platforms connect an indefinite number of organizations, individuals, clients, and workers both locally and globally. While workers are compensated for the services they provide, these platforms also profit from the immaterial labor that workers must engage in, uncompensated and often undefined, in order to provide their customers with a high standard of service and receive commensurate ratings. This “immaterial labor”—that is, all those aspects of labor relations that go beyond the material aspects of work and production—is obfuscated by the platforms and the sociotechnical systems in which those platforms are embedded. In this panel we focus on two feminist interpretations of immaterial labor that have attracted the interest of the STS community: Emotional Labor, which is the management of personal feeling that requires one to induce or suppress feeling in order to sustain the proper outward countenance for others’ sake; and Care Work, which in gig-economy settings can include the often-unrecognized work related to providing or facilitating others’ comfort, such as through offering amenities, recommendations, unique experiences, cleaning, and more. We invite papers that explore such approaches on gig-economy platforms and help us understand how emotional labor and care work are entangled with the successes of these platforms, while also necessarily downplayed or made hidden within the surrounding sociotechnical system.

Individual Presentations

• Airbnb and the Costs of Emotional Labor in Havana, Cuba - David Nemer, University of Virginia

• Balancing Emotional Labor, Autonomy, and Integration in the Cultural Intermediation of Indie Games - Matthew Perks, University of Waterloo; Felan Parker, University of St. Michael's College

• Searching for Community: Critical Re-evaluation of the Quantified Self as a Community - Yuliya Grinberg

Session Organizers

• David Nemer, University of Virginia

• Austin Lewis Toombs, Purdue University