International Workshop on “Machines & Measure” (Leicester, Feb 2018)
16 February, 2018 | Leicester University School of Business, UK
Centre for Philosophy and Political Economy (CPPE), Leicester University School of Business & Conference of Socialist Economists (CSE) South Group
How are machines being used in contemporary capitalism to perpetuate control and to intensify power relations at work? Theorizing how this occurs through discussions about the physical machine, the calculation machine and the social machine, this workshop re-visits questions of the incorporation and absorption of workers as appendages within the machine as Marx identified as well as new methods to numerate without, necessarily, remuneration. Speakers ask to what extent control is underway via intensified methods to capture labour power, including affective and emotional labour; and will identify how calculation and numeration serve to abstract labour through prediction, prescription, monitoring and tracking; on the streets, in homes, offices and factories. The ‘black box’ argument currently fashionable in debates, where digitalized management methods are a(e)ffectively obscured, is challenged, by identifying precisely how algorithmic decisionmaking, automation and machine learning processes operate to control workers and by theorizing the implications of measure inside human/machine experiences of relations of production.
Kendra Briken (University of Strathclyde) ‘Welcome within the machine. Human-machine relations on the shop floor’
Frank Engster (Helle Panke, Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung) ‘Measure Machine Money’
Alessandro Gandini (King’s College, London) ‘Labour Process Theory and the Gig Economy’
Simon Joyce (Leeds University) ‘Digitalized Management Methods. Black Box or Hidden Abode?’
Phoebe Moore (Leicester University) ‘Quantification of A(e)ffective Labour for Change Management’
Please email the organisers for any other information at pvm.doc@gmail.com or pm358@le.ac.uk
https://phoebevmoore.wordpress.com/2017/12/15/machines-measure/
