ABSTRACT

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.

chapter |19 pages

Introduction

part |131 pages

Theoretical Foundations of Studying Digital Labour

part |130 pages

Analysing Digital Labour

chapter |27 pages

Digital Slavery

Slave Work in ICT-Related Mineral Extraction

chapter |18 pages

Exploitation at Foxconn

Primitive Accumulation and the Formal Subsumption of Labour

chapter |13 pages

The New Imperialism's Division of Labour

Work in the Indian Software Industry

chapter |20 pages

The Silicon Valley of Dreams and Nightmares of Exploitation

The Google Labour Aristocracy and Its Context

chapter |10 pages

Tayloristic, Housewifized Service Labour

The Example of Call Centre Work

part |80 pages

Conclusions

chapter |63 pages

Digital Labour and Struggles for Digital Work

The Occupy Movement as a New Working-Class Movement? Social Media as Working-Class Social Media?

chapter |15 pages

Digital Labour Keywords