Abstract
In the past decade, debates about transformations in labor wrought by digital technologies have come to dominate scholarly and public discourse. Although we are chronically anxious about the future of work and what it means for jobs and employment conditions, we seldom question the value of work and its normative function in society. Greg Goldberg, an assistant professor of Sociology at Wesleyan University, offers a timely analysis of these anxieties in three contexts that have framed the topic of “digital labor”: convergences of work and play, automation, and the sharing economy. Not to be confused with media scholar Siva Vaidhyanathan’s book of the same title, Goldberg’s Antisocial Media is not a critique of digital labor but a “symptomatic reading” of the inconsistencies and structuring anxieties of such critiques by journalists, politicians, and academics. This approach draws from queer theory’s questioning of normativity as a method of social control that is facilitated by the production of affects such as anxiety.
Goldberg argues that anxieties expressed in criticisms of digital labor are less about the well-being of workers and more about the dismantling of valued forms of sociality that are responsible, collectively oriented, and sacrificial, which are threatened by technological transformations to the institution of work. These normative forms of sociality indulge latent fantasies about the triumph of collective governance of the Internet over surveillance capitalism. They also reinforce class biases about the value of cognitive over manual labor and its rightful resistance to automation. Anxieties over the sharing economy of on-demand labor platforms also moralize work as a social and communal contribution that is sullied by market relations, which impedes workers’ demands for increased wages.
The book’s strength lies in its goal to “expose and critique the unidentified and underexamined conservatism of the Left as it is expressed through the anxiety surrounding the transformation of work at the hands of digital technology.” Goldberg’s approach convincingly demonstrates how a range of arguments about digital labor stems from the implicit ideal about the collective governance of platforms and society by an enlightened cognitive class, operating according to nonmarket motivations. Researchers of participatory cultures and creative industries have investigated the social, emotional, and regulatory dimensions of work’s morality, but few have exposed the humanist underpinnings of these discourses and their critique with the forcefulness and consistency of Antisocial Media. This exposure strengthens critical–cultural scholarship, which routinely makes normative arguments about how society should be, in some cases without acknowledging them as such. This reflexivity is crucial for working through the hidden injuries of class, gender, race, and sexuality that scaffold the morality of work and its utopian underpinnings.
The forcefulness and consistency of this insight about normativity, however, erase nuances in digital economy research, where authors have shifted positions and perspectives over time. The inconsistencies that Antisocial Media identifies as manifestations of anxieties appear not only within but also between texts, which is an intended feature of scholarly (and public) discourse. For example, many researchers of cultural industries that Goldberg cites have emphasized their ambivalence toward the institution of work and reflected on the normative ends of their scholarship over the course of their careers. In particular, the book misses an opportunity to engage with sociologists and cultural theorists of “post-work,” who continue the Weberian tradition of questioning productivism and the work ethic in its various adaptations to capitalist production. Goldberg does cite some of this research to substantiate his own provocations. However, digital labor scholars would have benefited from the interplay between queer theory’s critique of normativity and postwork’s discussions about the morality of welfare reform, for example, in proposals and programs for Universal Basic Income.
Overall, Antisocial Media is a cogent contribution to research on the new economy that is performatively reflexive about its own limitations. To restrain the drive for normative arguments that the book critiques, Goldberg states that his “aim here is simply to point out that contemporary anxieties about automation and technological unemployment are grounded in an attachment to the human as a social subject.” Citing the work of feminist scholar Kathi Weeks, Goldberg ends his discussion on playfulness by questioning how paid and unpaid forms of work compensate for each other in the digital economy and whether we can forgo this attachment to work altogether. This is not a question the book can answer. This is because moving past the discursive affect of anxiety toward hope—however utopian—requires taking a normative stand. Goldberg’s analysis will nonetheless help future scholars make that stand, by holding them to account for their positionality and politics. This work will be of interest to researchers of digital labor and platforms in the field of media and cultural studies. It will also be helpful to students seeking a synthesis of the current research on convergences of work and play, automation, and on-demand labor platforms.