[iDC] Hyperemployed or Feminized Labor?

[Cynthia Wang]

Hello all, I'm Cynthia Wang, a PhD Student at the Annenberg School of
Communication at USC. Been following this listserv for a few years now, and
tentatively jumping in. Thanks to Ian for the article, which has really
helped in my thinking through some of my dissertation research questions,
and everyone's insight to this issue - truly some interesting stuff!

I've been thinking about mobile communication technologies in terms of
enabling and reinforcing a sort of logics of productivity wherever we are -
productivity being that impulse to always be doing "something productive" -
either in the way of maintaining or expanding economic capital (working,
answering emails from bosses), social capital (Facebooking, social media,
texting/messaging friends), cultural/informational capital (reading news,
various articles), etc, and the idea of "hyperemployment" is, I find, a
useful way to think of this. In my research, I'm considering looking at the
ways in which we use mobile communication technologies to reinforce logics
of productivity during "interstitial times" of waiting or traveling, which
are now accompanied with mobile technology and hyperemployment, allowing us
to "work" wherever we are, thereby recouping some sense of control over our
maintenance of these various forms of capital...

Thanks for the discussion!

Cynthia


On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 8:00 PM, Davin Heckman <davinheckman at gmail.com>wrote:

> To me, exploitation evokes taking something, while hyperemployment
> conjures up an ironic sense of 'making do' (great article, by the way). I
> tried very hard to dig into these concerns with my dissertation, which,
> among other things, deals at some point with the shift in home tech from
> labor-saving tools to consumer-oriented tech (which is also a shift in the
> gendering of household spaces) and a shift from an implicit recognition of
> the daily grind to a focus on managing the 'everyday'....
> Davin
>
>
> Monday, November 18, 2013, Ian Bogost <ian.bogost at lmc.gatech.edu> wrote:
> > On Nov 18, 2013, at 1:01 AM, Mark Andrejevic <markbandrejevic at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> >> Having said that, I'd be interested in seeing more argument/evidence
> backing up the claim that the notion of hyperemployment might be more
> likely to gain critical purchase than that of exploitation (because the
> latter sounds so retro-Marxist?) or hyperexploitation
> (retro-Baudrillardian?). Is this because of the way the term fits into the
> chain of associations with "unemployment, underemployment and
> overemployment"? Because the notion of employment carries with it
> associations of "being used"? Because it taps into a sense of fatigue and
> overwork rather than with threateningly radical political claims?
> >
> > I don't know either, yet, but my short answer to your
> hopefully-not-rhetorical questions is "yes."
> >
> > That said, I've given some further thought to Karen and Trebor's shared
> comment:
> >
> >> What I am curious about, however, is the use of the term
> “hyperemployment.” As Trebor suggested, the term is contradictory for
> workers who are refused the designation of “employee.”
> >
> > … and I just don't see the problem. By this logic, "unemployment" is
> contradictory for workers who are not employed. Thus the modification
> offered by a prefix, which refers to the *domain* of employment.
> >
> > Ian
> >
> >
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-- 
************
Cynthia Wang
Annenberg School for Communication
University of Southern California
cynthia.w at usc.edu
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