Whither labor geography and the rise of the robots?

Social & Cultural Geography

ISSN: 1464-9365 (Print) 1470-1197 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rscg20

Whither labor geography and the rise of the robots? David Bissell & Vincent J. Del Casino To cite this article: David Bissell & Vincent J. Del Casino (2017) Whither labor geography and the rise of the robots?, Social & Cultural Geography, 18:3, 435-442, DOI: 10.1080/14649365.2016.1273380 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2016.1273380

Published online: 18 Jan 2017.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 305

View related articles

View Crossmark data

Citing articles: 1 View citing articles

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rscg20 Download by: [The University Of Melbourne Libraries]

Date: 08 October 2017, At: 16:36

SOCIAL & CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY, 2017 VOL. 18, NO. 3, 435442 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2016.1273380

Whither labor geography and the rise of the robots? David Bissella

and Vincent J. Del Casino Jr.b

Research School of Social Sciences, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia; bSchool of Geography and Development, The University of Arizona, Tucson, USA

Downloaded by [The University Of Melbourne Libraries] at 16:36 08 October 2017

a

ABSTRACT

The rise of the robots suggests a technological revolution like no other. It heralds potentially profound impacts on jobs and labor markets. Geographers have so far remained relatively quiet about such transformations. This commentary suggests ways in which social and cultural geographers can expand upon a robust labor geography and the debates surrounding the relationship between robots, robotic technologies, and labor. Six areas of engagement are offered that outline the richness and nuance of social and cultural geographical analysis related to the ‘rise of the robots’ at a time where much of the popular discourse around robotics is characterized by the extremities of either dystopian angst or positive boosterism. We call on social and cultural geographers to engage in conceptually rigorous and empirically informed research that provides novel ways of making sense of the multiple dimensions of our robotic futures.

Quelle destination pour la géographie du travail et l’essor des robots RÉSUMÉ

L’essor des robots suggère une révolution technologique à nulle autre pareille. Il annonce une influence profonde sur le marché des professions et de l’emploi. Les géographes jusqu’à présent sont restés relativement discrets sur de telles transformations. Ce commentaire suggère les possibilités qui s’offrent aux géographes sociaux et culturels pour approfondir une solide géographie du travail ainsi que les débats autour des relations entre les robots, les technologies robotiques et le travail. Six domaines d’engagement sont proposés, qui soulignent la richesse et les nuances des analyses sociales et culturelles géographiques par rapport à « l’essor des robots » à une époque où la robotique se caractérise par les extrémismes de, soit l’anxiété dystopique, soit la promotion positive. Nous appelons les géographes sociaux et culturels à s’impliquer dans une recherche conceptuellement rigoureuse et empiriquement éclairée qui fournisse de nouvelles façons de comprendre les multiples dimensions de nos avenirs robotiques.

¿Hacia dónde va la geografía laboral y el auge de los robots? RESUMEN

El surgimiento de los robots sugiere una revolución tecnológica como ninguna otra. Anuncia potencialmente profundas repercusiones en los

CONTACT David Bissell

[email protected]

© 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

ARTICLE HISTORY

Received 9 November 2016 Accepted 15 November 2016 KEYWORDS

Algorithmic life; automation; labor geographies; robots and robotic technologies MOTS CLÉS

Vie algorithmique; automation; géographies du travail; robots et technologies robotiques PALABRAS CLAVE

Vida algorítmica; automatización; geografías laborales; robots y tecnologías robóticas


436

D. BISSELL AND V. J. DEL CASINO

puestos y mercados laborales. Hasta el momento, los geógrafos han permanecido relativamente callados ante tales transformaciones. Este comentario sugiere formas en que los geógrafos sociales y culturales pueden expandirse sobre una sólida geografía laboral y los debates que rodean la relación entre los robots, las tecnologías robóticas y el trabajo. Se ofrecen seis áreas de compromiso que describen la riqueza y el matiz del análisis geográfico social y cultural relacionado con el ‘surgimiento de los robots’ en un momento en el que gran parte del discurso popular alrededor de la robótica se caracteriza por el extremismo de la angustia distópica o la promoción positiva (positive boosterism). Se pide a los geógrafos sociales y culturales que participen en investigaciones conceptualmente rigurosas y empíricamente informadas que proporcionen nuevas formas de dar sentido a las múltiples dimensiones de nuestros futuros robóticos.

Introduction From driverless lorries to self-driving cars, and from automated surgery to robotic solicitors, we are presently on the verge of a technological revolution like no other. Some predictions warn that almost 50% of current jobs are at risk of replacement by robotics and automation technologies (Frey & Osborne, 2013), while others suggest that labor markets (for humans) will continue to change rapidly toward supporting a more automated future (Workplace Policy Institute, 2014). And, yet, social and cultural geographers as well as labor geographers seem to have so far remained relatively quiet about such changes (albeit with some notable exceptions such as Ellem, 2016; Nast, 2015, 2016). From manufacturing, transportation, logistics, healthcare, and law to education, agriculture, accountancy, journalism, and learning and data analytics, few employment fields are immune from the effects of these technologies on labor and labor relations. This means that there is a unique opportunity for geographers to interrogate the magnitude and reach that robotics are having on everyday work life. On first glance, the emergence of the field of labor geography (Herod, 1997) would seem best placed to survey the impacts of robotics on work. Many of the key questions that labor geography asks revolve around the question of worker agency, the changing nature of global production networks, and the new intermediaries that are emerging in response to new forms of work (Castree, 2007; Coe, 2013). But, labor geographies, as far as we can tell, have done very little to engage with the question of how robots, robotic technologies, and automation more generally might be producing new socio-spatial relations of production and consumption as well as new human/nonhuman relations. While social and cultural geographers have engaged labor geographies sporadically, they do have a well-established record of engaging with automation technologies, and it is this potential that we want to open up here. This commentary suggests how social and cultural geographers can contribute to debates about the relationship between robotics and labor along more nuanced lines and thus enliven a labor geography that can be more focused upon questions related to robotic futures (c.f., Del Casino, 2015). It suggests how social and cultural geographies can take up questions related to the everyday political economy of labor and the rapid changes presented to us by this round of labor automation through machine learning and artificial intelligence. In short, it is argued here that social and cultural geographers are well-placed to unpack the complexities and richness of the relationships of robotics and labor,

SOCIAL & CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY

437

emphasizing the value of dwelling with their ambivalences, rather than slipping into the tempting yet extreme positions of either dystopian angst (Ford, 2016) or positive ‘boosterism’ (Ross, 2016). In this way, social and cultural geographers can both engage with labor geography and inform how that subfield might take up questions of robots, robotic technologies, and automation.


Disciplinary interventions and opportunities Well over a decade ago, social and cultural geographers were highlighting how software code was producing space ‘automatically’ across many spheres of life (Thrift & French, 2002). Since then, social and cultural geographers have looked at how automation technologies are intensifying different forms of social splintering (Graham, 2005); and, more recently, how big data are creating new forms of social marginalization (Kwan, 2016). This work has not unfolded into a broader agenda for the field. In response, we want to point to six areas where we believe that social and cultural geographical research can enrich current thinking on the relation of robotics and work. These are key areas that can contribute to a labor geography that takes seriously robots, robotic technologies, and automation.

Labor, robotics and new everyday routines Robotics and automation are already having a marked effect on some employment sectors such as resource extraction, as Ellem’s (2016) account of the dwindling labor agency of mine employees in Western Australia indicates. This invites us to examine these effects on the lives of workers and their wider kinship networks. Given their attention to the dynamics of daily life, social and cultural geographers are well placed to examine how people’s everyday practices and routines are changing in response to these new working conditions. In turn, this charges us to consider how changing worlds of work are creating new relations at home, perhaps through new forms of time-squeeze that develops Jarvis’s (2011) work on household dynamics, or new forms of emotional dependency. Social and cultural geographers are also well placed to investigate the new forms of vulnerability that are being generated by the specters of obsolescence, redundancy and displacement which, as Diprose’s (2015) work highlights, are complex affective processes. Such conditions might give rise to new forms of mobility, through long distance mobile working practices of the intensity that Bissell (2014) describes in Sydney. Here, like many other cities, multiple pressures including rocketing house prices and the continued centralization of workplaces means that long-distance commuting from more affordable peri-urban locations is becoming more frequent, giving rise to lives that are shaped by the stresses and strains of spending hours in transit every day. Such conditions might also generate even longer distance migrations to find new work which, as Pratt’s (2012) work indicates, can create significant emotional challenges. Each of these invites us to think more carefully about the complexities of the decision-making practices (McCormack & Schwanen, 2011) that new ways of working gives rise to.

Labor, robotics and new workplaces The fine-grained ethnographic sensibilities, characteristic of social and cultural geographical research, are well positioned to explore the politics of the changed working practices that


438


actually take place in workplaces. There might be new patterns of gendering taking place within workplaces that are using robotics, as Holloway, Bear, and Wilkinson’s (2014) research on the changing identities, roles and ethical relations on dairy farms that have transitioned to robotics suggests. As Cockayne’s (2016) work on technology entrepreneurs shows, units of analysis such as affects and passions can unpack some of the complexities of how subjectivities become entangled within new conditions of labor in ways that might be both enlivening and depleting. Feminist analysis can provide us with critical ways of evaluating how robotic technologies might be expanding the work place in time and space, intensifying working practices for some, but providing new freedoms for others, as Richardson (in press) points out. For Birtchnell and Hoyle (2014), attention to questions of mobility has shown how robotic technologies such as 3D printing might change the flows of materials and labor in workplaces. Indeed, robotics technologies have the potential to change the power dynamics of workplaces, where the removal of humans can give rise to new forms of non-human authority, as Holloway et al. (2014) describe in relation to the automated technologies that monitor and modulate activity in the robotic dairy. Such complexities invite social and cultural geographers to explore how robotics are changing workplaces across different sectors from resource work, agriculture and education to medicine, care work, and service work.

Labor, robotics and new forms of workforce surveillance The introduction of advanced robotics and robotic technologies – particularly new algorithms – into everyday work has not only created new mechanisms of workforce practice but also new forms of worker surveillance. Kanngieser’s (2013) account of new workplace tracking and tracing technologies, is exemplary in this regard, revealing how robotics satisfies a corporate drive for efficiency and productivity gains, while reducing workers’ rights, benefits and opportunities for collective organization. Indeed, robotic devices are expanding the labored capacities of those who work in the surveillance industry, such as the U.S. border patrol (Boyce, 2016), as well as those who can now work more remotely (Flecker, 2016). Social and cultural geographers are well placed to think about the ways in which these new forms of surveillance enacted in and through the workplace are resituating human subjectivities and bringing into clearer focus the complexity of human–nonhuman relations being enabled by more intense robotic futures (c.f., Shaw, 2016). Here Irani (2015) offers a useful analysis of how Amazon’s techno-human infrastructure manages the challenges of a yet-to-be-realized artificial intelligence by re-inserting human actors into the labor process of data management but through the re-location of that labor to remote places.

Labor, robotics and new techno-bodily relations Social and cultural geographers are well-placed to explore some of the important ontological questions about the precise nature of the interdependence of bodies and robotics at work. With a rich and evolving heritage that has been concerned with exploring the nature of bodies and bodily experience, social and cultural geographers have largely moved away from thinking about essential identities to focus instead on relational capacities (Anderson & Harrison, 2010). Inspired by Haraway’s figure of the cyborg, robotics constitutes new and densely entangled relations between body and machine, as Gandy’s (2005) idea of ‘cyborg urbanisation’ intimates. Yet others, following Gilbert Simondon, suggest that the concept of



439

the ‘cyborg’ might blur crucial distinctions of humans and machines that might be better appraised along processual, ontogenetic lines (see De Boever, Murray, Roffe, & Woodward, 2012). Lapworth’s (2016) work, for instance, draws on Simondon to describe the specific processes of becoming that are happening as human bodies enter into relations with other entities. In this light, exploring the materialities of specific and contingent human–machine interfaces becomes significant. Ash’s (2015) research on the ‘enveloped’ milieu of the bodies, screens and controls involved in the process of video gaming is exemplary here, which prompts us to rethink robots as emergent assemblages more than stable entities. These conceptual concerns invite us to evaluate how robotics might be changing the nature of encounters, proxemics and sociality at work. Social and geographers are therefore well primed to evaluate how workplace robotics are changing power, not in terms of top-down domination, but a more knotty sense of how power is immanent to events and situations.

Labor, robotics and materializing futures Social and cultural geographers have been at the fore of rethinking the role of futures in our present. Their insights show how the work of anticipating and predicting future events and scenarios has all kinds of real effects in the present (Anderson, 2010). Given the many robotics applications that are currently in development, gaining a richer understanding of the logics and practices that drive these futures is crucial. Future-oriented practices such as planning and modeling, for instance, enact specific futures in the present, through the creation of distinctive atmospheres and skills (Adey, 2009). Kinsley’s (2012) work is exemplary in this regard, highlighting the power of anticipatory knowledges for the construction of technological futures. Social and cultural geographers have also explored ways in which media, filmic and literary presentations of futures each open up spaces to contemplate future spatialities (Kitchin & Kneale, 2005). In a different sphere, others have looked at how children’s aspirations and imaginations can enact specific future employment scenarios, as Holloway, Brown, and Pimlott-Wilson (2011) suggest. What this invites is a greater attention to the ways in which specific robotic work futures are being anticipated in the present.

Labor, robotics and new experiments in living Rather than just documenting or predicting social transformations, social and cultural geographers have been at the forefront of experimenting with different modes of activism in order to bring about progressive change. The advent of robotic labor therefore presents exciting opportunities to invent new forms of living. Activist philosopher Bernard Stiegler (2016) for instance warns that to curb mass unemployment, we need to create a new commons through what he calls an ‘economy of contribution’. This is all about creating new ‘creative mutations’ that resist the hyper-standardization and indifferentiation that robotics and automation potentially creates. Such a call echoes social and cultural geographical research on community economies that has looked at time banks and commoning which point to new modes of economic exchange based on sharing (Gibson-Graham, 2008). In the face of potentially deathly repetition, social and cultural geographers are also well positioned to chart experimentations with new forms of work that de-automates routines as Warren and Gibson’s (2014) work on the value of hand-crafted objects such as surfboards demonstrates. Developing recent social and cultural geographical work on habit and automation

440


(Dewsbury & Bissell, 2015) could go some way towards imagining how we might develop new capacities for de-automation, split-second reflexes that might swerve us in other unexpected directions. Ultimately though, what this reminds us is how conceptual labor, enhancing knowledge, is at the heart of this activism. For Stiegler, this task is about decoupling labor (intellectual participation) from employment (banal work). For social and cultural geography, this might be about building new research projects that support the development of new forms of collective intelligence.


Conclusion Through this commentary, we have outlined some of the potential ‘access roads’ that social and cultural geographers might take to explore how robotics and robotic technologies are changing the nature of work. Social and cultural geography has certainly engaged with questions of labor and, to some extent, machines if not robotics (e.g. Kirsch & Mitchell, 2004). But, more broadly, what we have tried to show is that there is a very rich history of conceptual and practical work in the sub-discipline that is extremely well positioned for evaluating the impacts of robotics on the world of work. What we are calling for then is a renewed focus by social and cultural geographers on new practices of labor and the intersections of that labor with the rapidly changing socio-spatial relations brought about by new forms of robots, robotic futures, and automated life. Such work is, we argue, essential if we are to avoid the pitfalls of generalizing diagnoses that frame the debate on robotics in terms of slavery and freedom. As social and cultural geographers, we need to use our capacities to excavate and chart the complexities, ambivalences, and minor potentials (Gerlach, 2015) of robotics on work in order to make a creative difference. We call on social and cultural geographers to engage in conceptually rigorous and empirically informed research that provides novel ways of making sense of the multiple dimensions of our robotic futures.

Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding This work was supported by the Australian Research Council [grant number DP160100979].

ORCID David Bissell

http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0964-186X

References Adey, P. (2009). Facing airport security: Affect, biopolitics, and the preemptive securitisation of the mobile body. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 27, 274–295. Anderson, B. (2010). Preemption, precaution, preparedness: Anticipatory action and future geographies. Progress in Human Geography, 34, 777–798. Anderson, B., & Harrison, P. (2010). The promise of non-representational theories. In B. Anderson & P. Harrison (Eds.), Taking-place: Non-representational theories and geography (pp. 1–36). Farnham: Ashgate.



441

Ash, J. (2015). The interface envelope: Gaming, technology, power. London: Bloomsbury. Birtchnell, T., & Hoyle, W. (2014). 3D printing for development in the global south: The 3D4D challenge. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Bissell, D. (2014). Encountering stressed bodies: Slow creep transformations and tipping points of commuting mobilities. Geoforum, 51, 191–201. Boyce, G. (2016). The rugged border: Surveillance, policing and the dynamic materiality of the US/ Mexico frontier. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 34, 245–262. Castree, N. (2007). Labor geography: A work in progress. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 31, 853–862. Cockayne, D. (2016). Entrepreneurial affect: Attachment to work practice in San Francisco’s digital media sector. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 34, 456–473. Coe, N. (2013). Geographies of production III: Making space for labor. Progress in Human Geography, 37, 271–284. De Boever, A., Murray, A., Roffe, J., & Woodward, A. (2012). Gilbert Simondon: Being and technology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Del Casino, V., Jr. (2015). Social geographies II: Robots. Progress in Human Geography, online early.Please provide missing volume and page numbers, if applicable for the ‘Del Casino (2015)’ references list entry. Dewsbury, J. D., & Bissell, D. (2015). Habit geographies: The perilous zones in the life of the individual. Cultural Geographies, 22, 21–28. Diprose, G. (2015). Negotiating contradiction: Work, redundancy and participatory art. Area, 47, 246– 253. Ellem, B., (2016). Geographies of the labor process: Automation and the spatiality of mining. Work, Employment & Society, 30, 932–948. Flecker, J. (2016). Space, place and global digital work. London: Springer. Ford, M. (2016). Rise of the robots: Technology and the threat of a jobless future. New York, NY: Basic Books. Frey, C., & Osborne, M. (2013). The future of employment: How susceptible are jobs to computerisation? Oxford University Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology, http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac. uk/publications/view/1314. Gandy, M. (2005). Cyborg urbanization: Complexity and monstrosity in the contemporary city. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 29, 26–49. Gerlach, J. (2015). Editing worlds: Participatory mapping and a minor geopolitics. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 40, 273–286. Gibson-Graham, J. K. (2008). Diverse economies: Performative practices for other worlds. Progress in Human Geography, 32, 613–632. Graham, S. (2005). Software-sorted geographies. Progress in Human Geography, 29, 562–580. Herod, A. (1997). From a geography of labor to a labor geography: Labor’s spatial fix and the geography of capitalism. Antipode, 29, 1–31. Holloway, S., Brown, G., & Pimlott-Wilson, H. (2011). Editorial introduction: Geographies of education and aspiration. Children’s Geographies, 9, 1–5. Holloway, L., Bear, C., & Wilkinson, K. (2014). Robotic milking technologies and renegotiating situated ethical relationships on UK dairy farms. Agriculture and Human Values, 31, 185–199. Irani, L. (2015). The cultural work of microwork. New Media & Society, 17, 720–739. Kanngieser, A. (2013). Tracking and tracing: Geographies of logistical governance and laboring bodies. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 31, 594–610. Kinsley, S. (2012). Futures in the making: Practices to anticipate ‘ubiquitous computing’. Environment and Planning A, 44, 1554–1569. Kirsch, S., & Mitchell, D. (2004). The nature of things: Dead labor, nonhuman actors, and the persistence of Marxism. Antipode, 36, 687–705. Kitchin, R., & Kneale, J. (Eds.). (2005). Lost in space: Geographies of science fiction. London: A&C Black. Kwan, M. P. (2016). Algorithmic geographies: Big data, algorithmic uncertainty, and the production of geographic knowledge. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 106, 274–282. Jarvis, H. (2011). Saving space, sharing time: Integrated infrastructures of daily life in cohousing. Environment and Planning A, 43, 560–577.


442


Lapworth, A. (2016). Theorizing bioart encounters after Gilbert Simondon. Theory, Culture & Society, 33, 123–150. McCormack, D., & Schwanen, T. (2011). Guest editorial: The space – Times of decision making. Environment and Planning A, 43, 2801–2818. Nast, H. (2015). The machine-phallus: Psychoanalyzing the geopolitical economy of masculinity and race. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 35, 766–785. Nast, H. (2016) Into the arms of dolls: Japan’s declining fertility rates, the 1990s financial crisis and the (maternal) comforts of the posthuman. Social & Cultural Geography, online early. Pratt, G. (2012). Families apart: Migrant mothers and the conflicts of labor and love. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Richardson, E. (in press). Feminist geographies of digital work. Progress in Human Geography. Ross, A. (2016). The industries of the future. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster. Shaw, I. G. R. (2016). Predator empire: Drone warfare and full spectrum dominance. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Stiegler, B. (2016). Automatic society: The future of work, Vol. 1. Cambridge: Polity. Thrift, N., & French, S. (2002). The automatic production of space. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 27, 309–335. Warren, A., & Gibson, C. (2014). Surfing places, surfboard-makers: Craft, creativity and cultural heritage in Hawai’i, California and Australia. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Workplace Policy Institute. (2014). The transformation of the workplace through robotics, artificial intelligence, and automation. San Francisco: Littler Mendelson.