Venture Labor| Foreword to Critical Commentary on Venture Labor

Authors

  • Laura Robinson Santa Clara University
  • Jeremy Schulz UC Berkeley

Keywords:

labor, freelance, professionals, free agent, click workers, invisible labor, networked-work, unemployment, self-help discourses, hiring, individualism

Abstract

At the International Communication Association’s 2014 conference in Seattle, Washington, along with other panelists, Laura Robinson, Jeremy Schulz, Alice E. Marwick, Nicole S. Cohen, C. W. Anderson, Michelle Rodino-Colocino, Enda Brophy, and Gina Neff presented their work across two panels, respectively entitled “Venture Labor: Work and ‘The Good Life’” and “Laboring for the ‘Good (Part of Your) Life.’” After the conference, panelists synthesized their conclusions. Critical commentary was invited from a range of prominent international scholars: Paul Hirsch, Sarah Banet-Weiser, Ofer Sharone, Barry Wellman, Dimitrina Dimitrova, Tsahi Hayat, Guang Ying Mo, Beverly Wellman, and Antonio Casilli.

Author Biographies

Laura Robinson, Santa Clara University

Laura Robinson is Associate Professor at Santa Clara University. She earned her PhD from UCLA, where she held a Mellon Fellowship in Latin American Studies and received a Bourse d’Accueil at the École Normale Supérieure. In addition to holding a postdoctoral fellowship on a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation funded project at the USC Annenberg Center, Robinson has served as Affiliated Faculty at the ISSI at UC Berkeley, Visiting Assistant Professor at Cornell University and Visiting Scholar at Trinity College Dublin. She is Series Co-Editor for Emerald Studies in Media and Communications and a past chair of CITAMS (Communication, Information Technology, and Media Sociology Section of the ASA). Her publications include articles in journals including Sociological Methodology, Information, Communication and Society, and New Media & Society. Her research has earned awards from CITASA, AOIR, and NCA IICD. Her website is www.laurarobinson.org.

Jeremy Schulz, UC Berkeley

Jeremy Schulz is a visiting scholar in residence at the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues, UC Berkeley. He earned his PhD from UC Berkeley and held a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellowship at Cornell University. He has published on a broad range of topics, including consumption, work, family, culture, and inequalities. His recent publications include “Talk of Work” published in Theory and Society and “Shifting Grounds and Evolving Battlegrounds,” published in the American Journal of Cultural Sociology. His article “Winding Down the Workday,” published in Qualitative Sociology, received the Shils-Coleman Award from the ASA Theory Section. His current research examines peer-to-peer consumption, wealth trajectories, indebtedness, and innovative qualitative methods. His website is www.jeremyschulz.org. 

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Published

2017-05-09

Issue

Vol. 11 (2017)

Section

Forum

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