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future without the indignities, petty cruelties, exploitation and misery of capitalist work is possible, and it is one worth fighting for’ (p. 166).
Princeton: William Blake Trust/Princeton University Press (1991).
Thomas Klikauer has 700 publications and writes regularly for BraveNewEurope (Western Europe), the Barricades (Eastern Europe), Buzzflash (USA), Counterpunch (USA), Countercurrents (India), Tikkun (USA), and ZNet (USA). One of his books is on Managerialism. His next book is on Media Capitalism (Palgrave).
Hudson, K. (2019). Lowborn: growing up, getting away and returning to Britain’s poorest towns. London: Chatto & Windus.
Meg Young (GCA and GCPA, University of New England at Armidale) is a Sydney Financial Accountant & HR Manager who likes good literature and proof reading. Contact: T.Klikauer@westernsydney.edu.au
References Blake, W. (1804). Jerusalem – The emanation of the giant Albion (edited with an introduction and notes by Morton D. Paley). London &
Burtch, G., Carnahan, S. & Greenwood, B. N. (2018). Can you gig it? An empirical examination of the gig economy and entrepreneurial activity. Management Science, 64(12), 5497-5520.
Jones, O. (2011). Chavs: the demonisation of the working class. London: Verso. Klikauer, T. & Link, C. (2021). The Good-Doing Elite. Retrieved from https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/the-good-doing-elite/ Thompson, E. P. (1963). The Making of the English Working Class. London: Victor Gollancz. Thompson, E. P. (1967). Time, work-discipline and industrial capitalism. Past & Present, 38(1), 56-97. Wood, A. (2020). Despotism on demand: how power operates in the flexible workplace. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Youn, S. (2019). 40% of Americans don’t have $400 in the bank for emergency expenses: Federal Reserve. ABC News. Retrieved from https://abcnews.go.com/US/10-americans-struggle-cover-400emergency-expense-federal/story?id=63253846
A gig guide for the 21st century The Gig Economy – Workers and Media in the Age of Convergence, by Brian Dolber, Michelle RodinoColocino, Chenjerai Kumanyika & Todd Wolfson ISBN 9780367686222, Routledge, London, xvii+322 pp., 2021. Reviewed by Thomas Klikauer and Meg Young Written by 33 international authors and organised by four editors, Brian Dolber and his colleagues’ book The Gig Economy provides more than just a contemporary examination of a rather cool sounding part of capitalism – The Gig Economy. Behind the trendy name lurks a reality of work that is everything but cool. The book’s seventeen chapters show as much. One of the key lessons of the entire volume appears right in the book’s first line when Michelle Rodino-Colocino says, ‘if we don’t band together, it’s only going to get crappier’ (p. 3). That work is going to be crappier defines not only the neoliberal workplace but the gig economy as a whole. Crappy work remains part of the gig economy that, according to the US Department of Labor, is defined as, ‘a single project or tasks for which a worker is hired, often through a digital marketplace, to work on demand’ (p. 4). The resulting and often highly standardised working conditions can create circumstances that can unify workers throughout the gig
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economy to improve them. In other words, gig workers are ‘recognising their common interests’ (p. 4) for higher wages, shorter working hours, and better working conditions. Yet, unlike many other workers, gig workers also struggle for recognition in a very particular way. They ‘demand immediate recognition of drivers’ rights as employees’ (p. 5). Gig workers are employed under the manageriallegal hallucination of being contractors – not employees – by ‘the captains of data-mediated capitalism’ (p. 5). In that, gig management is aided by the fact that sections of gig management have become algorithmic management. Algorithmic management relies on mathematical algorithms used as a technical form of control. As such, management ‘cultivates a comforting sense of technical neutrality’ (p. 7). This is incredibly useful to management. It can setup control systems, engineer surveillance, and discipline workers while pretending that these are only technical and neutral issues. In reality,
A gig guide for the 21st century Reviewed by Thomas Klikauer and Meg Young
vol. 64, no. 1, 2022
