*** Welcome to piglix ***

Immaterial labor


Immaterial labor is a term used to describe the affective and cognitive aspects of work that exist outside the traditional Marxian wage-based, labor theory of value, that the price of commodities is determined by the cost of the labor which produced them.

Studies of immaterial labor have included analysis of high-technology industries, although immaterial labor is understood as a concept far pre-dating digital technologies, specifically in the performance of gender and domestic roles, and other aspects of affective and cognitive work.

Themes commonly associated with immaterial labor in the context of the internet include: digital labor, commons-based peer production, and user-generated content production, which might include open source, free software, crowdsourcing, and flexible licensing agreements, as well as the collapse of copyright amidst the ambiguities of sharing creative works in the digital age, digital care work, and other conditions produced by participation in social environments within the digital, knowledge economy.

The term immaterial labor was coined by Italian sociologist and philosopher Maurizio Lazzarato in his 1997 essay "Immaterial Labor", published as a contribution to Radical Thought in Italy and edited by Hardt and Virno. It was re-published in 1997 as: Lavoro immateriale. Forme di vita e produzione di soggettività. (Ombre corte). Lazzarato was a participant in the Autonomia Operaia group as a student in Padua in the 1970s, and is a member of the editorial group of the journal Multitudes.

Post-Marxist scholars including Franco Berardi, Antonio Negri, Michael Hardt, Judith Revel, and Paolo Virno, among others have produced scholarship unpacking immaterial labor outside the traditional understanding of labor as a commodity-producing activity.


...
Wikipedia

...