Dienstag, 18. Juni, ab 20 c.t.: Into the Orbits of the Platform Economy: On the Work(ers) of Amazon – englischsprachiger Vortrag mit Sarrah Kassem.
While Amazon.com was established in the mid-1990s, it is over the course of the last few years that Amazon has grown exponentially- expanding in terms of its workforce, its warehouses and physical infrastructure, and finally its products and services. As the shareholders and top executives of Amazon accumulate more and more wealth, it comes at the price of the manual workers. What appears to the customer behind the screen as humanlesss processes – from ordering to receiving a product – is in every way based on the exploitation of these warehouse workers, reminiscent of the heydays of Taylorist factories. This presentation firstly contextualizes Amazon in the wider platform economy, as it is a corporation that has come to dominate and indeed monopolize numerous fields. It then delves into how work is organized in Amazon’s warehouses and how workers organize themselves, in other words – it analyzes the (in)direct power Amazon exerts over its workers and their lives, while shedding light on the agency of workers, the powers they claim and the different forms of labor organization.
Sarrah Kassem is currently doing her PhD at the University of Tübingen in the field of Political Economy, in which she engages with the platform economy and delves into the case of Amazon.
Los gehts um 20 c.t. in Hörsaal 21 im Kupferbau.
Das gesamte Programm, der von den Fachschaften Politik, Informatik und vielen weiteren organisierten Vortragsreihe, findet ihr unter https://fs-politik.de/vortragsreihe-cyber-valley/
Mit freundlicher Unterstützung durch den Studierendenrat Tübingen.
