Paradoxical Autonomy in Japan's Platform Economy. (July 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Shibata, Saori
• Other Names: Sharif Naubahar guest-editor.; Huang Yu guest-editor.
• Is Part Of: Science, technology & society. Volume 24:Number 2(2019)
• Page Start: 271
• Page End: 287
• Publication Date: 2019-07
• Subjects: Platform -- digital work -- crowd work -- Japan; Technology -- Social aspects -- Periodicals; Science -- Social aspects -- Periodicals; 509
• DOI: 10.1177/0971721819841995
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0971-7218

Abstract

Crowdsourcing firms, their client firms and the government in Japan have advocated that crowd work provides opportunities for workers to enjoy autonomous working practices, enabling subpopulations such as women and the elderly who would otherwise be excluded from the labour market to find employment. This is far from the case. Instead, crowdsourcing is perhaps better considered a means, enabled by technological advances, by which to flexibilise the labour market. We have been witnessing a shift in the forms of domination and control imposed on labour from a direct, physical and onsite type of control to an indirect mechanism of domination that has rendered workers less visible while suppressing wages. This further implies that the paradoxical autonomy of crowd work is embedded in contemporary antagonism in Japanese employment relations.