Shaping Technology ? Shaping Care Work? A Social Shaping of Technology Analysis of the Digitalization of Care Work
Sprache des Vortragstitels:
Englisch
Original Tagungtitel:
42nd International Labour Process Conference
Sprache des Tagungstitel:
Englisch
Original Kurzfassung:
In the past decades, care and care work have undergone a drastic economic shift, accompanied by the emergence and implementation of a variety of digital technologies in the field. Studies researching the technologisation of this ? often imagined as rationalization-resistant (Aulenbacher 2021) ? sector show, how these technologies result in an intensification of work (Moore and Hayes 2017), being a means of control (McDonald et al. 2021) or foster new divisions of labour. These tendencies mostly resonate with labour process analysis of technologies, rendering the introduction of new technologies as a means of the management to increase control over the labour process (Hall 2010). According to Hall (2010) and more recently Thompson and Laaser (2021) labour process analyses of technologies need to be renewed or revitalized. In doing so, they reference the Social Shaping of Technology (SST) (MacKenzie and Wajcman 1999). While Thompson and Laaser (2021) focus on the political and economic forces that shape technology at work, SST emphasizes more aspects, such as the role of the economy, the state, gender and race inequalities as well as technology itself and path dependencies. My contribution scrutinizes the following: First, it analyses how care technologies (i.e. robots and digital documentation systems) are socially shaped by the antagonism between capital and labour but also by the gendered character of technology and care as ?masculine? or ?feminine? and narratives in the field. Second, it sheds light to the effects digitalization has on care work. Lastly, it concludes with a reflection on how the findings are connected to the perceived ?rationalization-resistance? of the sector. These findings show an ambivalent picture, while the implementation of digital documentation systems resemble a quasi-taylorization of the work, as in other sectors, the deployment of robots in care homes is not in line with the often-prevalent control imperatives.
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