Expanding the Locus of Resistance: Understanding the Co-constitution of Control and Resistance in the Gig Economy

Existing literature examines control and resistance in the context of service organizations that rely on both managers and customers to control workers during the execution of work. Digital platform companies, however, eschew managers in favor of algorithmically mediated customer control—that is, customers rate workers, and algorithms tally and track these ratings to control workers’ future platform-based opportunities. How has this shift in the distribution of control among platforms, customers, and workers affected the relationship between control and resistance? Drawing on workers’ experiences from a comparative ethnography of two of the largest platform companies, we find that platform use of algorithmically mediated customer control has expanded the service encounter such that organizational control and workers’ resistance extend well beyond the execution of work. We find that workers have the most latitude to deploy resistance early in the labor process but must adjust their resistance tactics because their ability to resist decreases in each subsequent stage of the labor process. Our paper, thus, develops understanding of resistance by examining the relationship between control and resistance before, during, and after a task, providing insight into how control and resistance function in the gig economy. We also demonstrate the limitations of platforms’ reliance on algorithmically mediated customer control by illuminating how workers’ everyday interactions with customers can influence and manipulate algorithms in ways that platforms cannot always observe.

Národopisné oddělení Národního muzea v letech 1938–1948

This text discusses the history of the Ethnographic Department during the 1938–1948 period, i.e., chiefly during the Second World War and the Third Czechoslovak Republic. There was the significant shift in the ideological concept of the National Museum, as the institution progressed from the ideology of Czechoslovakism to defence of the Czech nation, and it was also necessary to deal with the pervading Nazi ideology and its specific manifestations (e.g., Germanization and Aryanization). On a practical level, the department primarily had to cope with a lack of space, as well as the gradual loss of and the fluctuations in staff. The fate of Drahomíra Stránská, who was a key figure in the museum’s ethnography, is also discussed. On a conceptual level, the department did not advance much and remained at the level of descriptive or comparative ethnography with an emphasis on other Slavic nations and the domestic environment.

Street-level workers, managers and institutional tensions: a comparative ethnography of healthcare practices of in/exclusion in three Italian public organisations

Public organisations are fundamental actors in migrant incorporation processes, as they are in charge of assessing migrants’ entitlement and providing access to welfare services. While a lot has been written on the individual determinants of street-level decisions, the role of organisational and institutional factors in shaping implementation practices has received little attention so far. By linking the street-level bureaucracy approach and the neo-institutionalist perspective in organisational analysis, this article investigates how public organisations mediate migrant incorporation processes in the field of healthcare. Drawing on a comparative ethnographic study of three public health organisations in an Italian region, the paper suggests that, in times of institutional tensions, managers’ priorities and framings of the issue, the ways they respond to decision-makers’ goals and allocate resources for implementing them, orient - and lead to variation in - street-level healthcare practices of in/exclusion for migrants with irregular status.

Teacher immunity in professional identity: reflection on male ielts teachers’ homosocial fabrics in 2 iranian ethnographic institutions

As a new concept in language teacher psychology, language teacher immunity is a strong indicator of how teachers behave and respond in the face of disturbances which has a profound effect on teachers' profession. So, as it is apparent, research on language teacher immunity is in its embryonic stage and this qualitative study tried to fill the gap in the existing literature by using Retrodictive Qualitative Modeling to develop an in-depth understanding the experiences of five IELTS male teachers from two ethnographic sites. And due to research and critical studies into men and masculinity has originated as one of the most emerging areas of sociological investigation, on a macro-level of ethnography, this research study concentrated on male IELTS teachers to see the interpretations about masculinity, homosocial relations and desire to make their own professional identity and on the micro-level, the ethos varies at each institution. To achieve the research objectives and answer the questions of this ethnographic study, three data collection techniques were utilized to generate information, namely document collection, classroom observations, and interviews. The findings of this comparative ethnography revealed that in the IELTS situation, “the Visionary” and “The Spark plug” should be placed in two separate groups of immunity (productive and adaptive) to increase the categories of immunity to 5 in this context. So, by adding masculinity patterns, which changed from physicality into knowledge-discipline and socialization-patronage in this study, it was concluded that those who were in productive and adaptive immunity category were not homogeneous due to the fact that they were complicit and approached themselves to the hegemonic masculinity with slight changes that the researchers could not separate them in their immunity.

Susceptibility in Development

Susceptibility in Development offers a novel approach to understanding power in development through theories of affect and emotion. Development agents—people tasked with designing or delivering development—are susceptible to being affected in ways that may derail or threaten their ‘sense of self’. This susceptibility is in direct relation to the capacity of others to affect development agents: an overlooked form of power. This book proposes a new analytical framework—the capacity/susceptibility to affect/be affected—to enable new readings of power relations and their consequences for development. These barely perceptible forms of power become visible through ethnographic attention to local level development. Susceptibility in Development offers a comparative ethnography of two types of local development agents: volunteers in a community development programme in Medan, Indonesia, and women municipal councillors in Dehradun, India. Ethnographic accounts that are attentive to the emotions and affects engendered in encounters between volunteers and ‘beneficiaries’, or municipal councillors and voters (for example) provide a fresh reading of the relations shaping local development. Local development agents may be more ‘susceptible’ than workers and volunteers from the global North, yet the capacity/susceptibility to affect/be affected orders relations and shapes outcomes of development from the local to the global. In theorizing from the local, Susceptibility in Development offers fresh insights into power dynamics in development.