This article develops a multi-level framework for the analysis of a bottom-up politics of technology at the workplace. It draws on a multi-case study on algorithmic management of manual labor in manufacturing and delivery platforms in Germany. In researching how workers influenced the use of algorithmic management systems, the concept of technopolitics is developed to refer to three different arenas of negotiation: (1) the arena of regulation, where institutional framings of technologies in production are negotiated, typically between state actors, employers’ (...) associations, and unions. (2) The arena of implementation, where strategies of technology deployment are negotiated—in the German production model typically between management and works council. (3) The arena of appropriation, in which different organizational technocultures offer contesting schemes for the actual use of technology at work. Whereas most recent research on digitalization of work conceptualizes workers as mere objects of digitalization processes, this paper focuses on worker agency as a “technopolitics from below.” It thus demonstrates how workers influence the concrete outcome of digitalization projects. (shrink)

This article calls for a rethinking of critical sociology. Representing classical critical sociology, the Bourdieusian paradigm illustrated domination, but its negative foundation removed actors’ power, privileging sociological knowledge as capable of identifying (social) transcendental categories of thought. Latour’s constructivism challenged this privilege, giving actors the political power of aggregating collectives around their common concerns at the cost of emphasizing domination and critique. We propose a critical approach that evades a transcendental perspective reliant on pure negation, producing a more positive critical (...) sociology founded on processualist phenomenological and pragmatic perspectives, principally Merleau-Ponty and Dewey. Actors and researchers can collectively ruminate on their perspectives and concerns to challenge power structures and transform their worlds. At the center of this is the social-mien, a creative reimagination of habitus. A brief discussion of the protests and scholarship surrounding the Notre-Dame-des-Landes activists’ practice of democracy highlights the utility of the approach and serves as a model for future application. (shrink)

This article challenges the urge within Actor-Network Theory, posthumanism, and the ontological turn in sociology and anthropology to dissolve analytical distinctions between subject and object, society and nature, and human and non-human. It argues that only by acknowledging such distinctions and applying a realist ontology can exploitative and unsustainable global power relations be exposed. The predicament of the Anthropocene should not prompt us to abandon distinctions between society and nature but to refine the analytical framework through which we can distinguish (...) between sentience and non-sentience and between the symbolic and non-symbolic. The incompatibility of posthumanist and Marxist approaches to the Anthropocene and the question of agency derives from ideological differences as well as different methodological proclivities. A central illustration of these differences is the understanding of fetishism, a concept viewed by posthumanists as condescending but by Marxists as emancipatory. (shrink)

The concept of magic is frequently used to discuss technology, a practice considered useful by some with others arguing that viewing technology as magic precludes a proper understanding of technology. The concept of magic is especially prominent in discussions of artificial intelligence and machine learning. Based on an anthropological perspective, this paper juxtaposes ML technology with magic, using descriptions drawn from a project on an ML-powered system for propulsion control of cargo ships. The paper concludes that prior scholarly work on (...) technology has failed to both define magic adequately and use research into magic. It also argues that although the distinction between ML technology and magic is important, recognition of the similarities is useful for understanding ML technology. (shrink)