Technology and the Crisis of Work: A Preview of Our Fall 2020 Issue

Technology and the Crisis of Work: A Preview of Our Fall 2020 Issue

A preview of our Fall 2020 issue, Technology and the Crisis of Work, guest-edited by Katrina Forrester and Moira Weigel.

Shantonia Jackson, interviewed in our fall issue. Artwork by Molly Crabapple

In our Fall 2020 issue, out October 5, Katrina Forrester and Moira Weigel have guest-edited a special section on Technology and the Crisis of Work. Drawing on the work of socialist feminists, the essays in this section examine labor—digital and in-person, paid and unpaid—in the era of COVID-19 and beyond.

“The spread of risk and death across the terrain of life-making has led to its politicization in new, uneven ways, whether it is in homeworking, for-profit healthcare, or community maintenance,” they write in their introduction. “It’s still unclear whether the chaos of spring and summer of 2020 will give way to a more manageable public health and jobs crisis, a period of major depression and long-term unemployment, or something unprecedented. One thing we do know is that, for now, old frameworks are straining under new pressures.”

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In the section (illustrated by John Michael Snowden, with cover art by Molly Crabapple): Julia Ticona on Care.com; Tressie McMillan Cottom on the hustle economy; Gabriel Winant interviews certified nursing assistant Shantonia Jackson about work in a long-term care facility during the pandemic; Veena Dubal on the new digital piecework; and Aaron Benanav on the deepening underemployment crisis.

Also in the issue: Adam Rothman and Barbara J. Fields on building solidarity against the backdrop of police murder; Kevin and Jay Mattson have a father-son conversation about Black Lives Matter; Justine van der Leun on Kwaneta Yatrice Harris, a woman incarcerated in Texas; Brian Morton on cultural appropriation and writing; Carlos Dada on democracy in Central America; Zachariah Mampilly and Jason Stearns on U.S. foreign policy in Africa; Hannah Black on tenant organizing; Mitchell Cohen on Irving Howe’s socialism; Cyryl Ryzak on Poland’s Law and Justice Party; and a selection of Sarah Jaffe and Michelle Chen’s stories of work in the coronavirus era.

And in the book review section: Adom Getachew on the Indian constitution; Jefferson Cowie on the new debate about the founding of the United States; Victoria Baena on Fernanda Melchor’s novel Hurricane Season; Samuel Bagenstos on anti-discrimination legal radicalism; Joe William Trotter Jr. on labor organizing in the South; and Ariel Ron on a democratic vision for banking.

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