Digital Labor

Juliet Schor

person  

Juliet Schor is Professor of Sociology at Boston College. She is a member of the MacArthur Foundation Connected Learning Research Network for which she is leading a six-year project on the “connected economy,” studying both non and for-profits, such as makerspaces, timebanks, food swaps, as well as large platforms such as Airbnb and Task Rabbit. Schor’s PhD is in economics, which she taught at Harvard University from 1984-1995. She is the author of the national best-seller The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure, The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don’t Need, and True Wealth: How and Why Millions of Americans are Creating a Time-Rich, Ecologically Light, Small-Scale, High-Satisfaction Economy. Schor is the recipient of the Leontief Prize, the Herman Daly Prize, Guggenheim and Radcliffe fellowships, and the ASA Public Understanding of Sociology Award. She appears frequently in national and international media.

How to build and sustain cooperative platforms
Controversy about for-profit platforms in the “sharing economy” has continued to grow, as labor practices, earnings, safety and a number of other issues have come in for scrutiny. In this talk I will present findings from a research project on sharing initiatives that I have been conducting since 2011, which includes both non-profits (makerspaces, food swaps, time bank, open education) and for-profits. I will focus on data from approximately 50 providers on three platforms—Airbnb, TaskRabbit and Relay Rides—discussing their experiences, earnings, and attitudes. Our data includes some re-interviews as well as a longitudinal perspective. We find great variation in earnings, and less with respect to providers’ satisfaction, which is generally high. I will also address issues of inequality with respect to platform earnings and access. The presentation will conclude with a discussion of what our data (from both the for and non-profit cases) can teach us about how to build and sustain cooperative platforms.

 
Making It Work
Fri, November 13
11:00 AM - 12:50 PM