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Repoliticising the Future of Work: Automation and the End of Techno-Optimism

Author

Listed:
  • Solange Vivienne Manche

    (CAM - University of Cambridge [UK])

  • Juan Sebastian Carbonell

    (IDHES - Institutions et Dynamiques Historiques de l'Économie et de la Société - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - UP8 - Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis - UPN - Université Paris Nanterre - UEVE - Université d'Évry-Val-d'Essonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - ENS Paris Saclay - Ecole Normale Supérieure Paris-Saclay)

Abstract

This review article of Aaron Benanav's Automation and the Future of Work (2020) and Jason Smith's Smart Machines and Service Work (2020) reads both works as an effort to repoliticise the question of unemployment, which has too often been ascribed to technological innovation, especially by proponents of automation theory. It places their works within current debates surrounding the question of automation and its political reverberations across the political spectrum. In the end, we show that the shortcomings of automation discourse reside in their economic analyses of the future of work and employment and that automation theorists encourage a depoliticisation of the question of employment through technocracy, while Benanav and Smith open the way for thinking about the future of work as a collective and social endeavour.

Suggested Citation

  • Solange Vivienne Manche & Juan Sebastian Carbonell, 2022. "Repoliticising the Future of Work: Automation and the End of Techno-Optimism," Post-Print hal-04112195, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04112195
    DOI: 10.1080/17530350.2022.2028651
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-04112195
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gilbert Cette & Simon Corde & Rémy Lecat, 2017. "Stagnation of productivity in France: A legacy of the crisis or a structural slowdown?," Economie et Statistique / Economics and Statistics, Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques (INSEE), issue 494-495-4, pages 11-36.
    2. repec:prs:ecstat:estat_0336-1454_2017_num_494_1_10778 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Robert J. Gordon, 2012. "Is U.S. Economic Growth Over? Faltering Innovation Confronts the Six Headwinds," NBER Working Papers 18315, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Automation; future of work; precarity; sociologie; stagnation; technological unemployment;
    All these keywords.

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