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dc.contributor.authorWood, Alex J.
dc.contributor.authorGraham, Mark
dc.contributor.authorLehdonvirta, Vili
dc.contributor.authorHjorth, Isis
dc.date.accessioned2021-02-24T11:55:38Z
dc.date.available2021-02-24T11:55:38Z
dc.date.issued2019
dc.identifier.citationWood. A.J., Graham, M., Lehdonvirta, V., Hjorth, I. Networked but Commodified: The (Dis)Embeddedness of Digital Labour in the Gig Economy. Sociology. 2019;53(5):931-950. doi:10.1177/0038038519828906
dc.identifier.urihttps://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/handle/20.500.12413/16356
dc.description.abstractThis article investigates the (dis)embeddedness of digital labour within the remote gig economy. We use interview and survey data to highlight how platform workers in Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa are normatively disembedded from social protections through a process of commodification. Normative disembeddedness leaves workers exposed to the vagaries of the external labour market due to an absence of labour regulations and rights. It also endangers social reproduction by limiting access to healthcare and requiring workers to engage in significant unpaid ‘work-for-labour’. However, we show that these workers are also simultaneously embedded within interpersonal networks of trust, which enable the work to be completed despite the low-trust nature of the gig economy. In bringing together the concepts of normative and network embeddedness, we reconnect the two sides of Polanyi’s thinking and demonstrate the value of an integrated understanding of Polanyi’s approach to embeddedness for understanding contemporary economic transformations.
dc.publisherSAGE
dc.rights.urihttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
dc.titleNetworked but Commodified: The (Dis)Embeddedness of Digital Labour in the Gig Economy
dc.typeArticle
dc.rights.holder© The Author(s) 2019
dc.identifier.externalurihttp://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0038038519828906
dc.identifier.agES/I033777/1
dc.identifier.doi10.1177/0038038519828906


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