Literature by the same author
plus at Google Scholar

Bibliografische Daten exportieren
 

Labour, Efficiency, Critique : writing the plantation into the technological present-future

Title data

Ouma, Stefan ; Premchander, Saumya:
Labour, Efficiency, Critique : writing the plantation into the technological present-future.
In: Environment and Planning A : Economy and Space. Vol. 54 (2022) Issue 2 . - pp. 413-421.
ISSN 1472-3409
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X211065452

Abstract in another language

In this commentary, we call upon critical labour scholars, including labour geographers, to feature what sociologist Palmer called the ‘thrust of efficiency’ more centrally in their work. We put forth that the push for efficiency, as made possible by digital technology, needs to be analysed in terms of its historical lineage as well as in terms of its geographical scope. Centreing efficiency in critical labour studies, necessitates three scholarly moves. These are particularly relevant for labour geography, a field that has so far tended to circumvent questions of coloniality/labour, digital Taylorism, and the politics of (re-)writing economic geographies, in by-passing the literatures that deal with them. The plantation, an analytical category and ontic reality that stretches across several yet often unconnected bodies of literature – literary studies, Black Geographies, Caribbean studies, and the Black Radical Tradition, as well as in Global History – is central to our effort. Eventually, writing the plantation into the technological present-future can be the starting point for a larger and historico-geographically informed critique, in economic geography and beyond, of efficiency, a mode of thinking-cum-praxis based on input–output calculations, objectifying practices, violent value extraction and the removal of undesired ‘social frictions’ for the sake of capital accumulation.

Further data

Item Type: Article in a journal
Refereed: Yes
Additional notes: Kommentar zu: Dufty-Jones, Rae; Gibson, Chris; Barnes, Trevor: Writing economies and economies of writing. In: Environment and Planning A 54 (2022)2, S. 370-381
Keywords: Digital Taylorism; Plantation; Black geographies; Surveillance capitalism; Labour geographies
Institutions of the University: Faculties > Faculty of Biology, Chemistry and Earth Sciences > Department of Earth Sciences > Chair Economic Geography > Chair Economic Geography - Univ.-Prof. Dr. Stefan Ouma
Faculties
Faculties > Faculty of Biology, Chemistry and Earth Sciences
Faculties > Faculty of Biology, Chemistry and Earth Sciences > Department of Earth Sciences
Faculties > Faculty of Biology, Chemistry and Earth Sciences > Department of Earth Sciences > Chair Economic Geography
Result of work at the UBT: Yes
DDC Subjects: 300 Social sciences > 300 Social sciences, sociology and anthropology
300 Social sciences > 330 Economics
Date Deposited: 18 Jan 2022 10:50
Last Modified: 18 Jan 2022 10:51
URI: https://eref.uni-bayreuth.de/id/eprint/68393