Melissa Gregg

Bio

Melissa is a leading figure in the field of affect theory and work as the author of Cultural Studies’ Affective Voices (2006) and co-editor of The Affect Theory Reader (with Gregory J. Seigworth, Duke UP, forthcoming). Her writing on digital culture and labour has been published in a range of journals including Convergence, Continuum, Feminist Media Studies and Media International Australia. With Mark Andrejevic, Melissa convened one of the first graduate courses on digital labour post-web 2.0, “The Work of Media Consumption” at the University of Queensland. She currently teaches in the Gender and Cultural Studies Department at the University of Sydney where she is finishing two manuscripts on professional identity, friendship and labour: Work’s Intimacy (Polity, forthcoming 2010) and Broadcast Yourself: Presence, Intimacy and Community Online (with Catherine Driscoll).

Abstract

Affective labour: past and present

This paper provides an overview of the concept of “affective labour” in media and cultural theory to isolate two trends that seem specific to the digital era. It begins with an overview of feminist writings on immaterial labour that precede both the Italian tradition lately dominant (in the work of Hardt&Negri, Virno, Lazzarato) and the fan tradition of affective labour highlighted by Henry Jenkins and others interested in “playbour” (Kucklich), the rise of the “pro-am” (Leadbeater&Miller), “prosumer” (Toffler) and/or “produser” (Bruns). Bourdieu’s taxonomy of capital is used to suggest that current attempts to quantify the exchange value of online digital labour underestimate the significance of social and cultural capital in social networking practices and the degree of resistance to corporate exploitation already evident in online communities.

Situating today’s online social networking practices in a wider history of professionally-oriented “instrumental leisure” (Banks), the paper shows how affective labour has become standardised in a wider range of white collar professional work than the male-dominated work cultures of the past. Drawing on a three year study of information professionals, the uniqueness of digital affective labour is shown to lie in its anticipatory and prospective dimensions. In the digital era, workers engage in networking for the end goal of employability rather than security of employment (Boltanski & Chiapello). This shift in the career narratives imagined by information professionals will be shown to necessitate a new labour politics organised around “event” as opposed to “clock” time (Adkins).