Patrizia Zanoni | Universiteit Hasselt (original) (raw)

Papers by Patrizia Zanoni

DiGeSt. Journal of Diversity and Gender Studies, Jun 24, 2024

In this contribution to the roundtable, I reflect on the evolution of critical diversity studies,... more In this contribution to the roundtable, I reflect on the evolution of critical diversity studies, as part of the broader field of critical management and organization studies, from its origins in the 1990s to date. After reviewing its unique strengths in generating knowledge on the relation between difference and power, I discuss how the economic crisis of 2008 has transformed and radicalized this field of study. I conclude with a plead to engage more with the bourgeoning Marxist scholarship. Such engagement is not only essential to theorize the role of difference in organizing unequally in capitalism, but also to envision anti-capitalist struggles and a post-capitalist, more equal organization of the economy, work and life as a whole. What is critical diversity studies? Over the last decade, critical diversity studies as part of the broader critical management and organization studies has come to age (Prasad et al., 1997; Zanoni et al., 2010; Zanoni & Van Laer, 2024). The term 'critical' qualifies this scholarship as foregrounding power in the conceptualization of difference along gender, sexuality, (dis)ability, race and ethnicity, religion, language, age and class, to name only a few, as well as their intersections. Drawing on a wide variety of theories and conceptual vocabularies, critical diversity studies investigates the discursive, material, affective and institutional making and unmaking of such differences. Taking an explicitly non-positivist, non-essentialistic epistemological stance, it assumes that differences are not universally 'given', but rather social constructions produced through social practice in multiple ways across contexts and dynamically over time. This entails that differences remain inherently instable and contested. On the one hand, to become hegemonic and 'taken for granted', their specific meanings need to be continuously reaffirmed. On the other hand, precisely this necessity makes them susceptible of being more or less overtly disputed and transformed. Differences are understood not as characteristics of individuals, but rather as 'principles of organizing' work and life in unequal ways, which includes the unequal distribution of the symbolic and materials rewards attached to it (Benschop & Doorewaard, 1998; Nkomo, 1992). We draw on feminist theory, decolonial theory, queer theory, Marxist theory, critical discourse analysis, neo-materialist theory, and more to unpack how difference deeply imbues our understanding of what is work and what is not, which activity deserve to be paid and which should be carried out without compensation, what are essential

Routledge eBooks, Oct 13, 2020

Culture and Organization, May 30, 2014

Conceptualizing aesthetic innovation as the social and cultural act of claiming value, we investi... more Conceptualizing aesthetic innovation as the social and cultural act of claiming value, we investigate how ethnic minority creatives rhetorically construct their work as innovative, while dealing with contradictory discourses of ethnicity. From our analysis of the rhetorical schemes they deploy to construct aesthetic innovation, three types of argumentations emerged: (1) argumentations relating one's creative work to one's unique self and biography through liaisons of coexistence; (2) argumentations establishing aesthetic innovation vis-à-vis other products and traditions through comparisons and model schemes and (3) argumentations highlighting power struggles between the creative and some ‘significant others’ in the creative industries through personifications and hierarchies. This study contributes to a better understanding of rhetorical strategies to construct aesthetic innovation focusing on the role social identities play in this process. More generally, it shows the suitability of rhetoric theory and method to analyse claims on value.

Organization, Apr 20, 2022

This editorial introduces eight papers included in this special issue on COVID-19. Together, thes... more This editorial introduces eight papers included in this special issue on COVID-19. Together, these papers draw key theoretical and political insights for critical organization studies from the pandemic along three main lines. First, they examine how COVID-19 has denaturalized global capitalism, leading to a broad interrogation of the organization of the economy and our societies. Second, they point to how COVID-19 has unveiled the close relation between capital and the state in producing inequalities old and new, a relation that neoliberalism tends to hide from view. Third, they leverage COVID-19 to give voice to the largely female disposable workforce in the Global South on whose work global commodity flows, consumption and capital accumulation rest. We conclude by pointing to the need to address constitutive interdependencies, such as those between wage work and reproductive work, the global North and the global South, the market and the state, to name only a few. We further call for expanding traditional understandings of struggle to include a broader range of social antagonisms (e.g. for sufficient time to care, education, healthcare, housing, safe public spaces, accessible to all) as part of a theoretically and politically renewed organizational research agenda fostering solidarity.

Research in the sociology of work, Jun 14, 2019

Abstract Drawing on the case of the recent Belgian law on the “sharing economy,” this chapter dev... more Abstract Drawing on the case of the recent Belgian law on the “sharing economy,” this chapter develops a critique of the dominant discourse of platform-mediated work as fostering the inclusion of individuals belonging to historically underrepresented groups (e.g., women with caring roles, people living in remote areas, individuals with disabilities, etc.) into the labor market. Exempting platform-mediated employment from social contributions and substantially lowering taxation, the law facilitates platform-based crowdsourcing firms’ predatory business model of capital valorization. The author argues that this business model rests precisely on the externalization of the costs of the social reproduction of this “diverse” labor through its precarization. These costs are not only externalized to individual workers, as often held. They are also externalized to the Belgian welfare state, and thus ultimately both to taxpayers and firms operating through classical business models, which fund the welfare state through taxation and social security contributions. For this reason, the debate surrounding platform-based employment might paradoxically provide a historical opportunity for recovering the Belgian tradition of social dialog between employers’ associations and trade unions. The author concludes by identifying key foci for action to ensure a better protection of workers of crowdsourcing firms including classifying them as employees, revising the conditions of access to social security protection, inclusive union strategies, the leveraging of technology to enforce firm compliance, and fostering counter-narratives of firms’ accountability toward society.

Gender, Work and Organization, Nov 6, 2018

Drawing on Judith Butler's early work on gender as performance and her later work on the ethicall... more Drawing on Judith Butler's early work on gender as performance and her later work on the ethically accountable subject, this study examines the production of gendered moral subjects under neoliberal governance in contemporary academia. The analysis of 40 semi-structured in-depth interviews with postdoc researchers and assistant, associate and full professors in a Belgian university reveals how in academics' narratives of their ethical relations of (non-)accountability towards multiple stakeholders, gendered subjects are performed along the heterosexual matrix reproducing the gender binary. The conjunction of gendered and ethical demands imposed through relations of accountability further opens up distinctively gendered possibilities of consent and resistance under neoliberal governance. We advance the extant literature on gender in academia which largely focuses on women's symbolic struggle to (dis)identify with a masculine professional norm. By locating power in the gendered relations of accountability towards multiple others, it re-conceptualizes gender as an ontological struggle in the constitution of the self as moral along gendered norms. The study rejoins recent scholarship that calls for the recognition and elaboration of a relational ethics by showing how such ethics enables the emergence of open and responsive subjectivities in relations of accountability.

Organization, 2020

In this introduction to the second part of the special issue on alternative economies published i... more In this introduction to the second part of the special issue on alternative economies published in Organization in 2017, I first briefly chart key fora where the debate has continued in the last two years, and then present the three additional contributions included here. Moving the conversation forward, I argue that, in order to evaluate the prefigurative potential of alternative organizations, we need to address more thoroughly the relation between alternatives and their outside. A productive place to ground this reflection is in the debate between post-capitalism and anti-capitalism. The main lines of this debate are reconstructed based on the keynote speeches delivered by Jodi Dean and Stephen Healy at the last Rethinking Marxism conference held in Amherst, Massachusetts, in September 2013. I conclude by claiming that post-capitalist immanence should be articulated with an anti-capitalist communist horizon, and advance the Open Marxist notion of de-mediation of social relations as key to do this. Although capitalist institutions (e.g. the market, the state) mediate all social relations, mediation is never definitive, as it always contains the possibility for its own negation, de-mediation. So conceived, de-mediation redefines our understanding of class struggle beyond the capital-labor relation in the workplace, into society as a whole, broadening the ethical and political scope of the organizational research agenda on alternatives to capitalism.

New Technology Work and Employment, Feb 25, 2011

Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks, Feb 23, 2023

Work, Employment & Society, Mar 8, 2022

Based on the case of a Belgian meat processing company that relies on posted workers employed by ... more Based on the case of a Belgian meat processing company that relies on posted workers employed by two subcontractors, this study investigates how posting affects client capital’s ability to control labour. Analysed through a Labour Process Theory lens, the findings reveal that posting fragments capital and substantially reduces the client firm’s control over workers’ effort and mobility power. This is due to the low-cost, temporary nature of posting, the disembeddedness of posted workers and their stronger relations with their employer than with the client firm. Competing to control posted labour, both units of capital enact practices commonly associated with trade unions: client capital advocates for posted workers in its interactions with the subcontractor, and the subcontractor promotes posted workers’ reduction of effort and increased mobility against the interests of client capital. Because of their structural vulnerability, posted workers might leverage conflicts within capital to resist the harshest forms of exploitation.

Oxford University Press eBooks, Jan 19, 2016

Drawing on the personal accounts of researchers of diversity, this chapter discusses the praxis o... more Drawing on the personal accounts of researchers of diversity, this chapter discusses the praxis of doing qualitative diversity research. First, it discusses how during a process of socialization, researchers are exposed to norms which promote certain research practices important to achieve the status of ‘good academic’. Second, it discusses the ambiguous and unstable power and identity dynamics characterizing qualitative research on diversity. Third, the chapter addresses the issue of translating research findings into writing, and highlights how in this process, authors have significant power, yet are also regulated in particular directions by academic conventions. Fourth, it discusses the issue of reflexivity, highlighting how it can not only be practiced in a ‘good’, but also a ‘bad’, and an ‘ugly’ way. In this way, this chapter highlights the identity- and power-laden difficulties and dilemmas confronting qualitative researchers in the field of diversity.

Proceedings - Academy of Management, Aug 1, 2018

Organization Studies, Jul 28, 2022

This paper responds to the emergent calls for recovering the role of contentious politics in pref... more This paper responds to the emergent calls for recovering the role of contentious politics in prefigurative communities to more effectively transform capitalist institutions. Theoretically drawing on the work of Judith Butler, our paper points to the importance of addressing the institutional frames that demarcate who will be (mis)recognized in the public space and which are at the core of politics. Our analysis of the Coop case shows how prefigurative and contentious politics are not incompatible, but can rather strengthen each other in a virtuous circle. When articulated to redefine existing institutional frames, they can reduce precarity. Through this articulation an assembly is constituted where a redefined subject can emerge outside the precarizing frames of neoliberalism. At the same time, our analysis suggests that Coop’s political practices do not completely redefine the individualized, calculative neoliberal subject. Project workers embraced the assembly only to the extent that it helped them reduce their self-responsibility and advance their professional and life projects. Overall, these insights advance the literature on grassroots organizations by showing the importance of contentious politics in attempting to redefine the institutional frames, as opposed to solely relying on prefigurative politics outside institutions. Yet they simultaneously confirm the difficulty of redefining the precarious neoliberal subject through collective emancipatory projects.

Proceedings - Academy of Management, Aug 1, 2009

The study re-conceptualizes diversity as class. In the factory, diversity is constructed as 'diff... more The study re-conceptualizes diversity as class. In the factory, diversity is constructed as 'different' workers' inability to function within lean production and workers' strategy to resist exploitation. These constructions are, in turn, used by CarCo to legitimize outsourcing the phases of production carried out by 'different' workers and sacking them.

Entrepreneurship and Regional Development, Oct 19, 2020

Drawing on in-depth interviews, this study investigates how entrepreneurs with disabilities (EWDs... more Drawing on in-depth interviews, this study investigates how entrepreneurs with disabilities (EWDs) position themselves, in their identity work, vis-à-vis dominant, normative representations of the entrepreneur that tend to exclude them. Addressing the current neglect in how EWDs deal with such discursive barriers, we document four identity positions which they deploy, in various combinations, to construct an identity as an entrepreneur. Our findings show that outward positions, by which EWDs compare their own self with (non)-entrepreneurial (able-bodied) others and emphasize similarity and uniqueness, reproduce normative representations of the entrepreneur. Inward positions, by which EWDs engage in inner conversations contrasting their current self with older, aspirational or impossible selves, on the contrary lead to the destabilization of normative representations. This study speaks back to wider debates in entrepreneurship studies, including the plea to consider 'ordinary' entrepreneurs, the difference between 'being' an entrepreneur and 'doing' entrepreneurship, and the value in difference.

Digital Technology; HRM; Identity Regulation; Labour Market Intermediaries; Power; Professional I... more Digital Technology; HRM; Identity Regulation; Labour Market Intermediaries; Power; Professional Identity; Socio-Materiality; Work Practices

DiGeSt. Journal of Diversity and Gender Studies, Jun 24, 2024

In this contribution to the roundtable, I reflect on the evolution of critical diversity studies,... more In this contribution to the roundtable, I reflect on the evolution of critical diversity studies, as part of the broader field of critical management and organization studies, from its origins in the 1990s to date. After reviewing its unique strengths in generating knowledge on the relation between difference and power, I discuss how the economic crisis of 2008 has transformed and radicalized this field of study. I conclude with a plead to engage more with the bourgeoning Marxist scholarship. Such engagement is not only essential to theorize the role of difference in organizing unequally in capitalism, but also to envision anti-capitalist struggles and a post-capitalist, more equal organization of the economy, work and life as a whole. What is critical diversity studies? Over the last decade, critical diversity studies as part of the broader critical management and organization studies has come to age (Prasad et al., 1997; Zanoni et al., 2010; Zanoni & Van Laer, 2024). The term 'critical' qualifies this scholarship as foregrounding power in the conceptualization of difference along gender, sexuality, (dis)ability, race and ethnicity, religion, language, age and class, to name only a few, as well as their intersections. Drawing on a wide variety of theories and conceptual vocabularies, critical diversity studies investigates the discursive, material, affective and institutional making and unmaking of such differences. Taking an explicitly non-positivist, non-essentialistic epistemological stance, it assumes that differences are not universally 'given', but rather social constructions produced through social practice in multiple ways across contexts and dynamically over time. This entails that differences remain inherently instable and contested. On the one hand, to become hegemonic and 'taken for granted', their specific meanings need to be continuously reaffirmed. On the other hand, precisely this necessity makes them susceptible of being more or less overtly disputed and transformed. Differences are understood not as characteristics of individuals, but rather as 'principles of organizing' work and life in unequal ways, which includes the unequal distribution of the symbolic and materials rewards attached to it (Benschop & Doorewaard, 1998; Nkomo, 1992). We draw on feminist theory, decolonial theory, queer theory, Marxist theory, critical discourse analysis, neo-materialist theory, and more to unpack how difference deeply imbues our understanding of what is work and what is not, which activity deserve to be paid and which should be carried out without compensation, what are essential

Routledge eBooks, Oct 13, 2020

Culture and Organization, May 30, 2014

Conceptualizing aesthetic innovation as the social and cultural act of claiming value, we investi... more Conceptualizing aesthetic innovation as the social and cultural act of claiming value, we investigate how ethnic minority creatives rhetorically construct their work as innovative, while dealing with contradictory discourses of ethnicity. From our analysis of the rhetorical schemes they deploy to construct aesthetic innovation, three types of argumentations emerged: (1) argumentations relating one's creative work to one's unique self and biography through liaisons of coexistence; (2) argumentations establishing aesthetic innovation vis-à-vis other products and traditions through comparisons and model schemes and (3) argumentations highlighting power struggles between the creative and some ‘significant others’ in the creative industries through personifications and hierarchies. This study contributes to a better understanding of rhetorical strategies to construct aesthetic innovation focusing on the role social identities play in this process. More generally, it shows the suitability of rhetoric theory and method to analyse claims on value.

Organization, Apr 20, 2022

This editorial introduces eight papers included in this special issue on COVID-19. Together, thes... more This editorial introduces eight papers included in this special issue on COVID-19. Together, these papers draw key theoretical and political insights for critical organization studies from the pandemic along three main lines. First, they examine how COVID-19 has denaturalized global capitalism, leading to a broad interrogation of the organization of the economy and our societies. Second, they point to how COVID-19 has unveiled the close relation between capital and the state in producing inequalities old and new, a relation that neoliberalism tends to hide from view. Third, they leverage COVID-19 to give voice to the largely female disposable workforce in the Global South on whose work global commodity flows, consumption and capital accumulation rest. We conclude by pointing to the need to address constitutive interdependencies, such as those between wage work and reproductive work, the global North and the global South, the market and the state, to name only a few. We further call for expanding traditional understandings of struggle to include a broader range of social antagonisms (e.g. for sufficient time to care, education, healthcare, housing, safe public spaces, accessible to all) as part of a theoretically and politically renewed organizational research agenda fostering solidarity.

Research in the sociology of work, Jun 14, 2019

Abstract Drawing on the case of the recent Belgian law on the “sharing economy,” this chapter dev... more Abstract Drawing on the case of the recent Belgian law on the “sharing economy,” this chapter develops a critique of the dominant discourse of platform-mediated work as fostering the inclusion of individuals belonging to historically underrepresented groups (e.g., women with caring roles, people living in remote areas, individuals with disabilities, etc.) into the labor market. Exempting platform-mediated employment from social contributions and substantially lowering taxation, the law facilitates platform-based crowdsourcing firms’ predatory business model of capital valorization. The author argues that this business model rests precisely on the externalization of the costs of the social reproduction of this “diverse” labor through its precarization. These costs are not only externalized to individual workers, as often held. They are also externalized to the Belgian welfare state, and thus ultimately both to taxpayers and firms operating through classical business models, which fund the welfare state through taxation and social security contributions. For this reason, the debate surrounding platform-based employment might paradoxically provide a historical opportunity for recovering the Belgian tradition of social dialog between employers’ associations and trade unions. The author concludes by identifying key foci for action to ensure a better protection of workers of crowdsourcing firms including classifying them as employees, revising the conditions of access to social security protection, inclusive union strategies, the leveraging of technology to enforce firm compliance, and fostering counter-narratives of firms’ accountability toward society.

Gender, Work and Organization, Nov 6, 2018

Drawing on Judith Butler's early work on gender as performance and her later work on the ethicall... more Drawing on Judith Butler's early work on gender as performance and her later work on the ethically accountable subject, this study examines the production of gendered moral subjects under neoliberal governance in contemporary academia. The analysis of 40 semi-structured in-depth interviews with postdoc researchers and assistant, associate and full professors in a Belgian university reveals how in academics' narratives of their ethical relations of (non-)accountability towards multiple stakeholders, gendered subjects are performed along the heterosexual matrix reproducing the gender binary. The conjunction of gendered and ethical demands imposed through relations of accountability further opens up distinctively gendered possibilities of consent and resistance under neoliberal governance. We advance the extant literature on gender in academia which largely focuses on women's symbolic struggle to (dis)identify with a masculine professional norm. By locating power in the gendered relations of accountability towards multiple others, it re-conceptualizes gender as an ontological struggle in the constitution of the self as moral along gendered norms. The study rejoins recent scholarship that calls for the recognition and elaboration of a relational ethics by showing how such ethics enables the emergence of open and responsive subjectivities in relations of accountability.

Organization, 2020

In this introduction to the second part of the special issue on alternative economies published i... more In this introduction to the second part of the special issue on alternative economies published in Organization in 2017, I first briefly chart key fora where the debate has continued in the last two years, and then present the three additional contributions included here. Moving the conversation forward, I argue that, in order to evaluate the prefigurative potential of alternative organizations, we need to address more thoroughly the relation between alternatives and their outside. A productive place to ground this reflection is in the debate between post-capitalism and anti-capitalism. The main lines of this debate are reconstructed based on the keynote speeches delivered by Jodi Dean and Stephen Healy at the last Rethinking Marxism conference held in Amherst, Massachusetts, in September 2013. I conclude by claiming that post-capitalist immanence should be articulated with an anti-capitalist communist horizon, and advance the Open Marxist notion of de-mediation of social relations as key to do this. Although capitalist institutions (e.g. the market, the state) mediate all social relations, mediation is never definitive, as it always contains the possibility for its own negation, de-mediation. So conceived, de-mediation redefines our understanding of class struggle beyond the capital-labor relation in the workplace, into society as a whole, broadening the ethical and political scope of the organizational research agenda on alternatives to capitalism.

New Technology Work and Employment, Feb 25, 2011

Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks, Feb 23, 2023

Work, Employment & Society, Mar 8, 2022

Based on the case of a Belgian meat processing company that relies on posted workers employed by ... more Based on the case of a Belgian meat processing company that relies on posted workers employed by two subcontractors, this study investigates how posting affects client capital’s ability to control labour. Analysed through a Labour Process Theory lens, the findings reveal that posting fragments capital and substantially reduces the client firm’s control over workers’ effort and mobility power. This is due to the low-cost, temporary nature of posting, the disembeddedness of posted workers and their stronger relations with their employer than with the client firm. Competing to control posted labour, both units of capital enact practices commonly associated with trade unions: client capital advocates for posted workers in its interactions with the subcontractor, and the subcontractor promotes posted workers’ reduction of effort and increased mobility against the interests of client capital. Because of their structural vulnerability, posted workers might leverage conflicts within capital to resist the harshest forms of exploitation.

Oxford University Press eBooks, Jan 19, 2016

Drawing on the personal accounts of researchers of diversity, this chapter discusses the praxis o... more Drawing on the personal accounts of researchers of diversity, this chapter discusses the praxis of doing qualitative diversity research. First, it discusses how during a process of socialization, researchers are exposed to norms which promote certain research practices important to achieve the status of ‘good academic’. Second, it discusses the ambiguous and unstable power and identity dynamics characterizing qualitative research on diversity. Third, the chapter addresses the issue of translating research findings into writing, and highlights how in this process, authors have significant power, yet are also regulated in particular directions by academic conventions. Fourth, it discusses the issue of reflexivity, highlighting how it can not only be practiced in a ‘good’, but also a ‘bad’, and an ‘ugly’ way. In this way, this chapter highlights the identity- and power-laden difficulties and dilemmas confronting qualitative researchers in the field of diversity.

Proceedings - Academy of Management, Aug 1, 2018

Organization Studies, Jul 28, 2022

This paper responds to the emergent calls for recovering the role of contentious politics in pref... more This paper responds to the emergent calls for recovering the role of contentious politics in prefigurative communities to more effectively transform capitalist institutions. Theoretically drawing on the work of Judith Butler, our paper points to the importance of addressing the institutional frames that demarcate who will be (mis)recognized in the public space and which are at the core of politics. Our analysis of the Coop case shows how prefigurative and contentious politics are not incompatible, but can rather strengthen each other in a virtuous circle. When articulated to redefine existing institutional frames, they can reduce precarity. Through this articulation an assembly is constituted where a redefined subject can emerge outside the precarizing frames of neoliberalism. At the same time, our analysis suggests that Coop’s political practices do not completely redefine the individualized, calculative neoliberal subject. Project workers embraced the assembly only to the extent that it helped them reduce their self-responsibility and advance their professional and life projects. Overall, these insights advance the literature on grassroots organizations by showing the importance of contentious politics in attempting to redefine the institutional frames, as opposed to solely relying on prefigurative politics outside institutions. Yet they simultaneously confirm the difficulty of redefining the precarious neoliberal subject through collective emancipatory projects.

Proceedings - Academy of Management, Aug 1, 2009

The study re-conceptualizes diversity as class. In the factory, diversity is constructed as 'diff... more The study re-conceptualizes diversity as class. In the factory, diversity is constructed as 'different' workers' inability to function within lean production and workers' strategy to resist exploitation. These constructions are, in turn, used by CarCo to legitimize outsourcing the phases of production carried out by 'different' workers and sacking them.

Entrepreneurship and Regional Development, Oct 19, 2020

Drawing on in-depth interviews, this study investigates how entrepreneurs with disabilities (EWDs... more Drawing on in-depth interviews, this study investigates how entrepreneurs with disabilities (EWDs) position themselves, in their identity work, vis-à-vis dominant, normative representations of the entrepreneur that tend to exclude them. Addressing the current neglect in how EWDs deal with such discursive barriers, we document four identity positions which they deploy, in various combinations, to construct an identity as an entrepreneur. Our findings show that outward positions, by which EWDs compare their own self with (non)-entrepreneurial (able-bodied) others and emphasize similarity and uniqueness, reproduce normative representations of the entrepreneur. Inward positions, by which EWDs engage in inner conversations contrasting their current self with older, aspirational or impossible selves, on the contrary lead to the destabilization of normative representations. This study speaks back to wider debates in entrepreneurship studies, including the plea to consider 'ordinary' entrepreneurs, the difference between 'being' an entrepreneur and 'doing' entrepreneurship, and the value in difference.

Digital Technology; HRM; Identity Regulation; Labour Market Intermediaries; Power; Professional I... more Digital Technology; HRM; Identity Regulation; Labour Market Intermediaries; Power; Professional Identity; Socio-Materiality; Work Practices

Drawing on the case of the recent Belgian law on the ‘sharing economy’, this paper develops a cri... more Drawing on the case of the recent Belgian law on the ‘sharing economy’, this paper develops a critique of the dominant discourse of platform-mediated work as fostering the inclusion of individuals belonging to historically underrepresented groups (e.g. women with caring roles,
people living in remote areas, individuals with disabilities, etc.) into the labor market. Exempting platform-mediated employment from social contributions and substantially lowering taxation, the law facilitates platform-based crowdsourcing firms’ predatory business model of capital valorization. I argue that this business model rests precisely on the externalization of the costs of the social reproduction of this ‘diverse’ labor through its precarization. These costs are not only externalized to individual workers, as often held. They are also externalized to the Belgian welfare state, and thus ultimately both to taxpayers and firms operating through classical business models, which fund the welfare state through taxation and social security contributions. For this reason, the debate surrounding platformbased employment might paradoxically provide a historical opportunity for recovering the Belgian tradition of social dialogue between employers’ associations and trade unions. I conclude by identifying key foci for action to ensure a better protection of workers of crowdsourcing firms including classifying them as employees, revising the conditions of access to social security protection, inclusive union strategies, the leveraging of technology to enforce firm compliance, and fostering counter-narratives of firms’ accountability towards society.

Encyclopedia of Critical Political Science, Elgar Online, Edited by Clyde W. Barrow, 2024

Open Marxism (OM) is a variant of Marxist theory, which argues that Marx’s critique of political ... more Open Marxism (OM) is a variant of Marxist theory, which argues that Marx’s critique of political economy should be understood as a subversive critique of the economic categories of bourgeois society, its philosophical concepts, moral values, and political institutions. Contrary to structural Marxism, which conceptualizes social forms as a kind of false appearance overlaid upon material reality, OM conceptualizes them as specific manifestations of how labor is mediated in and against capital at a particular time. The state is central to OM analyses as it is the political form of capitalist social relations. Class struggle is an intrinsic aspect of the analysis of the state, not something external to it, while the last iterations of OM point to critical affirmations as prefigurative struggles for alternative forms of social reproduction.

Encyclopaedia of Critical Political Science, 2024

Open Marxism is a strand of Marxism that argues that Marx's critique of political economy should ... more Open Marxism is a strand of Marxism that argues that Marx's critique of political economy should be understood in the first place as the subversive critique of the economic categories of bourgeois society, its philosophical concepts, moral values, and political institutions. Contrary to structural Marxism, which conceptualizes social forms as a kind of false appearance overlaid upon material reality, OM conceptualizes them as specific manifestations of how labour is mediated in and against capital at a particular time. Central to OM analyses is the state, which is the political form of capitalist social relations. Class struggle is intrinsic in the analysis of the state, not external to it, as often posited-the last iterations of OM point to critical affirmations as prefigurative struggles for alternative forms of social reproduction. OM's advocacy of insubordination and emancipation rests upon labour struggles moving 'in, against, and beyond' the social forms of domination on which capitalism is based.