“Experts describe ‘surveillance wages’ as a system in which wages are based not on an employee’s performance or seniority, but on formulas that use their personal data, often collected without employees’ knowledge.”

Academic publishing is increasingly difficult and costly, relying on unpaid labor from authors, reviewers, & editors. In response to these precarious circumstances the AWR editorial collective is trialing a new approach to sustaining our journal through increased engagement.

“It did sound like, on probing, that their universities were all responding to the same market intelligence, provided by the same consultancies, using the same metrics.”

The educational geography of north & northeast Scotland is under threat- please share and sign www.change.org/p/open-lette...

A very easy step the Secretary of State could make is to shut down the use of consultancies in #UKHE. It leaks SO MUCH money out of the (public) sector to for-profit firms, is creating a truly dangerous monoculture, and is so seemingly obscure none outside the sector will be pissed off.

Please check out this new book featuring a chapter by one of the AWR editors @valuequestion.bsky.social that explores Malinowski's engagement with work and labour

📣 New Podcast! "Harbour Workers Rise: Hong Kong Seamen’s Strike Victory" on @Spreaker #1920s_seafarers #1922_chinese #asia_hong #china #dockworkers #history_1922 #history_early #hong #kong #labor #maritime #movement #protest_south #seamen #shipping #strike #strike_hong #union #unrest #workers

We may associate the planet’s vast oceans with mystery and adventure, but what’s the reality of life onboard cargo ships for the world’s maritime workers? Pallavi Sanil reviews Sea-Time: An Ethnographic Adventure by Helen Sampson. buff.ly/rg844lL

With the cover now finalized, I am pleased to announce my forthcoming book: 𝐏𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦 𝐄𝐱𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐬𝐦: 𝐃𝐚𝐭𝐚 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐤 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐏𝐞𝐨𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐏𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐀𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞. Available this October from @ucpress.bsky.social s. 🧵 1/4

We're wrapping up 2025 by highlighting the most-read articles published this year! First up is "Unsettling the self: Autoethnography and related kin" by Christine J. Walley and Denielle Elliott. #OpenAccess #Anthropology doi.org/10.1111/aman...

Global capitalist value chains are exploiting workers and destroying the environment. Capitalist Value Chains: Labour Exploitation, Nature Destruction, Geopolitics by Benjamin Selwyn and Christin Bernhold reviewed by @abieler.bsky.social @lsereviewofbooks.bsky.social @lseid.bsky.social

“AI can never be AI without humans. It is not artificial intelligence. It’s African intelligence...We are training our own death. We train ChatGPT and it’s killing us slowly.” www.404media.co/ai-is-africa...

Afterlives of slavery are manifest in the global distribution of labor and infrastructure that is used to harvest human brainpower and convert it into “AI”

The whole "AI" industry is just based on the hope that they can deskill people fast enough that they'll have to rent back cognitive support systems. Forever. It's like Uber. Just that they don't try to break existing transportation infrastructures but your brain.

Check out Xavier Smalls' review of Tackling the Everyday: Race and Nation in Big-Time College Football, by Tracie Canada anthrowork.org/book-reviews...

"Ethnography Under Watch: Field Notes on Student Politics in Indian Universities" Aniruddha Mahajan at @saw-anthroofwork.bsky.social Exertions site: anthrowork.org/intervention...

"According to the unions, the gig and platform economy is particularly vulnerable to fuel supply fluctuations." www.siasat.com/gig-workers-...

We are releasing this report FULL of ways workers can have a voice in workplace tech as Gallup releases polling: “employees who say they have a lot of influence over tech adopted in their workplace are more than twice as likely to report high job satisfaction” news.gallup.com/poll/692693/...

What it's like to "be a man" doing platform food deliveries when you're caught between entrepreneurial discourses and precarious work? My latest (open access) publication, for the Journal of Sociology. journals.sagepub.com/eprint/HDW2T...

This technology doesn't spring out of a hole in the ground. It's built on unsustainable resource extraction and the burning of fossil fuels, and used for monocropping. Farmland needs to be protected, and farm workers need dignity and collective ownership. Corporate tech is not going to get us that

They Labor Center is seeking candidates for the position of Technology and Work Program Director to oversee, develop, and conduct research, policy analysis, and training related to rapid technological change in the workplace. Learn more & spread the word! laborcenter.berkeley.edu/job-opening-...

I'm one of many professors quoted in this report from Alice Speri. I really appreciate The Guardian taking an angle which has basically eluded every other major outlet.

Labor scholars and students of the platform economy will want to check out my review of Kathleen Thelen's new book, *Attention Shoppers! American Retail Capitalism and the Origins of the Amazon Economy* Herewith the link: www.wipsociology.org Recommended!

We are delighted to invite you to take part in The Work of Mending workshops with @hunterianmuseum.bsky.social at The Royal College of Surgeons of England! This series of creative workshops explores the meaning of hands and handwork, past and present. Tickets: www.eventbrite.com/cc/the-work-...

"Brian Halpin’s ethnography of a California catering company shows how managers treated workers as disposable not by firing them, but by manipulating their hours @jstordaily.bsky.social daily.jstor.org/the-mock-cal...

www.timeshighereducation.com/uk-universit... Times Higher has not always been a friend of universities given the league tables, rankings, etc. But it might be worth completing this survey to help publicise the widespread redundancies and terrible standards of management and leadership in UK HE.

Thanks to everyone who joined us today! Once the recording becomes available, we'll share it here Our next event will take place on 24 March from 6:30pm GMT with Annelies Scheers & Patrizia Zanoni – The machinistic production of the ‘defective worker’ marxismdisability.wordpress.com/2026/02/16/m...

Save 30% on #NewBook "Precarious Accumulation," by Nellie Chu, which tells the story of migrant entrepreneurs in fast fashion industry confronting their dreams of economic freedom with the reality of precarity, exploitation, and marginalization. buff.ly/MMyUaUd

Last was "A Nation on the Line" by Jan Maghinay Padios, who delivers an amazing ethnographic study of call centers in the Philippines, capturing the nature of the work, its fraught colonial entanglements, and how they function. Highly recommend Full review: bookwyrm.social/user/bwaber/... (4/4)

Professors Amy J. Cohen and Ilana Gershon (@structureless.bsky.social) draw on recent work to explain how economic experiences shape political and legal sensibilities, highlighting the value of qualitative and ethnographic methods.

Book review of Inside the Invisible Cage: How Algorithms Control Workers, by Hatim A. Rahman (2024) by Raktima Kalita @saw-anthroofwork.bsky.social Exertions site: anthrowork.org/book-reviews...

Meanwhile, meta analyses of generations of anthropological research on hunter-gatherer societies show that Darwin was deeply wrong in his conclusions about sex and gender. Showing clear and consistent evidence of women in prominent hunting roles. stories.spu.edu/articles/pro...

Feminist Anthropology honors Kamala Kempadoo's transformative impact on feminist scholarship. Dive into this virtual issue examining race & gender in sex work and critical trafficking studies, with perspectives to challenge assumptions and expand understanding. Read more: https://ow.ly/VIyo50YkkbI

New Books podcast: The Pandemic Workplace : How We Learned to Be Citizens in the Office by Ilana Gershon @structureless.bsky.social newbooksnetwork.com/the-pandemic... #anthropology

Deeply honored to receive the Book Prize from the Society for the Anthropology of Work!! Grateful to SAW and to everyone who engaged with my work. 💜

As we approach the anniversary of Code Work's publication, here's a recent interview with Ilana Gershon that highlights some of the main themes: campanthropology.org/2025/10/20/h... @princetonupress.bsky.social

A common fictional narrative shows people with nonconforming identities finding self-acceptance in towns and cities. This #LGBTQHistoryMonth, archivist Lottie Wood explores how author E. M. Barraud found the opposite, through rural work and the Women’s Land Army. merl.reading.ac.uk/news-and-vie...

Come at do a PhD with Sam Hind, Riza Batista-Navarro and me! "Artificial Inequality? AI and its impact on the UK Creative Industries" Deadline 30th March www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

The Wall Street Journal just illustrated the core argument of my book: a system rigged to reward capital over labor is one in which even full-time work no longer secures the most basic material needs. This is the economic order that produces the "working homeless." www.wsj.com/economy/jobs...

If you're in LA come check out my experimental ethnographic film on stenographers who caption in real time for D/deaf and Hard-of-hearing folks www.oxy.edu/events/2026/...

Harvard Business Review: "AI Doesn’t Reduce Work—It Intensifies It" hbr.org/2026/02/ai-d... bsky.app/profile/carl...

It's out: the first ever podcast interview with Richard B. Lee! 🥁 We discuss the 60 year legacy of Man the Hunter conference, including: The Original Affluent Society The Dawn of Everything The choice of the term "Man" in the conference name. Enjoy!

Sandhya Fuchs, winner of the 2025 APLA Book Prize in Critical Anthropology for Fragile Hope: Seeking Justice for Hate Crimes in India (Stanford University Press, 2025), contributed this open access essay to PoLAR Online. The essay is part of Sana Malik's series, First Responders: wp.me/p68wh0-539

I wish I could get it together for this conference because I miss Halifax but for anthros who want/need a trip to the maritimes in May CASCA is always a great time:

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia: doi.org/10.5281/zeno... We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity. 1/n

"Connective Tissue: Factory Accidents and Reconstructive Plastic Surgery in South India" by Lily N. Shapiro www.rutgersuniversit... #Health #LaborStudies #DisabilityStudies #AsianStudies #PlasticSurgery #SouthIndia #Anthropology #ReconstructiveSurgery #FactoryAccidents

Join us on the 26th March!

Sad news, Dr Bolles published important and groundbreaking scholarship in anthropology of work and labor, including women's work, globalization/neoliberal restructuring, and organized labor in the Caribbean.

An excerpt from my upcoming book #HumansofAI for @uoftpress.bsky.social "Pay No Attention to Those Engineers Behind the Curtain: The Hidden Infrastructure that Runs AI" #STS @americananthro.bsky.social @cas-sca.bsky.social @4sweb.bsky.social linguisticanthropology.org/blog/2025/08...

We’re hiring! 📢📢📢 The Open Encyclopedia of #Anthropology is looking for a new editorial team. Join us in strengthening #OpenAccess publishing and shaping the future of our discipline. Applications welcome from individuals or groups. Please share widely! 🌎🌍🌏 docs.google.com/document/u/1...