Moody, Josh
(2022)
Coders, Creatives and the Commodification of
Knowledge in a Digitalizing, Flexibilizing
World (of Work).
PhD thesis, National University of Ireland Maynooth.
Abstract
This thesis is a comparative case study of knowledge work in software and creative sectors in
contemporary capitalism. It investigates how the commodification of knowledge has
transformed relations of control, work-life boundaries and worker subjectivities in knowledge
work. The thesis links these changes in the organisation of work to commodification through
the analysis of four sociomaterial exigencies of knowledge work – indeterminacy, exclusivity,
sociomaterial attachments, and objectification (through digitalization).
Studies of work have been burgeoning over the last fifty years, and it is generally agreed by
most disciplines and interested parties that the advanced capitalist societies of the world have
been experiencing a significant transformation since at least the 1980’s. Despite the diverse
range of causal explanations for these changes, there is convergence around some core
developments, namely the increasing digitalization of society, the flexibilization of work and
employment, the intensification of competitiveness, individualism and entrepreneurialism as
organizing principles, the financialization of the global economy, and the importance of
knowledge, information and creativity in the worlds of work.
The high-technology Software and Cultural and Creative Industries have been the focus of
global narratives and hyperbole since the 1990s and in many ways these activities (I use the
term ‘activities’ to denote the industries and the work/labour within them) have been hailed as
the archetypes and prototypes of the transformations underway. Therefore, they are ideal cases
for a critical study of work at the forefront of capitalist transformations. Through extensive
interviews with 44 workers and managers in a variety of firms in both sectors, the thesis
provides important insights into how work is changing, what problems and opportunities
present themselves, and what might be possible trajectories for the future of work.
These case studies are analysed through a theoretical, conceptual and analytical framework,
which I term a sociomaterialist critical realism. This framework allows me to unravel the
knowledge work of software and creative workers as a necessarily sociomaterial practice. The
thesis therefore takes the idea that ‘matter matters’ seriously, and this becomes the centre point
around which the line of argument and chapters are built. By interviewing these workers about
the practices of their labour, the organisation of their work and their experiences of it, I ‘isolate’
and ‘locate’ the sociomaterial threads that bind them to their labour, organisations,
communities of practice, and the subject of their labour itself. In doing so, the analysis
4
effectively identifies and traces the entanglements of knowledge work and contributes to our
understanding of how these are weaved together in contemporary work.
The findings identify core exigencies (central characteristics that generate typical demands) of
knowledge work and illustrates how these shape the nature of software and creative work by
examining their implications for the contested terrains of control, the work-life boundary, and
worker subjectivity. It is in these contested terrains of working life that I find that knowledge
work is controlled through regulated autonomy, boundaries are necessarily blurred because of
the permanent susceptibility to perennial labour, and that knowledge workers are
sociomaterially required to perform as agile agents to effectively conduct their work and
maintain their careers.
As Kalleberg (2009:1) stated in his presidential address to the American Sociological
Association, “work reveals much about the social order, how it is changing, and the kind of
problems and issues people (and their governments) must address”. As social scientists, we
often approach our studies of the world from a critical juncture of reality where the causal
complexities of human societies converge, and social phenomena emerge. Similarly, I use the
world of work as the vantage point from which I begin my journey into the analysis of socio-
economic organization and its implications for the experiences of workers in contemporary
capitalism. Despite the wider complexities of those core transformations taking place,
empirical case studies of work and production which build upon global scholarship and account
for political economic dynamics can reveal much about these changes, how they are
experienced by workers on the ground, and the causal forces shaping work and economic
futures.
On a more fundamental level, this research and thesis are all about making connections: firstly,
making connections between the different but adjacent fields of the sociology of work (SoW),
labour process analysis (LPA), communication and media studies, organisation and
management studies, and (socio)materialisms; second, making connections between the
microsociological practices of labour, their sociomateriality and the organisational structures
and economic processes within which they are embedded; and finally, making connections
between new approaches and conceptual tools and existing terrains of struggle within the world
of work.
| Item Type: |
Thesis
(PhD)
|
| Keywords: |
Coders; Creatives; Commodification of
Knowledge; Digitalizing; Flexibilizing;
World; Work; |
| Academic Unit: |
Faculty of Social Sciences > Sociology |
| Item ID: |
16540 |
| Depositing User: |
IR eTheses
|
| Date Deposited: |
20 Sep 2022 13:08 |
| URI: |
|
| Use Licence: |
This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available
here |
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