The first of the Centre for Cultural Policy's Research seminars this term will be on Thursday 27th October 5pm-6.30pm in G50 Millburn House.

Dr. Jonathan Ong from the Department of Media and Communication at the University of Leicester will be presenting a paper entitled Digital Sweatshops in the Disaster Zone: Precarity and Opportunity in Techie Aid Work.

Abstract and bio below.

You are warmly invited to join us. Wine and nibbles will be provided. Please e-mail p.watkins@warwick.ac.uk to confirm your attendance.

Digital Sweatshops in the Disaster Zone: Precarity and Opportunity in Techie Aid Work

ABSTRACT:

The optimistic discourse behind humanitarian technologies rests on the promise of a “power shift in the humanitarian sector from agencies to affected people” (Red Cross 2012). But what is absent in this technological vision is the role of local aid workers themselves and the challenging labor conditions–and new opportunities–they face in an emergency. This talk draws focus to digital labor as an increasingly integral component of contemporary aid work. Aid agencies are pressured to buy into and test out technological solutions in crisis situations sometimes to game donors’ buzzword-driven agenda. Ethnographic work in the disaster zone reveals however that the humanitarian technologies discourse actually maps on to global labor inequalities, where cheap local labor get the same use-and-discard treatment as the tech they are hired to pilot. This talk reports on the Typhoon Haiyan response and reflects on the ambivalent perspectives of local aid workers toward the tech work that they experienced as precarious, repetitive and emotionally exhausting but also creative, experimental and deeply meaningful.

BIO:

Jonathan Corpus Ong is a Lecturer in Media and Communication at the University of Leicester. He was Co-Investigator of the ESRC-funded Humanitarian Technologies Project and lead researcher of the DFID-funded “Obliged to Be Grateful” listening project which conducted ethnographic research in the Philippines following Typhoon Haiyan. He convenes the Newton Tech4Dev Network, which is currently inviting for new collaborations on research streams including on digital sweatshops and post-disaster convivialities