Worker Resistance in Digital Capitalism| Worker Resistance in Digital Capitalism—Introduction

Abstract

Recent debates on media activism and digital labor suggest an urgency to examine the intersection of these two lines of inquiry—namely, how workers counteract and resist digital capitalism. This Special Section approaches the question through a set of studies into the old and new challenges facing workers in a wide range of sectors and in different parts of the world. It examines the mundane and novel tactics adopted by workers for collective action, solidarity building, and the construction of alternatives to the prevailing narratives of digital capitalism. Overall, this article argues that struggles cannot be separated from the local manifestations of the structural constraints that underpin digital capitalism: postcolonial conditions, local economic regimes, global division of labor, normative perceptions of certain jobs, institutional privileges or barriers, and the identity of the workers themselves. These situated struggles, however, animate multiple sources of solidarity that have the potential to cross such lines.