Saskia Sassen
Dienstag, 07. Juli 2015 - 19:00 Uhr
Universität Wien
The Institute of Sociology proudly invites you to Saskia Sassen?s keynote speech within the fifth Marie Jahoda Summer School of Sociology. The event will be held in close cooperation between the Institute of Sociology and the Cost-Action IS1202: Dynamics of Virtual work.
The lecture focuses on the point at which the digital becomes specific in interactive domains. The assumption is that digital technologies deliver their utilities through large ecologies of meaning. That is, when it comes to interactive domains we miss a lot if we just focus on technical capabilities. These issues are developed via two very different types of cases. One compares two kinds of socio-technical formations: electronic financial networks and local social activist movements that are globally networked. Both cut across the global/national duality and each has altered the economic and political landscapes for, respectively, financial elites and social activists. Using these two cases helps illuminate the very diverse ways in which the growth of electronic networks partially transforms existing politico-economic orderings. They are extreme cases, one marked by hypermobility and the other by physical immobility. But they show us that each is only partly so: financial electronic networks are subject to particular types of embeddedness and local activist organizations can benefit from novel electronic potentials for global operation. The second case concerns a new project on how digitization can enhance the work life of low-income workers by addressing the specific needs of these workers at their workspace and in their neighborhoods. Low-wage workers can gain from the development of digitized apps and tools that address their needs. The high-end worker is already a full and effective user of these technologies, and in the US, most digital applications have been geared to the middle classes and high-end workers and households. Very little has been developed to meet the needs for low-income workers, their families, and their neighborhoods. Can digital technology help transform the low-income neighborhood into a social back up system for low-wage workers?
The event takes place on July 7, 2015 - 7pm in the Small Ceremonial Chamber (Kleiner Festsaal) of the University of Vienna, Universitätsring 1, 1010 Vienna
Please send registrations to franz.astleithner@univie.ac.at
Saskia Sassen is professor of Sociology at the Columbia University, New York and visiting professor at the London School of Economics. Her research covers globalization, immigration, global cities, new technologies and changes within the liberal state that result from current transnational conditions: www.saskiasassen.com
The fifth Marie Jahoda Summer School of Sociology ?The Global Digital Workplace -New Ways of Working, New Forms of Labour? gives PhD students from all around the world the possibility to discuss their PhD projects on digitization of work: www.soz.univie.ac.at/summerschool