Laboring Against Automation

In 2024, the possibility of total automation looms ever present: will machines replace humans? This seminar places contemporary discourse about automation in historical context, underscoring how the promises and threats of labor automation are not nearly as new as they seem. Focusing on workers’ perspectives on automation, as well as their attempts to resist it, this course will highlight the unequal experience of automation across geographic, gendered and racialized hierarchies. Considering both micro-level changes in workplaces and global dynamics, we’ll ask: How did textile workers in Bursa and colonial Bombay, tobacco workers in Lebanon, and autoworkers in the United States articulate and act on fears that their labor would become obsolete? And how might colonialism, migration, the offshoring of jobs and the informalization of labor in the Global South be tied to the automation of labor in the Global North?