Adam M. Parker (Author)
Gaikwad, Nikhar (Advisor)
Columbia University
Gaikwad, Nikhar
Publication date: 2023
Language: English
Physical Details: 138
In this dissertation project, I make three separate contributions to the study of the political economy of automation which center the agency of workers and society over technological change. The papers presented here each take a historical approach, both to contextualize modern debates over new technologies and to describe political responses that may have fallen out of contemporary awareness. In the first paper, I examine the origin of the term “automation” to reveal the ways that this concept has been shaped by social and political imperatives. I then propose a new definition and conceptualization of automation which respect this reality and open new avenues for research into this form of technological change. In the second paper, I examine the role played by the occupational structure of unions in determining their responses to automation. Drawing on a comparison of the cases of 1) the AFL-CIO and its Industrial Union Department and 2) New York Typographical Union No. 6 from approximately 1950–1975, I show that industrially-organized unions are more receptive of automation than are unions organized along craft lines. In the final paper, I examine the role that the different approaches to labor force control adopted by craft unions play in shaping both their responses to new technologies and their inclusion or exclusion of women workers. Through a comparison of the histories of the typographical unions in the United States and the United Kingdom over 150 years, I show that unions adopting an apprenticeship-based system of labor force control are both more resistant to new technologies and more exclusionary of women than are unions adopting a strategy of incorporation. Taken together, these papers show that workers and unions have been neither helpless cogs nor implacable wrenches in the machinery of technological change.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Book
Marez, Curtis;
(2016)
Farm worker futurism: speculative technologies of resistance
Thesis
Jason Resnikoff;
(2019)
The Misanthropic Sublime: Automation and the Meaning of Work in the Postwar United States
Article
Corinna Schlombs;
(2023)
Built on the Hands of Women: Data, Automation, and Gender in West Germany's Financial Industry
Book
Richard Wallace;
Jon Burrows;
(2022)
Reel Change: A History of British Cinema from the Projection Box
Thesis
Stephanie Aleen Dick;
(2015)
After Math (Re)configuring Minds, Proof, and Computing in the Postwar United States
Article
Anne-Marie Coles;
(2021)
Emergence of a techno-legal specialty: Animal tests to assess chemical safety in the UK, 1945–1960
Book
Michael G. Hillard;
(2021)
Shredding Paper: The Rise and Fall of Maine's Mighty Paper Industry
Article
Laymon, Sherry;
(2012)
Arkansas's Dark Ages: The Struggle to Electrify the State.
Article
Gates, Frederick B.;
(2007)
The Impact of the Western and Atlantic Railroad on the Development of the Georgia Upcountry, 1840--1860
Book
Lamoreaux, Naomi R.;
Sokoloff, Kenneth Lee;
(2007)
Financing Innovation in the United States, 1870 to the Present
Article
Haigh, Thomas;
(2010)
Computing the American Way: Contextualizing the Early US Computer Industry
Book
Rose, Mark H.;
Seely, Bruce Edsall;
Barrett, Paul F.;
(2006)
The Best Transportation System in the World: Railroads, Trucks, Airlines, and American Public Policy in the Twentieth Century
Article
Gray, George;
Smith, Ron;
(1998)
Sperry Rand's Transistor Computers
Article
Sartor, Lutz;
(2005)
Die Auto Union AG und ihre Reaktionen auf das “Volkswagen”- Projekt 1931--1942
Essay Review
Edward Jones-Imhotep;
(2020)
Review Essay: The Ghost Factories: Histories of Automata and Artificial Life
Article
Taija Kaarlenkaski;
(October 2023)
Cows and Humans as Technology Users: Multispecies Agency and Gender in Automated Milking Systems in Finland
Article
Ali Ergur;
(2021)
Dealing with the Machine: Strategies of Pilots and Doctors Towards Technological Integration
Article
Sam Hind;
(2020)
On ‘Living in a Box’. Distributed Control and Automation Surprises („Living in a Box“. Verteilte Steuerung und Automatisierungsüberraschungen in Verkehrsflugzeugen)
Article
Hyysalo, Sampsa;
(2006)
Representations of Use and Practice-Bound Imaginaries in Automating the Safety of the Elderly
Book
Carl Benedikt Frey;
(2019)
The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation
Be the first to comment!