Southern Centre for Inequality Studies (SCIS) - (Working papers)

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10539/38293

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Subject: search.filters.subject.Digital Labor Platforms

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    The architecture of players in Ghana’s digitalising agriculture.
    (Southern Centre for Inequality Studies (SCIS), 2022-11-15) Akorsu, Angela Dziedzom; Britwum, Akua Opokua
    Digital technology is hailed as the appropriate solution for facilitating the deployment of solutions to poor farmers in Ghana in face of the state’s inability to provide the required extension personnel. The influx of digital platforms into Ghana has brought in several operators whose connections and what they portend for Ghanaian farmers are under investigation. Using the food regimes approach we explore how digital technologies have been introduced into Ghana’s agricultural landscape. Our interest was the developing discourses used to legitimate the transition of agricultural digitalisation from a public good critical for ending rural poverty to a commodity for which farmers assume full costs. Our data was drawn from individual and group interviews with digital players in Ghana’s capital city. We obtained additional data from secondary sources including websites and research publications. We contend that the high proliferation of agritechs in Ghana in the face of state withdrawal locks them into the international digital ecosystems riding on the social enterprise discourse to sanitise the exploitation of Ghanaian farmers. In the face of the complex interconnectedness of digital players, there is an urgent need for sharper conceptual tools to move analysis to the conceptualisation of development alternatives to ensure the beneficial impact of digital technologies for poor farmers in countries such as Ghana.
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    Click farm platforms and informal work in Brazil
    (Southern Centre for Inequality Studies (SCIS), 2022-11-15) Grohmann, Rafael; Govari, Caroline; Amaral, Adriana
    This paper analyses work on click farm platforms in Brazil and argues that work on these platforms updates and reproduce traditional informal work in the country. The methods involve digital ethnography on click farm platforms, WhatsApp and Facebook groups and YouTube channels, and worker interviews. The findings present relationships between informal work and work for click farm platforms in these dimensions: a) culture and language, especially from WhatsApp groups, functioning as an extension of click farms; b) vocabularies and practices around “resale” as a sign of informal work in the country; c) the role of YouTubers in spreading neoliberal discourses; and d) boundaries around the piracy market and illegality. The paper contributes to debates on the taskification of work through digital labour platforms and the widespread neoliberal discourse and identity. First, the click farm platform deepens the mechanisms of micro-work platforms by presenting new layers of “fauxtomation” and “ghost work”, in a platform labour circuit marked only by Brazilians – consumers and workers. Second, it reveals the articulation among discourses of neoliberalism, entrepreneurship, and informal work in the context of the global South.