Table Of ContentDigital Work in the Planetary Market
The MIT Press– International Development Research Centre Series
Open Development: Networked Innovations in International Development, edited by Matthew L. Smith
and Katherine M. A. Reilly
Public Access ICT across Cultures: Diversifying Participation in the Network Society, edited by Francisco
J. Proenza
Shadow Libraries: Access to Knowledge in Global Higher Education, edited by Joe Karaganis
Digital Economies at Global Margins, edited by Mark Graham
Making Open Development Inclusive: Lessons from IDRC Research, edited by Matthew L. Smith and
Ruhiya Kristine Seward
Critical Perspectives on Open Development: Empirical Interrogation of Theory Construction, edited by
Arul Chib, Caitlin M. Bentley, and Matthew L. Smith
Digital Work in the Planetary Market, edited by Mark Graham and Fabian Ferrari
Digital Work in the Planetary Market
Edited by Mark Graham and Fabian Ferrari
The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
International Development Research Centre
Ottawa • Amman • Dakar • Montevideo • Nairobi • New Delhi
© 2022 Contributors
This work is subject to a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC- BY 4.0) International License.
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Published by the MIT Press.
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The research presented in this publication was carried out with the financial assistance of Canada’s
International Development Research Centre. The views expressed herein do not necessarily repre-
sent those of IDRC or its Board of Governors.
The MIT Press would like to thank the anonymous peer reviewers who provided comments on
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Graham, Mark, 1980– editor. | Ferrari, Fabian, editor.
Title: Digital work in the planetary market / edited by Mark Graham and Fabian Ferrari.
Description: Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press, 2022. | Series: The MIT Press-International
Development Research Centre series | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021037262 | ISBN 9780262543767 (paperback)
Subjects: LCSH: Employees—Effect of technological innovations on—Case studies. |
Industrial productivity—Effect of technological innovations on—Case studies. |
Electronic commerce—Case studies.
Classification: LCC HD6331 .D527 2022 | DDC 331.25—dc23/eng/20211208
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021037262
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
1 Introduction 1
Mark Graham and Fabian Ferrari
I Grounding Planetary Networks
2 Moving beyond Shanzhai? Contradictions of Platformized Family
Production in the Planetary Network of E-Commerce Labor 23
Lin Zhang
3 How Do Workers Survive and Thrive in the Platform Economy?
Evidence from China and the Philippines 41
Julie Chen and Cheryll Ruth Soriano
4 “Follower Factories” in Indonesia and Beyond: Automation
and Labor in a Transnational Market 59
Johan Lindquist
5 Moderating in Obscurity: How Indian Content Moderators
Work in Global Content Moderation Value Chains 77
Sana Ahmad and Martin Krzywdzinski
6 Digital Livelihoods in Exile: Refugee Work and the Planetary
Digital Labor Market 97
Andreas Hackl
II Mapping Planetary Networks
7 Working the Digital Silk Road: Alibaba’s Digital Free Trade
Zone in Malaysia 117
Brett Neilson
vi Contents
8 The Planetary Stacking Order of Multilayered Crowd- AI Systems 137
Florian A. Schmidt
9 In Search of Stability at a Time of Upheaval: Digital Freelancing
in Venezuela 157
Hannah Johnston
10 Human Listeners and Virtual Assistants: Privacy and Labor Arbitrage
in the Production of Smart Technologies 175
Paola Tubaro and Antonio A. Casilli
11 The Proletarianization of Data Science 191
James Steinhoff
III Dissecting Planetary Networks
12 Organizing in (and against) a New Cold War: The Case of 996.ICU 209
JS Tan and Moira Weigel
13 Planetary Potemkin AI: The Humans Hidden inside
Mechanical Minds 229
Jathan Sadowski
14 Data, Compute, Labor 241
Nick Srnicek
15 Cellular Capitalism: Life and Labor at the End of the Digital
Supply Chain 263
Matthew Hockenberry
IV Reimagining Planetary Networks
16 An International Governance System for Digital Work
in the Planetary Market 283
Janine Berg
17 Righting the Wrong: Putting Workers’ Data Rights Firmly
on the Table 291
Christina J. Colclough
18 Fair Work, Feminist Design, and Women’s Labor Collectives 303
Payal Arora and Usha Raman
19 Tilt the Scroll to Repair: Efficient Inhuman Workforce at Global
Chains of Care 319
Joana Moll and Jara Rocha
Contributors 329
Index 331
Acknowledgments
The book has benefited from the conversations, debates, and political engagements
that the authors have engaged in as part of the Fairwork and Geonet projects based
at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford. Thank you very much to Dan-
iel Abs, Iftikhar Ahmad, María Belen Albornoz, Moritz Altenried, Paula Alves, Branka
Andjelkovic, Amir Anwar, Arturo Arriagada, Amri Asmara, Tat Chor Au-Y eung, Priash-
ish Basak, Alessio Bertolini, Louise Bezuidenhout, Gautam Bhatia, Richard Boateng,
Manuela Bojadzijev, Macarena Bonhomme, Maren Borkert, Fabian Brasemann, Rodrigo
Carelli, Sonata Cepik, Chi Chan, Henry Chávez, Aradhana Cherupara Vadekkethil,
Matthew Cole, Paska Darmawan, Stefano De Sabbata, Markieta Domecka, Veena Dubal,
Darcy du Toit, Trevilliana Eka Putri, Chris Foster, Milena Franke, Sandra Fredman, Rafael
Grohmann, Khadiga Hassan, Richard Heeks, Kelle Howson, Francisco Ibáñez, Svitlana
Iukhymovych, Vladan Ivanovic, Tanja Jakobi, Athar Jameel, Hannah Johnston, Zoran
Kalinic, Srujana Katta, Chris King, Maja Kovac, Martin Krzywdzinski, Larry Kwan, Jorge
Leyton, Oscar Javier Maldonado, Shabana Malik, Claudia Marà, Évilin Matos, Paul
Mungai, Tasnim Mustaque, Mounika Neerukonda, Sidra Nizamuddin, Sanna Ojanperä,
Abigail Osiki, Amelinda Pandu, Balaji Parthasarathy, Leonhard Plank, Valeria Pulig-
nano, Jack Qui, Ljubivoje Radonjić, Ananya Raihan, Pablo Aguera Reneses, Nagla Rizk,
Nancy Salem, Julice Salvagni, Derly Yohanna Sánchez Vargas, Murali Shanmugavelan,
Janaki Srinivasan, Fabian Stephany, Shelly Steward, Ralph Straumann, Sophie Sun,
Pradyumna Taduri, Pitso Tsibolane, Anna Tsui, Funda Ustek-S pilda, Jean-P aul Van
Belle, Michel Wahome, Jing Wang, Robbie Warin, Nadine Weheba, and Zermina.
The beginnings of this book emerged from an International Development Research
Centre (IDRC)–s upported research project (“Microwork and Virtual Production Net-
works in Sub-S aharan Africa and Southeast Asia”) that took us to Malaysia, the Philip-
pines, Vietnam, Ghana, Nigeria, and South Africa. In each of those six countries, we
spoke with digital workers, managers of outsourcing companies, and policymakers.
viii Acknowledgments
Thank you to everyone who spoke with us, and thank you to IDRC for generously
funding that research.
We were brilliantly assisted by the invaluable editing expertise of David Sutcliffe,
and Christina Nichols. Thank you for so thoughtfully and thoroughly engaging with
each text.
This book would not exist without Nola Haddadian and the team at IDRC. Nola—w e
acknowledge with gratitude the many ways you have offered encouragement, guid-
ance, and support. Indeed, it is through IDRC’s support that we are able to release this
book under an open access license.
We also wish to thank the funders of our research for trusting us to tackle head-o n
pressing problems in the world of work and giving us the space and time to step back,
reflect, think, and write. We acknowledge the Alan Turing Institute under the Engineer-
ing and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) grant EP/N510129/1, the German
Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the Deutsche
Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), the UK Economic and Social
Research Council (ESRC) (ES/S00081X/1), the Leverhulme Trust (PLP-2 016–1 55), the
Ford Foundation, and the European Research Council (ERC-2 013-S tG335716-G eoNet).
While working on this book, Fabian was supported by the ESRC under grant ES/
P000649/1, studentship number 2094254, as part of the Grand Union Doctoral Train-
ing Partnership (DTP) and the University of Oxford (Scatcherd European Scholarship).
Both editors would like to thank the inspiring and encouraging students, staff mem-
bers, and faculty at the Oxford Internet Institute and at Green Templeton College.
Mark would like to thank his parents, Jean and Hashem, for giving him a planetary
perspective; David Keeling and Matt Zook for crucial inspiration on the journey that
led here; and Kat for always inspiring the next steps.
Fabian would like to thank David Feeny for his invaluable advice. A special thanks
goes to Gabrielle for her patience and support, and to Fabian’s parents, Claudia and
Hermann, for everything.
Finally, a thank-y ou to all of the book’s authors. This book was written and edited
during the COVID-1 9 pandemic, and we are immensely grateful to each of the authors
for contributing under such difficult conditions.
1 Introduction
Mark Graham and Fabian Ferrari
In a rural Ugandan town, a day’s drive from the nearest international airport, a few
abandoned shipping containers sat beneath a communication mast. On one side of the
mast was the main road linking the region to the rest of the country. You could almost
miss the shipping containers from the road, hidden as they were behind a small kiosk
selling snacks, sodas, and mobile phone credit. On the other side lay a dry playing field.
A few boys kicked a ball around, and a hen and her chicks scurried to get out of the way.
This might seem an unlikely location for work that goes into developing the next
generation of consumer-f acing technologies. But that is exactly what was happening
there. In 2012, a foreign-o wned company put a few computers into shipping contain-
ers, powered them with generators, and connected them to the Internet wirelessly.
Workers were then hired to train machine learning systems, run by companies in the
Americas, Europe, and Asia, by classifying and annotating images and videos (Anwar
and Graham 2020).
By 2017, when one of us visited, the demand for such work had increased so much
that the work had been moved out of the shipping containers and into a much larger
office space (see figure 1.1). Here, 300 people worked in shifts to classify data for for-
eign clients. On most of the workers’ screens were street-l evel photographs of North
American suburbs, and workers were carefully drawing the outlines of everything in
the images in front of them: cars, pavement, buildings—e ven birds!
When asked to describe what they were doing, most workers responded— quite
rightly—t hat they were annotating images. But when pressed for more detail, why the
client wanted these images annotated or what they might be doing with them, the
response was simply “They don’t tell me; they just want lots of tagged images.”
These are jobs that look as if they can be done from literally anywhere—i n Antarc-
tica or on a floating barge—a part from one key factor: the requirement for workers
who are willing and able to carry out that labor. It is this tension that Digital Work in
the Planetary Market explores. The digital revolution, coupled with widespread Internet
