From precarious work to obsolete labour? Implications of technological disemployment for geographical scholarship

ABSTRACT

The displacement of jobs via mechanization and automation has long been understood as uncomfortable for labourers but also an intrinsic part of a process of ‘creative destruction’ leading to further growth in capitalist economies. This article argues that a seismic shift is currently underway in the dynamics of the labour market with regard to automation. Technologies of automation are capable of a rapidly rising proportion of all of the tasks that capital is willing to pay for and that humans are capable of doing. We highlight the geographically differentiated implications of this ongoing transition, and emphasize that geographers are importantly situated to analyse the political and economic implications of what is likely the start of a radical restructuring of the relationships between labouring, resource distribution, and indeed human ethics.

KEYWORDS:

• Automation
• disemployment
• obsolescence of labour
• uneven development

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Mary Lawhon http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4850-1560

Notes

1 In what follows, we develop a logical argument about the relationship between technology and labour and speculate about what it might means for a possible future. We are very mindful of the limitations of prediction (and the many errors that have occurred when scholars tried to do so, particularly around issues such as resources (e.g. Meadows et al. 1972)!). Our argument here is not intended to foreclose other possible futures: at the very least, climate change, energy limitations and/or large-scale warfare might well overshadow the impact of technological displacement.

2 Keynes (1932) notably argued that increased use of technology would lead to the meeting of our material wants and a significant increase in leisure rather than a reabsorption of the available labour. Unemployment in earlier periods of major technological change was accompanied by decreases in the number of hours in the working day (Srnicek and Williams 2015). However, the kind of systematic reduction of labour hours and meeting of material satisfaction described by Keynes have not come to pass (Woirol 1996; Bix 2001). This example is a useful reminder that the social implications of technological disemployment cannot be determined through logical calculations about economic relations, but are profoundly shaped by social, cultural and political influences.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Economic and Social Research Council, UK: [grant number ES/M009408/1].