Critical conversation in the Digital Age

By cecilia [dot] von_arnold [at] rektor [dot] lu [dot] se (Cecilia von Arnold) - published 6 April 2018

The internet in the school breaks down and the students can't work. The teacher has to send them home even if that means that she violates the rules, but she doesn't have any other options. Illustration: Maja Lindén.

"It is of vital importance to swim against the current of bits and bytes which challenge our proven analogue way of reflecting on what is happening around us. I sincerely hope this anthology prompts the start of a critical conversation about the digitalization of working and organizing.", Stephan M. Schaefer writes in the preface of the new book “Working and Organizing in the Digital Age”.

Stephan M. Schaefer is one of the editors of the new book “Working and Organizing in the Digital Age” published by the Pufendorf Institute for Advanced Studies. This quote directs our attention to the essentials of the Digiwork research project, a critical review of one of the most distinctive signs of the time: digitalization.

Stimulate debate

Stephan M. Schaefer, Associate Senior Lecturer at LUSEM, released the edited volume just some weeks ago together with his colleagues Magnus Andersson, Elizabeth Bjarnason and Kristofer Hansson. The book summarizes an interdisciplinary research project funded by the Pufendorf Institute in Lund during 2016-2017 and explores the effect of digitalization on working and organizing.

"The idea here was never to produce some particular outcome or a research report. We really worked in the Pufendorf spirit which is to stimulate debate and to produce ideas," Stephan says. "To ask what is important or what could be important to do research on later, after the Pufendorf project. The book is more about summarizing ideas and scenarios and to draw attention to the negative and positive effects of the technology. To see how much unintended consequences it might have."

Read the full article here

Article by: Anna Löthman

More information about The Pufendorf IAS previous theme Digiwork