The opportunity to contribute: disability and the digital entrepreneur

ABSTRACT

A range of scholarly work in communications, informatics, and media studies has identified ‘entrepreneurs’ as central to an emerging paradigm of digital labor. Drawing on data from a multi-year research project in the virtual world Second Life, I explore disability experiences of entrepreneurism, focusing on intersections of creativity, risk, and inclusion. Since its founding in 2003, Second Life has witnessed significant disability participation. Many such residents engage in forms of entrepreneurship that destabilize dominant understandings of digital labor. Most make little or no profit; some labor at a loss. Something is being articulated through languages and practices of entrepreneurship, something that challenges the ableist paradigms that still deeply structure both digital socialities and conceptions of labor.

Disability is typically assumed to be incompatible with work, an assumption often reinforced by policies that withdraw benefits from disabled persons whose income exceeds a meagre threshold. Responses to such exclusion appear when disabled persons in Second Life frame ‘entrepreneur’ as a selfhood characterized by creativity and contribution, not just initiative and risk. In navigating structural barriers with regard to income and access, including affordances of the virtual world itself, they implicitly contest reconfigurations of personhood under neoliberalism, where the laboring self becomes framed not as a worker earning an hourly wage, but as a business with the ‘ability’ to sell services. This reveals how digital technology reworks the interplay of selfhood, work, and value – but in ways that remain culturally specific and embedded in forms of inequality.     

劳动的社会价值测度研究

当今，知识和信息技术的价值化和产业化使得一般人类劳动出现了体力劳动和脑力劳动的分化，且有不同的价值体现，故马克思提出的简单劳动和复杂劳动需要重新定义，将体力劳动定义为简单劳动，脑力劳动定义为复杂劳动。简单劳动是一次耗费，一次凝结并物化到劳动产品的价值中，而复杂劳动是整体或连续性的凝结到知识及与知识相关的产品中。简单劳动和复杂劳动的价值测度模型表明：在完美市场状态下，如果简单劳动的社会劳动生产率提高，那么复杂劳动者的价值也会相应提高。据此，我国要建立健全劳动力市场，就要注重劳动的平等性，对于复杂劳动要建立长效的报酬机制，鼓励创新和社会价值的提升；对于简单劳动要建立充分的竞争机制，给予简单劳动者二次分配后的社会福利与收入补贴。     

Authoritarian neoliberalism: trajectories of knowledge production and praxis

ABSTRACT

This introduction to the special issue takes as its point of departure three centres of gravity that have shaped the study of neoliberalism but have also established barriers to further progress in these debates. By promoting an intersectional materialist research agenda which challenges extant ideational, modernist and empiricist tendencies in scholarship on neoliberalism, the essay contextualizes the special issue articles by outlining and clarifying key aspects of our understanding of authoritarian neoliberalism. In particular, we reflect on themes related to conceptualization and periodization, which are of importance for both this special issue but also for broader questions of knowledge production and praxis. Through doing so, we argue that there are two distinct yet connected trajectories within the research agenda on authoritarian neoliberalism: one which focuses on the intertwinement of authoritarian statisms and neoliberal reforms; and another which traces various lineages of transformation of key societal sites in capitalism (e.g. states, households, workplaces, urban spaces). Recognition of this spectrum of authoritarian neoliberal practices is important as it helps us uncover how inequalities of power are produced and reproduced in capitalist societies, and pushes us to consider more fully how other worlds can be made possible. Nevertheless, it is affirmed that we must remain open to what an emancipatory society might look like, and what struggles would be most appropriate, in and across various socio-spatial contexts.     

Care earnings in the United States and 24 European countries: The role of social policy and labour market institutions

Care occupations are gendered and remain relatively poorly paid, particularly in the United States. Prior research on the ‘care penalty’ primarily points to individual, relational, and market-valuation factors in explaining the relative earnings of care workers. This study integrates these explanations with a comparative institutional perspective. Using higher-quality data and methods than previous comparative research in the field—that is, harmonized micro-data from the Current Population Survey and EU-SILC from 2005 to 2016, country and year fixed effects models, and a counterfactual analysis—we find that national variance in labour market and welfare state institutions explains most of the difference in the relative earnings of reproductive care workers between the United States and European countries. Higher rates of collective bargaining coverage, stronger employment protection and welfare state spending contribute to higher relative earnings for reproductive care occupations, and lower relative earnings for high-status nurturant care occupations. Differences in the relative earnings of care workers appear to be mostly a construct of social policy and labour market institutions rather than individual, relational, and market-valuation factors.     

真善美起源初探

本文阐释中西思想史上关于真善美起源的两种典型观点即感觉说和游戏说,以及马克思主义哲学对这一问题的解答;分析前两种观点的理论意义和局限性,认为马克思主义哲学从真善美与人类物质生产的关系入手,指出真善美起源于劳动,为人类进一步探讨和追求真善美奠定了科学的理论基础     

资源依赖与劳动法律文本的行动结果

为促进科学立法,揭示在实践中影响着劳动法律行动结果的因素,利用上海、深圳、天津等10个城市的问卷调查数据,以《劳动合同法》中关于劳动合同签订的文本规定为切入点,从交换理论的视角出发进行了Logistic回归模型分析,发现劳动关系中的资源依赖格局,会影响行为主体在劳动法律干预下的行为选择与演化,从而影响劳动法律文本的行动结果。社会关系及其在法律干预下的发展规律,是法律调节社会关系的客观现实和经验基础。要有效地实现法律在国家治理中的重要职能,亟需进一步推进经验层面的实证研究。     

农村劳动力移民的地位分层及认同分化

在经由“农业生产”向“非农职业”的“一次分化”之后,进入城市从事非农工作的农村劳动力移民正发生着客观社会经济地位和主观地位认同的“二次分化”。利用CGSS2013数据的分析表明：在农村劳动力移民客观社会经济地位的分化过程中,人力资本成为获得较高客观社会经济地位(声望、权力和收入)的关键机制,而社会资本则不具有显著的经济收入回报。此外,在其主观地位认同的分化过程中,客观社会经济地位决定了农村劳动力移民主观地位认同的基本定位,而以“相对剥夺感”为核心的社会体验因素则在很大程度上决定了主客观地位认同偏移的具体方向。相对剥夺体验较强者更易出现地位认同的“向下偏移”,相对剥夺体验较弱者更易出现地位认同的“向上偏移”。     

农业劳动力老龄化对土地利用效率的影响

通过构建农业劳动力老龄化—要素投入—土地利用效率的理论分析框架,从个体维度、家庭维度实证分析劳动密集型农产品生产中农业劳动力老龄化对土地利用效率的影响。研究表明：随着决策者年龄增加,倾向于依靠自我剥削机制增加自用工投入,家庭老龄化程度负向影响自用工投入、资金投入,对土地利用效率产生消极影响;增加劳动、雇工、资金投入有利于提高土地利用效率,但土地净生产率更依赖于农户自有生产要素。决策者受教育程度、农业机械固定资产原值、苹果收入占比、土地流入、细碎化程度、有效灌溉面积占比、是否获得政府补贴正向影响土地利用效率,决策者年医疗费用、家庭土地规模、自然灾害、村里是否有技术员负向影响土地利用效率。据此,应通过引导土地合理流转、关注农民健康与收益分配化解农业劳动力老龄化的消极影响,通过向农民投资、强化补贴与灾害预警增强农户的土地利用能力。     

农村留守家庭研究综述

留守家庭是我国城镇化、现代化以及社会转型的产物,农村留守家庭对于理解中国社会转型不同于西方现代化过程的特征具有独特价值。基于劳动力迁移理论从宏观和微观两个角度研究国外留守家庭产生的原因,分析留守家庭现状及其带来的消极影响。通过对国内相关文献的检视发现,中国农村留守家庭有其特殊性,并已成为严重的社会问题,给个体、家庭、社会和国家带来多重影响。农村留守家庭的产生不仅源于家庭,更有复杂的制度、政策以及经济原因,要将留守家庭问题纳入到城镇化发展战略中来,创造农民举家迁移的进城市民化和就地集聚城镇化的制度环境和自由选择条件,才能解决留守家庭衍生的问题。     

边际成本:劳动力供给曲线的重新解释

在目前劳动经济理论中,人们企图运用边际效用理论,把闲暇作为消费品,在闲暇一物品两种消费品中进行效用最大化选择来推导劳动力供给曲线。本文认为边际效用理论并不能推导劳动力供给曲线,它只能据以推导劳动（时间）供给曲线。劳动力是生产出来的,其生产是要花费成本的。边际成本理论能合理解释劳动力供给曲线。这不仅在理论上是可行的,而且可获得实证支持。