Badrinath Rao
(Department of Liberal Studies, Kettering University)
Abstract:
The unprecedented changes wrought by the inexorable march of new technologies have forced us to confront our most foundational assumptions about our collective lives and values. Novel technologies generate huge profits, confer staggering benefits, and yet inevitably engender colossal socio-economic dislocations. Optimists tend to argue that the current social upheavals are transitory; new forms of work will enhance the common weal. Pessimists fear that new technologies will exacerbate socioeconomic inequalities and create mass unemployment. Regardless of one’s perspective on the future of work in the postdigital age, certain elements of the current renegotiation of work and their implications for workers are incontrovertible. First, with the emergence of platform economy job security is a thing of the past. Precarity, lack of human security, and diminution of bargaining power are the new realities of the working class. Second, useful though they may be, new technologies will create disempowerment, dehumanization, and loss of dignity, particularly for the digital have-nots. Third, new forms of surveillance and extreme demands of the gig economy will lead to alienation and the erosion of community bonds. Arguing from a social philosophy perspective, the paper posits as follows. First, drawing on Taylor and Fraser’s philosophy of recognition and dignity, it contend that no matter how profitable, technology must not be allowed to eclipse the inherent dignity of human beings. Thus, absent meaningful alternatives, the use of technologies that corrode the identity and self-worth of workers and result in their misrecognition must be consciously eschewed. Second, viewed from the human capabilities approach of Sen and Nussbaum, fostering human capabilities which enables leveraging new technologies must be accorded priority. Social policies must incentivize investments in the development of human potential. Third, recognizing the negative externalities of our obsession with efficiency, we must reinstate humanness and reaffirm our commitment to human security. Lastly, given the worldwide mobility of capital, these innovations cannot be carried out in isolation. What is required is a global effort to protect the sacrosanct nature of work through the adoption of enlightened international covenants and policies.
Badrinath Rao is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Asian Studies at Kettering University in the United States. His expertise is in the law, politics, and society in India and China. Dr. Rao is also a licensed attorney. In 2018-19, Dr. Rao was the Kosciusko Foundation Visiting Professor at the University of Warsaw in Poland. Dr. Rao has taught in six countries: India, China, the United States, Spain, Poland, and Canada. He was a visiting faculty in the Master’s Program at the International Institute for the Sociology of Law, University of the Basque Country, Spain in 2005-07. Dr. Rao was also a Visiting Professor at Sichuan University, Chengdu, China in 2009. In 2014, he was a Visiting Professor at the Southeast University in Nanjing, China, and at the Harbin Institute of Technology, School of Law, Harbin, China. In the summer of 2017, Prof. Rao was a Visiting Faculty at the School of Law in Hunan University, Changsha, China. Besides, he has visited China 11 times and lectured in 36 Chinese universities on issues concerning the law, social sciences, and leadership and ethics. Dr. Rao has lectured and presented papers in several countries including Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Hungary, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, S. Korea, Serbia, Spain, and USA. Dr. Rao is currently working on a monograph on the justice system in India.