Work and imaginaries of rationality

Anette Hallin (), Christoffer Andersson (), Lucia Crevani (), Caroline Ingvarsson (), Chris Ivory (), Inti Lammi (), Eva Lindell () and Anna Uhlin ()

Chapter 2 in Creating the Future of Work, 2025, pp 11-37 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: In chapter 2, we explore imaginaries of work as rational. The underlying idea of these imaginaries is that all work may be fully understood, mapped, and optimized – an assumption that is fundamental for the digitalizing of work. Drawing on an empirical example where the work of social workers was broken down into discrete, separate, and sequentially ordered activities and later translated into algorithms, we show how work becomes heteromated and disembodied. This means that work becomes separated from time and space, and in the digitalized versions of work, power is shifted away from the humans to digital technologies, changing what it means to know work.

Keywords: Rational; Optimization; Heteromation; Reductionism; Power; Knowing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035324477
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