[All] a refreshing analysis of Uber.

[Lori Strothard]

Thanks Greg- sounds interesting! I told my neighbour Tom Slee about this because he recently published a book about the dangers of Uber, Air BnB etc. The book is called "What's Yours is Mine: Against the Sharing Economy". 

Here is a review of it that sets the stage for it:   http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/03/the-unforeseen-dangers-of-uber-and-airbnb/ 

 It seems just like freon in refrigerators, people often plunge ahead into using /implementing short-sighted things that seem easy + beneficial in many ways, without really considering the wider, often profound & long lasting repercussions/intended, unintended side-effects. It seems if something gets a job done or fills a need, and people can make money from it, often things move forward before society has had a chance to say 'wait a minute'-lets look at this more deeply'. I stayed at an Air Bnb in Vancouver a year ago, and though I thought it was great, much nicer than staying in a hotel, now I hear that many homeowners in Vancouver have found that they can make more money by continually renting out a space as an Air Bnb spot, that people who want to rent on a long-term basis are having trouble finding spots or are being told to vacate. So I unknowingly was also contributing to a problem that I hadn't realized would transpire at that point. 

Lori S.



  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Gregory C. Michalenko 
  To: all at gren.ca 
  Sent: Thursday, April 07, 2016 9:39 AM
  Subject: [All] a refreshing analysis of Uber.


  At last someone is raising the really important issues about Uber.  Read the abstract. 
  -Greg Michalenko


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  From: env-faculty-bounces at lists.uwaterloo.ca [env-faculty-bounces at lists.uwaterloo.ca] on behalf of Heather Dorken [hdorken at uwaterloo.ca]
  Sent: Thursday, April 07, 2016 9:11 AM
  To: env-faculty at lists.uwaterloo.ca
  Subject: [env-faculty] Revised - Geography and Environment Faculty Search - Daniel Cockayne




  Dear colleagues, 



  Please join us for a research seminar with Daniel Cockayne, who is interviewing for an Assistant Professor position in GEM. Daniel expects to defend his PhD in Geography at the University of Kentucky this coming June. Daniel’s CV can be viewed in Heather Dorken’s office (EV1-115). The seminar will be held from 10:00-11:30 in EV1-221 on Friday, April 15. We will provide coffee and cookies.



  “Does Uber own the cars now?” The normalization of insecure work in San Francisco’s digital media sector



  Abstract 

  In this presentation I argue that work in San Francisco’s digital media sector is structured by both the short termism of financial technologies such as venture capital that make demands of exponential growth and fast returns on investment and the intense personal commitment individuals display to the their firm and product. Drawing on eighteen months of fieldwork in San Francisco with entrepreneurs, software developers, and other workers, I argue that equity-financed small businesses in this sector reproduce and romanticize insecure and uncertain working conditions for themselves and others. Negative impacts of work are balanced against the perceived (if not real) benefits of working for small businesses, such as personal autonomy and control over one’s work, high status and respect, and the desire for glamorous working environments. Through interviews with workers, I analyze how individuals justify their own submission to un- or under-paid and stressful work, long working hours, and considerable economic risk. I also examine how entrepreneurs impose insecure working conditions on others. I use the example of the ‘on-demand’ or, as it is more colloquially known, sharing economy to demonstrate how labor is devalued through the consistent framing of this work as ‘social’ rather than ‘economic,’ the imposition of punitive and disciplinary peer-review systems, and the prevalent legal classification of workers as contractors rather than employees in the U.S. context. I frame my findings within cultural and feminist economic geography, the geographies of work and labor, and critical studies of technology in geography to argue that the workplace is a primary site not only for the reproduction of particular systems of economic accumulation, but also the communication of power relations that reproduce hegemonic standards of work, and normative models of behavior. 





  Hope to see you there,

  Johanna



  Johanna Wandel
  Associate Professor
  Interim Chair, Geography and Environmental Management
  University of Waterloo, Waterloo ON N2L 3G1

  519 – 888 – 4567 ext. 38669





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