This presentation will tie together disparate economic, cultural, and political phenomena of our last few decades to form a provocative narrative about the shape of the global capitalist economy at present. Ursula will examine the way that advanced information and communications technology has opened up new fields of capital accumulation: in culture and the arts, in the privatization of public services, and in the commodification of human sociality by way of mobile devices and social networking. These trends are in turn accompanied by the dramatic restructuring of work arrangements, opening the way for new contradictions and new forms of labor solidarity and struggle around the planet.

Ursula Huws is Professor of Labour and Globalisation at the University of Hertfordshire in the UK, and founder of Analytica Social and Economic Research. She is the author of Labor in the Global Digital Economy and The Making of a Cybertariat: Virtual Work in a Real World.