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Drawing from participant observation and in-depth interviews, this article illustrates how esoteric practitioners (mainly Tarot card readers) come to see themselves as "self-employed" or entrepreneurs and take up the labor of brand building. These individuals study and use the cards not only as part of a personal "quest" for meaning or experience but also as an attempt to "make a living" from their work. This labor is personal and subjective as well as increasingly digital in nature, occurring through blogs, websites, and other media. Despite the relative ease of Web 2.0 technologies, online brand building poses serious challenges for Tarot readers. In contrast to websites depicting "a best life," the process of building a personal brand can be fraught with hesitation, speculation, and failure as well as confounded by issues of access to technology. This tension makes many Tarot readers "reluctant entrepreneurs" who feel that they have no choice but to engage with the Internet.

Articles in Workplace have repeatedly called for increased collective organisation in opposition to a disturbing trajectory: individual autonomy is decreasing, contractual conditions are worsening, individual mental health issues are rising, and academic work is being intensified. Despite our theoretical advances and concerted practical efforts to resist these conditions, the gains of the 20th century labor movement are diminishing and the history of the university appears to be on a determinate course. To date, this course is often spoken of in the language of "crisis." While crisis may indeed point us toward the contemporary social experience of work and study within the university, we suggest that there is one response to the transformation of the university that has yet to be adequately explored: A thoroughgoing and reflexive critique of academic labor. By this, we mean a negative critique of academic labor and its role in the political economy of capitalism; one which focuses on understanding the basic character of 'labor' in capitalism as a historically specific social form. Beyond the framework of crisis, what productive, definite social relations are actively resituating the university and its labor within the demands, proliferations, and contradictions of capital? With the production of this special issue of Workplace, we hope to contribute to a negative critique of academic labor that not only helps make these social relations more transparent, but situates academic labor as an object of critique within the discourse of recent developments in Marxist praxis.

"Providing a much needed overview of the growing field of digital sociology, this handbook connects digital media technologies to the traditional sociological areas of study, like labour, culture, education, race, class and gender. Rooted in a critical understanding of inequality as foundational to digital sociology and is edited by leaders in the field. It includes topics ranging from web analytics, wearable technologies, social media analysis and digital labour. This rigorous, accessible text explores contemporary dilemmas and problems of the digital age in relation to inequality, institutions and social identity, making it suitable for use for a global audience on a variety of social science courses and beyond. Offering an important step forward for the discipline of sociology Digital sociologies is an important intellectual benchmark in placing digital at the forefront of investigating the social."--Policy Press website

Explores of social justice, citizenship, and community in the context of data-driven urbanismInvestigates critical issues of social justice, citizenship and community in the context of the powerful economic rationales of data-driven urban developmentMakes a theoretical contribution towards framing social justice from the perspective of the datafied cityDocuments new case studies and exposes new avenues for research across social justice, critical data studies, education and politicsData Justice and the Right to the City engages with theories of social justice and data-driven urbanism. It explores the intersecting concerns of data justice - both the harms and civic possibilities of the datafied society - and the right to the city - a call to redress the uneven distribution of resources and rights in urban contexts. These concerns are addressed through a variety of topics: digital social services, as cities use data and algorithms to administer to citizens; education, as data-driven practices transform learning and higher education; labour, as platforms create new precarities and risks for workers; and activists who seek to make creative and political interventions into these developments. This edited collection proposes frameworks for understanding the effects of data-driven technologies at the municipal scale and offers strategies for intervention by both scholars and citizens