Logo: to the web site of Uppsala University

In this article, we review the workplace battleground and explore the potential of social media for mobilizing social movements in labour conflicts and beyond. By conducting a case study with empirical accounts obtained from the 2010–2011 British Airways cabin crew dispute in the United Kingdom, along with secondary sources, we discern social media in the workplace as a contested field. Inquiring into the unfolding dynamic of social media and workplace conflict, we investigate the mobilizing prospects of theoretical concepts like ‘distributed discourse’ and ‘accelerated pluralism’ through the analytical prism of our interviews. Our analysis of these empirical accounts will tease out certain empowering potentials in the use of social media to shape discourse and mobilise movement. However, we also note that these same communicative actions may challenge internal union authority, generate counter-mobilising efforts and constitute an integral part in exposing both our private and working lives to the processes of marketisation and commodification. 

This book is a philosophical journey into what is here described as a dissociative economy, whereby the battle-lines between capital and labour, are currently being drawn in and through our very identities themselves. Whilst predominantly theoretical, and owing much to Critical theory and the teachings of Jacques Lacan, the book nevertheless grapples with three diverse empirical cases from our evermore prevailing and broadly defined knowledge economy. In these empirical glimpses the industries of investment banking, information technology and management consulting are duly represented through interviews derived from Lehman Brothers, Google and a multinational consulting firm. The empirical accounts are used to render visible the theoretical contributions to the fields of subjectivity, ideology, power, resistance and virtuality. By looking at a rather timely and specific range of work-life identities, yet at the same time elaborating these accounts in light of the fundamental question around identity itself, which has tickled the human intellect since time immemorial. My hope is to enter into a timeless dialogue and yet at the same time very much speak into our present.