IRC16 - Proposed Sessions

This session argues that the "new normal" of post-covid society hinges on the involution of modernity's separation of the domestic and the vocational. In this time of the pandemic, spaces of work (offices, factories, construction sites) and sites of public consumption (malls, theatres, markets) are marked by the sign of the virus. The virus as a symbol, is something that interrupts a form of sociality which has been dubbed "offline", "in-person", "face to face" and various other terms which indicate a distinction to screenally mediated sociality that unfolds in an imagined, digital space. Work-from-home then, emerges as a suture that allows for sociality to recommence, having been briefly interrupted in "physical" sites. And this movement is what has been dubbed the new normal. The seemingly contemporaneous cohabitation of the two spatialities that such a reality functionally necessitates is, however, far from seamless.

At the turn of the 20th century, Max Weber argued that modern rationality consisted in the separation of the domestic and the vocational, of home and office. The separation of business from the affairs of the household constituted for Weber, the condition of possibility of capitalist enterprise. This parallels the separation of bureaucratic office as a vocation distinct from private life, and the inhabiting of them as separate modalities of existence. Such a separation of the vocational and the domestic was primarily articulated with reference to the physicality of the spaces of work, and of dwelling.

We suggest that the normative force of the COViD-normal reimagines the Weberian separation not just physically but also ideationally. The office, then is not just a physically distinct space, its distinction can be imagined by practices such as constituting a certain zoom backdrop, or by wearing a blazer for the webcam as pyjama'd legs tucked away from view. In other words it reconstitutes the temporal habitation of these spaces as simultaneous. Reconstituting such a simultaneous habitation, however, calls for a return to an older and perhaps pre-modern conceptualization of interfaces between the domestic and the vocational as both physical and ideational spaces.

Session Plan

Introduction to the session problematique - 10 minutes

Section 1. The mise-en-scene of work - 15 minutes

How does the workplace emulate home and home emulate workplace - in a world where boundaries are increasingly non-existent? What can be the politics and aesthetics of choosing zoom backgrounds for a call attended from home? This section unpacks some of these tenuous questions regarding our labouring bodies and the spaces they inhabit. Using examples of lived life, zoom call backgrounds become the mise-en-scene at once fluidly dissolving between home and workplace. Further, erasing the markers of home and deliberately adding ones that emulate the workplace become the neoliberal acts of aesthetic correction that reconfigure home like the workplace. The session aims at illustrating the tensions of inhabiting home within workspace and workspace within home.

Section 2. The Other Side: Homeless and Worklessness of India’s Migrant Labor - 15 minutes

2020 has been the year of unprecedented crisis. While most of the organized sectors of the Indian economy ubiquitously could be seen occupying the digital spaces, the unorganized sector was still coming to terms with this catastrophe. This section explores the complexities of capitalist economies in the Covid 19 pandemic wherein the boundaries of the workplace and home are progressively blurred, but for 94 percent of the population involved in the unorganized sector and in migrant labour, ‘home’ and ‘work’ are both deferred, distant dreams. While digital spaces are meaningless to this demographic as a site of work, the pandemic has forced them to adapt and navigate digital spaces to connect with their household economies (oikonomos) through the transfer money.

Section 3. Inhabiting the Portal: Locking Down Spatialities of Advocacy and Justice - 15 minutes

What does it mean to hold space when faced with the impossibility of inhabiting of spaces? The global Covid-19 pandemic has no doubt changed the way we think of spatiality. One is faced with the odd conundrum of desiring community while inhabiting isolation. A major concern has been the creation of communities of care without the familiar comfort of physical proximity with fellow beings. This piece reflects on the impact that the pandemic has had on vocations of political advocacy for social justice that necessitate visibly occupying specific spaces, particularly in the contexts of movements such as the BLM or anti-CAA protests. This piece also considers questions of inclusivity in moving such vocations from physical to digital spaces.

Conclusion, or Why migrant laborers walk home, while school teachers teach to empty classrooms. - 10 minutes

We hope to keep our presentations under an hour so that we can have about 30 minutes of discussion.

Session Team

Akriti, Deepak and Misbah are assistant professors at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, GITAM (deemed to be) University, Hyderabad.

Akriti Rastogi teaches Film and Media Theory and is interested in mapping cinema effects across contexts. Entry-level film professionals and media industry gatekeeping are her other interests.

Deepak Prince teaches sociology and is interested in the anthropology of technology. Other interests include politic anthropology, sts and public art. Inhabiting the Portal: Locking Down Spatialities of Advocacy and Justice

Misbah Rashid teaches political science. Her research is on Gender in Islamic Jurisprudence, interpretation of Muslim Personal Law. She has worked in the past with developmental organizations that look at the impact

Satish Kumar has developed and taught courses in the literatures, histories and cultures of Africa and the African diaspora, Ethnic American literatures, immigrant and migrant literatures and survey courses in World Literature. His research is on South Asian and African literatures.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-involutejaggedseamsofthedomesticandthevocational

IRC 22 - Proposed Session - #IdentifyingTheIdeaofLaborinTeaching – Negotiating pedagogy at home and inside classroom(s)

Admin — 2022-05-19T15:16:11Z

Details of a session proposed for the Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 - #Home.

Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 - #Home - Call for Sessions

Session Type: Presentation and Discussion

Session Plan

If we introspect the past two years in the context of the pandemic, techno-digital tools and methods have become a necessity from being a substitute in our daily ventures. Schools, colleges and other institutions were forced to continue with what we became familiar as ‘work from home’. Taking work spaces as case studies (offices/schools/colleges) we aim to explore how ‘home’ has transformed itself from an informal space to a forma one through the medium of digital devices and the internet. Schools, in particular have undergone a shift in the modes of their practices – onsite to online (home), which has also resulted in the transformation of spaces within which pedagogy used to navigate.

The devices and the programs which cater to platforms like Google classroom, Zoom and other have seen a revival in usage in these recent times. This execution of the digital platforms or the ‘Zooming Towards a University Platform’ (D’Souza, 2020) has however boosted the Education Technology sector since online teaching for them has always been the ‘front paw’ (D’Souza: 2020). With these platforms being increasingly used as mediums to conduct ‘classes’ from the vicinities of home, one significant issue that has come across is the issue of the space. To be more precise, the online platforms and digital devices have challenged the conventional classroom space which has resulted in the change of pedagogy and mobility of individuals – both students and educators etc. This change in the space – from brick and mortar to online interfaces can be related to the Foucauldian notion of heterotopia, which is a result of a decentralization of the physical classroom space.

Evidently, the practice of work, in this case teaching/pedagogy has also undergone changes. Interaction in a classroom was always aimed towards a broader objective carried out within a ‘public sphere’ (Habermas, 1962). With digitization owing to the pandemic the public sphere seemed to get replaced by private spaces especially homes, only to be integrated within an online (digital) space which has a temporal existence. Owing to this, academic work or labor has seen an imposed digitisation on the part of both educators and students, and the transformation of the existing space has called for a different approach towards pedagogy.

Drawing on these, we would like to seek answers for these questions:

How is work or labor in the academic sectors getting reconfigured with the imposition of the digital?
Is the idea of space and concept of work related to each other? if so, how? Or is work specific to space? What difference lies between the space of the home and the institutional space?
Is space or work a characteristic of each other? Do they fulfill each other’s’ features? Given this, does the idea of the public vs private sphere in terms of teaching and learning alter the notion of separate spaces?
How is the classroom getting reconfigured within the home and the digital ? what role does the individual(s) and the technodigital play?

Session Team

Sunanda Kar works as a research student in the department of Humanities and Social Sciences, National Institute of Technology, Silchar, Assam. Her research interests include Digital Humanities, Literary studies, and New Media.

Bishal Sinha works as a Junior Research Fellow in the Department of English, Assam University. His Research interests include Postcolonial Studies, Film and Media Studies and Literary Gerontology.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-identifyingtheideaoflabourinteaching

IRC22 - Proposed Session - #CovidConfessions: An internet art project

Admin — 2022-04-25T13:16:53Z

Details of a session proposed for the Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 - #Home.

Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 - #Home - Call for Sessions

Session Type: Online Interactive Exhibit/Individual Presentation/Demonstration of research outputs and methods

Session Plan

Featuring anonymous stories of resilience, wisdom, and joy, in Kannada, Hindi, & English

Background: Over the past 2 years, digital infrastructures have played an intensified role in the meaning making of the home. As the internet offers up access to work, play, and social contact it also mediates our relationships with our own identities, our successes, and failures. In the anonymity of the online community (for those who are privileged enough to have access to the internet and personal hardware like a smartphone or laptop), physical markers of belonging, material signifiers of social status can become irrelevant. For many who don’t have stable home environments, online communities can become a home that their own physical dwellings cannot.
Questions: How can anonymity construct a stable and safe space? How can sharing anonymously via digital technologies help overcome mental health stresses caused by prolonged isolation? Can one find refuge and comfort in the stories and experiences of others? How can online safe spaces be curated as a tool for healing?
#CovidConfessions: This session is an internet art experiment. The goal is to create an archive of anonymous covid confessions to share in the form of illustrations, voice overs, and animation, with the world. Here is a reference to the art style. This is a long-form story, but I’m looking to create long-form, as well as single-slide bitesized multi-media pieces for social media. I know that there are similar confession style online spaces like this one but I’m looking to take these words one step further and create art that can be a healing.
Accessibility: In order to be accessible to non-English speakers, I’d like to gather and include stories in Hindi and Kannada: #कोविडकहानी #CovidKahani #ಕನ್ನಡಕಥೆ #CovidKatha
Gathering Stories: Stories will be collected through digital platforms like LinkedIn/Twitter/Instagram and personal networks like WhatsApp/Signal/Telegram, via a google sheet like this one. I will need this translated into Hindi and Kannada. I will reach Kannada speakers through Telegram and WhatsApp, English speakers through instagram, and Hindi speakers through Instagram and WhatsApp. Would love inputs on how to do this better.

Marginalised Voices: The internet is inherently a privileged space, and given that online confessions are given anonymously and without physical intervention, I don't see how I can reach out to non-internet users for stories at this point without compromising their anonymity — including them is out of the scope of this project. I acknowledge that it's very difficult to centre marginalised voices in this project — would love inputs on how to tackle that.

Session Type

An asynchronous online interactive exhibit, running from April 27 to May 27.
The internet is asynchronous, so we should make space for exhibit style projects which are not tied down to particular live “session.” This is an ongoing project that everyone can participate in. This project will be hosted on a microsite, linked to the IRC website, and shared on the instagram handle: @covid.confessions.project.
However, if I were hard pressed to choose one of the four formats, I would pick format 3 “Demonstration of research outputs and methods.” I can speak about what has been successful and what hasn’t worked with the project, what the reach and impact has been, and whether it answered any of the questions I began with.

Presenter

Indumathi Manohar came to a career in design via theatre, dance, and scuba diving. Currently Communications Designer at CIS, she works on making research publications, annual reports, podcasts, events, and op-eds, more accessible to a larger audience through visual design— whether it be through layout design, infographics, social media creatives or web banners. You can find her work here.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-covidconfessions

IRC22 - Proposed Session - #TransActandWhatFollowed - Access to care for transgender persons during the COVID-19 pandemic

Admin — 2022-05-19T15:12:46Z

Details of a session proposed for the Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 - #Home.

Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 - #Home - Call for Sessions

Session Type: Individual Presentation

Session Plan

This session will be an individual presentation by Brindaalakshmi.K. Transgender persons were among the most severely affected during COVID-19 pandemic. The government of India made no special efforts to address the concerns of the transgender community during the lockdowns. Further hampering the access to their rights, the Government of India issued the rules for the new law, Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act 2019 while the world was under a global lockdown. Transgender persons have had to go back to living in severely transphobic and abusive environments with their natal families. Access to healthcare and COVID-19 vaccination has also been a challenge for many transgender persons due to the lack of valid identification documents. Digitisation of the process to change the name and gender on identification documents has made the situation worse for a historically silenced population group. The digital process has widened the gap in accessing healthcare and other support systems during the pandemic.

Under the theme of violence and care, this paper will explore the systemic violence faced by the transgender community during the COVID-19 pandemic and their struggles and challenges in accessing healthcare and other relief. The intent is to explore the role of technology in both enabling better access and also widening the access gap for transgender persons and also the data gap further perpetuating the erasure of transgender persons. The widening access gap will be understood by focusing on the digital process to change ID documents while the positive aspects of the use of technology will be explored by looking at some of the community driven online campaigns to raise funds and other support for transgender persons during the lockdowns.

This session will be based on the initial findings from the qualitative research study, Gendering of Development Data in India: Post-Trans Act 2019 by Brindaalakshmi.K for the Centre for Internet & Society as part of the Our Voices, Our Future project supported by Association for Progressive Communications. For the purpose of this study, qualitative interviews were conducted with NGOs, activists and lawyers to cover the rights related challenges faced by transgender persons. Apart from gender, different intersections of their identity such as caste, religion, urban/rural and disability were also covered in these interviews. Some of the findings will be shared during this presentation.

Presenter

Brindaalakshmi. K is Co-Lead, Queer & Digital at Point of View. They are authoring the study, Gendering of Development Data in India: Post-Trans Act 2019 for the Centre for Internet & Society, India as part of the Our Voices Our Future project supported by Association for Progressive Communications. They previously authored the study, Gendering of Development Data in India: Beyond the Binary for the Centre for Internet & Society, India as part of the Big Data for Development Network (2020). They are a queer rights activist and peer supporter working with the LGBTIQA+ community in India.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-transactandwhatfollowed

IRC22 - Proposed Session - #WaitingForFood

Admin — 2022-04-25T13:11:04Z

Details of a session proposed for the Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 - #Home.

Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 - #Home - Call for Sessions

Session Type: Presentation and Discussion of Papers

Session Plan

“Don’t come to Burger King, let the King come to you! Order safe deliveries from our kitchen to your doorstep on Swiggy or Zomato. Stay home, stay safe”.

The above caption is from an advertisement by the popular fast food joint Burger King, during the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic. Indeed, one would have come across many such advertisements, centering the safety of the customer, from restaurants and food delivery platforms during the pandemic. Delivery platforms also reinforced this idea of ‘safe access to food from home’ through measures such as temperature checks and vaccination status of the delivery workers, option of no-contact delivery etc. Within such a context, the idea of ‘home’ acquired a certain valence, imbued with a sense of comfort that allowed for multiplicity of food options to be delivered within a short span of time, without compromising one’s safety. In this session, we propose to explore aspects of time, space, and home in the context of food delivery in the pandemic. While we explore time through the concept of ‘waiting’, we look at space through processes of simultaneous compression and rarefaction.

A cursory glance at any food delivery app provides the customer with a certain distribution of time- order placed, preparing order, order picked up, order delivered- all of which are significantly tied to how the process of waiting at home is approached and experienced by the customer. Additionally, the tracking option on the app with an icon of the driver mediates the waiting experience. Similarly, such processes of waiting are experienced by the delivery worker in different ways albeit through multiple delivery cycles outside of home. In any given delivery cycle, a delivery worker waits for the order to be assigned and waits for the restaurant to prepare the order. In addition to this, incentives and long distance delivery produce other forms of waiting for the delivery worker. This waiting operates simultaneously with rapid movement often required to ensure that the order is delivered to the customer who is waiting at home. These forms of waiting are integral to the order-delivery chain and they take place on multiple registers- shaped by the space of home and outside home.

Various food delivery apps also communicate to the customer the promise of delivering different cuisines from across restaurants at the tip of their fingers. Such technologies entail a collapse of space that the customer experiences which varies drastically from the spatial organization of these said options. Many aspects of the app interface are directed towards this compression- the manner in which multiple cuisines and restaurants are organized on the app, the tracking interface that signals an apparent proximity mediated by time frame. Real time experience of delivery often punctures this idea of a seemingly seamless process- glitches in the map showing faulty directions and specifically in the context of Mumbai, the space itself is characterized by traffic jams, climate events etc- reconfiguring space in specific ways.

Drawing on the above discussions, the proposed session will include two papers exploring dimensions of space, time and home. Both papers will be presented In the first paper, (presenter's name) will discuss time in the context of waiting by asking how different modalities of waiting, experienced in the food-delivery process, are linked to the space of home and outside home. In the second paper, (presenter's name) will focus on space as a concept to understand how the perception of the compression of space in the app itself is animated in the order delivery process. Through both these papers, we attempt to explore how the idea of home itself gets restructured through the discourse of ‘staying at home to be safe’. Both papers draw on an ethnographic study conducted by the discussants in Central Mumbai.

Outline of the Session

The discussants will share a recording of their respective presentations of 15 minutes each (as stated in the call for papers). The session will begin with a short discussion between presenters for 20 minutes. This will be followed by an open floor discussion on the papers with the audience present for the subsequent 30 minutes.

Session Team

Nisha Subramanian is pursuing a PhD in Anthropology at Ashoka University. Their work explores rights of forest dwelling communities and temporalities of justice and injustice within the space of the forest

Rhea Bose is pursuing her PhD in The School of Development Studies (SDS), TISS Mumbai. Her work looks at the intersections of cyberspace and queer theory.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-waitingforfood

IRC22 - Proposed Session - #“Going Home”: Constructions of a Digital-Urban Platform Interface in Delhi-NCR

Admin — 2022-04-25T13:04:02Z

Details of a session proposed for the Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 - #Home.

Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 - # Home - Call for Sessions

Session Type: Individual Paper Presentation

Abstract

My ongoing fieldwork with taxi drivers in Delhi-NCR suggests that the “go-home” feature and its equivalent in platform apps such as Uber and Ola have generated a lot of interest. This feature matches drivers with rides to their preferred destinations – usually allowing drivers to choose one or two destinations of their choice in a working day (Uber India Help nd). In an environment of algorithmic governance where drivers feel a considerable loss of control and autonomy, this feature offers a semblance of control over their conditions of survival and mobility. Departing from the enthusiasm generated among platform taxi drivers, this paper explores what “home” signifies for platform cultures with specific attention to the social and material infrastructures that enable and contest “going home.” The “home,” as in other instances, conveys familiarity, comfort and (intimate) knowledges. How and why (if so) do platforms as an urban-digital-labour-capital interface rely on or negate these constructions? Does this arrangement offer an incremental step of negotiating interlocking conflicts and if so, how? In summary, this paper provisionally suggests that “home,” as a feature and as an idea, may have been introduced by platform companies but its possibilities are not circumscribed by their designs.

Cited

Uber India (nd): “Set a Driver Destination,” Uber India Help, viewed on 9 March 2022, https://help.uber.com/driving-and-delivering/article/set-a-driver-destination?nodeId=f3df375b-5bd4-4460-a5e9-afd84ba439b9

Presenter

Anurag Mazumdar is a doctoral candidate at the Department of Geography & GIS, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-goinghomeconstructionofadigitalurbanplatforminterfaceindelhincr

IRC22 - Proposed Session - #SocialMediaActivism

Admin — 2022-04-25T13:01:47Z

Details of a session proposed for the Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 - #Home.

Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 - # Home - Call for Sessions

Session Type: Individual Presentation/Demonstration of Research Outputs and Methods

Session Plan

The said session is based upon the author’s original study on social media as a means of protest in the new digital age. Based on the study “Social Media and Protest: A Case Study on Anti CAA Protest in India” and updating it to “Social Media and Protest: A Case Study of Protest in India during COVID-19” through this session the aim is to bring in light the new ways how dissent or movements of resistance are being navigated. “Home” as being the theme of the conference becomes central point of view in this study and to understand how resistance movement can be participated from home and the impact it makes. This study can be beneficial to understand the socio-political movements in India and usage of digital technologies in mass participation in these movements – these range from amplification of resources, organizing gatherings etc.

The theme social media and modern activism has recently taken the limelight in study of liberal arts. Researchers and universities are now taking social media as a tool to understand modern activism. The proposed study was originally presented in the International Conference on Advanced Research in Social Sciences, Oxford, United Kingdom. The session aims to discuss the findings of the said paper vis-à-vis Anti CAA protest in India as the case study. However, in regards to new developments around global and national politics, the author would also like to bring in perspective new case studies. And highlight the role of social media for dissent in India since 2019, followed in the Farmer’s Protest and much more.

Abstract

Social Media and Protest: A Case Study of Protest in India during COVID-19

The study aims to understand the role of social media in the current chain of events of various activist protests that have happened in the 21st Century or are going around the world. It specifically focuses on the role of social media in mitigating the protest in India. Role of social media thus was recognized as one of the major influences in organizing and facilitating these protests across the country. A special emphasis has been levied upon how the role of social media and how it was changed during the COVID-19 timeline. Understanding how physical interaction was limited how did people still participate in the resistance movement and helped in amplifying the cause. For instance, the Farmers Protest of 2020 is an example of Pandemic, resistance and social media – using this as an example an attempt is being made to understand how the pandemic has severely use of social media among young audience.

In this study we unfold the active role of Social Media Apps such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram into creating awareness about the issue, advocating for one’s rights and organizing protests. Thus, looking at a new narrative of activism through online means or to say emergence of “Online Activism" and shift in resistance movements to digital spaces.

Keywords: social media, Activist Protest, COVID-19, Farmers Protest 2020, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Resistance, Digital Spaces, Online Activism

Presenter

Ms. Anushka Bhilwar (pronouns: they/she) are a student of MPP (Masters in Public Policy) at the University of Stirling, Scotland and an alumnus of Ambedkar University, New Delhi. Their research expands to AI and tech-policies to contemporary political thought and conflict studies. Currently, she works as a freelance writer and storyteller for Glasgow Women’s Library, Glasgow, United Kingdom and a contributing writer at People’s History of South Asia. In their previous endeavours they have worked within the capacity of a Research Associate and Technical Writer with United Nations Development Programme, New Delhi and Indian Institute of Public Administration, New Delhi.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-socialmediaactivism

IRC 22 - Proposed Session - #HomeAndTheInternet

Admin — 2022-05-19T15:21:27Z

Details of a session proposed for the Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 - #Home.

Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 - # Home - Call for Sessions

Session Type: Presentation and Discussion of Papers

Session Plan

The COVID-19 pandemic left many of us stranded between homes – some were able to reach back to our natal homes while others had to make do with where we were then situated. This was a difficult journey of sudden confinement. In times like these when people ought to be with their families, many of us didn’t get the chance to be with them. There emerged new questions of what is home, where is our home.

Can there be a single home? Can people from the North Eastern belt call the mainland our home in times of crisis where racial discrimination was right on our face? Do meanings of home change for a person with psychosocial disabilities who relies on external communities for support system? What does this forced confinement inside the home bring for the queer subject for whom the public space was the only getaway to live our queer lives?

We understand that the pandemic opened up the canvas of ‘home’ and ‘belonging’ by offering us alternative modes of socialization, thereby building communities within social movement which may not be tied to physical interaction. The internet in this context offered a temporary escape to many of us, while also latching on to our tendencies of addictive consumption. It was the only connection we had with the world outside. Issues that were previously overlooked gained attention as they reached to the level of crisis. Not only did educational learning suddenly shift to the digital space, we also witnessed a transition of the existing social movements into the digital landscape. This was obviously exclusionary for many without access, but also opened scope for a new accessibility of these existing modes of learning which the disabled population could better adapt to.

This session is a presentation of two papers by the three team members on the theme of home and the internet for Dalit-Bahujan and Tribal students in India along the intersections of queer, disabled and North Eastern identity-based experiences. With qualitative interviews of women and queer students, and students with psychosocial disabilities in higher education, we bring out narratives of how the pandemic has affected the idea of home for them, how their cross-cutting intersectional identities have played a role in their experience of the real and the digital space, how the burden of labour has changed for women students in these times, how the social movements took shape within the contours of the home and on the internet, and what are the mental health impacts of these experiences on these students. The papers will be partly autoethnographic as the research questions have evolved from the personal experiences of the researchers themselves.

Keywords: Mental health, movement building, working from home, friendship, labour, discrimination, social media, internet

Session Team

Bhanu Priya Gupta is a PhD scholar in Disability Studies at Ambedkar University Delhi (AUD). Her research area is mental illness among Dalit-Bahujan women in the Hindi-speaking belt of India. She is a first-generation graduate who comes from the Bhadbunja community (most backward caste) of North India. She identifies as a Bahujan queer woman, a caregiver and person with mental illness. She has previously worked at National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR) as a Research Associate. She is also a writer and has published her works at Mad in Asia, Velivada, In Plainspeak, and Gaysi Family.

Dona Biswas is a PhD candidate in Women’s and Gender Studies, studying in Dr. B. R. Ambedkar University Delhi (AUD) and Centre for Women’s Development Studies (CWDS). Her research area is social movement and women in movement, working on Bodoland Movement in Assam. She belongs to Namasudra (SC) Bengali community, migrated Agricultural labourer, in Assam. She has previously worked at Nirantar: A Centre for Gender and Education, Delhi as a Research Assistant on Early and Child Marriage in India. Her writings have been published at Feminism in India, Velivada, and Sanghaditha.

Ekta Kailash Sonawane belongs to Mahar (Dalit) community of Maharashtra. They did their Masters in Gender Studies from Ambedkar University Delhi wherein they wrote a dissertation on the intellectual history of class, caste and gender. They have worked as a journalist and researcher at Awaaz India TV and Institute of Human Development. Their work has been published at Dalit Camera, Indie Journal, Colour's Board, Feminist Collective. They have also published a feature article in Hindustan Times.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-homeandtheinternet

IRC 22 - Proposed Session - #HomeBasedFlexiworkInCovid19

Admin — 2022-04-25T12:57:33Z

Details of a session proposed for the Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 - #Home.

Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 - # Home - Call for Sessions

Session Type: Panel Discussion

Session Plan

The objective of this session is to elicit how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected work for women in India and Sri Lanka, through the opportunities of remote and flexible work (centred around the home).

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought out unprecedented changes to the way we work. Some have lost jobs, while others have shifted to remote work. Some have seen their businesses stagnate while others have grown new ones from home. Undoubtedly digital connectivity has been crucial to continuity of work for many, through remote and flexible work opportunities, often centred around the home.

But this kind of work is not without its own challenges; particularly for women. Women are increasingly absent from the formal labour market. Women have traditionally been marginalised when it comes to digital technology, in terms of access, affordability and skills. Women have also traditionally borne the larger share of the care burden in the home. Remote and flexible work have long been argued as significant enablers of womens sustained participation in the workforce, in addition to addressing the problem of women working below their skill grade. The COVID-19 pandemic has stress tested these so-called enabling work arrangements for women.

This panel will seek to shed light on the experiences of women working remotely and flexibly in India and Sri Lanka during the pandemic. It will seek to answer questions such as:

Who is able to work remotely and flexibly, and who faces barriers to do the same?
How do women (vis-a-vis men) perceive flexible and remote (home-based) work?
Do they see them as benefits or does this reinforce patriarchal mobility restrictions?
What are the challenges that women face in these kinds of work arrangements?
What is the role of the platform economy in enabling remote and flexible work options for women?
What are the analog complements for women to successfully work remotely and flexibly?
Which changes are likely to be sustained, and which will not

The session will take the form of a panel discussion led by the moderator. After they set the stage and context, the first panelist will discuss some of the high-level trends in digital access, skills and remote work disaggregated by gender from nationally representative survey findings in India and Sri Lanka. This will include discussion of the differential perceptions on remote work among men and women. The next two panelists will then discuss findings from ongoing research in India and Sri Lanka (respectively) on how digitally enabled work opportunities for women are contributing to the empowerment of women in the two countries. They will also discuss the specific challenges and opportunities that have been experienced by women during the pandemic, such as difficulties in balancing care work with paid work in the home, changing roles and dynamics between women and men in the home due to new digitally enabled work opportunities, inter alia. The next panelist will weigh in with findings from a study of digital opportunities in home-based work in Cambodia, Myanmar and Thailand. The last panelist, who runs a job search platform for blue collar workers, will bring in an industry perspective, shedding light on how employers view women as workers and how women might overcome challenges in finding jobs that match their skills and aspirations.

The session focuses on women, and what is needed to facilitate their participation in the labour market through digitally enabled remote and flexible work opportunities. Women are increasingly absent from the formal labour market and face a number of challenges (precarity, discrimination, etc) to equal participation. Women have also traditionally been marginalised when it comes to digital technology, in terms of access, affordability and skills, which further contributes to economic marginalisation and disempowerment. The research that will be discussed in the session brings to the conversation, the voices, perspectives and lived experiences of women in India, Sri Lanka and other Asian countries through their survey responses and in-depth interviews with them.

Session Team

Sabina Dewan is Founder and Executive Director of the JustJobs Network, which she began with John Podesta in 2013. She is also a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research in India, and a Non-Resident Fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire. Before this, Dewan served as a Senior Fellow and Director for International Economic Policy at the Center for American Progress in Washington DC. Dewan’s research focuses on delineating strategies for job creation and workforce development. She works closely with governments, businesses, multilateral and grassroots organisations providing critical labour market information to improve interventions aimed at generating more and better employment, and cultivating employability, especially for women, youth and marginalised groups.

Mukta Naik, a Fellow at Centre for Policy Research, is an architect and urban planner. Her research interests include housing and urban poverty, urban informality, and internal migration, as well as urban transformations in small cities. At CPR, she focuses on understanding the links between internal migration and urbanisation in the Indian context. Recently, she has worked on gendered experiences of the labour market and related mobilities. She is currently involved with a project on examining the ways in which women’s platform work in India is impacted by corporate and government policy.

Ayesha Zainudeen is a Senior Research Manager at LIRNEasia. Her core areas of interest lie at the intersection of technology and inclusion in the Global South, with a current focus on the future of work. She has 17 years’ extensive experience in this field, having designed, managed, and led numerous research projects in the South and Southeast Asian region for clients such as IDRC (Canada), the World Bank, the Ford Foundation, the GSM Association, inter alia. In her current research, she is documenting how digital technologies are changing work opportunities and contexts in particular for women in South Asia. She is also mapping online job portals in the Asia Pacific to understand their potential as a data source for near-real-time labour market analytics.

Gayani Hurulle is a Senior Research Manager at LIRNEasia, where she researches digital policy and regulation, digital inclusion and the future of work across South and Southeast Asia. She is currently assessing impacts of COVID-19 on labour markets in India and Sri Lanka, as well on technology adoption, platform use and education. She is also an external consultant at EY, where she is conducting World Bank Digital Economy Assessments. She has worked with varied clients such as the Ministry of Digital Infrastructure and Information Technology of Sri Lanka, IDRC, UNESCAP and Mozilla.

Hue-Tam Jamme is Assistant professor, School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning, Arizona State University. She studies urbanisms in transition from a comparative perspective. Using a range of qualitative and quantitative methods, she focuses on the lived experience of societal transformations. Her research explores in particular whether the development of information and communication networks shapes inclusive urban spaces. Jamme currently leads a research project centred on the gig economy and women’s upward mobility and in the capitals of Cambodia, Myanmar, and Thailand. In previous research, she investigated the socio-spatial consequences of the transition towards auto-mobility in Vietnam.

Devesh Taneja is the Co Founder of Vyre, an innovative hiring platform that uses a mix of technologies to facilitate early talent discovery and engagement for the service sector workers. His current research interest lies at the intersection of Technology, Entrepreneurship, Financial Inclusion and Impact Investing. He has several years of experience in investment banking in India and the United States wherein he has worked in fundraising for small businesses. He holds a Masters in Business Administration from Yale University.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-homebasedflexiworkincovid19