Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences
Netherlands
fellow
Winifred Poster
2023-2024
Home institution
Labor Tech Research Network
Discipline(s)
Anthropology and ethnology
Sociology
Theme(s)
Digital Society
Gender, Family & Youth
Labor, Capital & Innovation
Fellowship dates
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Biography
Winfred is a NIAS Theme Group Fellow (Re-imagining Security Labour) during 2023-2024.
I study feminist labor theory, digital globalization, and Indian outsourcing. For the past two decades, I’ve been following high-tech firms from the US to India, both in earlier waves of computer manufacturing and software, and more recent waves of back-office work and call centers. My focus is on the intersection of post-colonial computing with the political economy of service labor. I’m curious how information communication technologies are changing the meaning of work, dispersing it transnationally, incorporating new types of workers, and reshaping identities.
My training is in Sociology from the University of California at Berkeley (BA) and Stanford University (PhD). I have taught at Northwestern University, the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and currently at Washington University, St. Louis. Internationally, I have held visiting positions at the University of Hyderabad in India, Linköping and Örebro Universities in Sweden, the University of Paderborn in Germany, the University of Toronto in Canada, and the Intel Science & Technology Center for Social Computing at UC Irvine.
My research has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the Center for International Business Education and Research. Findings have appeared in journals such as the American Sociological Review, Social Problems, Gender & Society, International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society, Journal of Developing Societies, Social Politics, Industrial Relations, Research in the Sociology of Work, American Behavioral Scientist, Gender, Sexuality, & Feminism, and International Journal of Comparative Sociology. Chapters have appeared in books from Stanford University, Cambridge, Sage, Routledge, Lawrence Earlbaum, Brill, Elsevier, Verlag, and IGI Presses. Pieces have been reprinted in Uganda and India, and translated into German. I have presented my work at international conferences in ten countries. My article “Who’s on the Line?” has won awards from Emerald Management Reviews and the University of Minnesota.
Research Project
The Security Labor of Managing Digital Bodies: Women’s Techno-Affective Work for the State in the US and India
How can a deeper understanding of individuals in the security labor force shape the future of security work? There are myriad examples of how, in general, descriptions of security labour in the media tend to villainize or heroize the workers, criticising them as lazy and uneducated, or, celebrating them as patriotic and brave. This NIAS Theme Group will bring their own deeply informed practices and varied viewpoints regarding the global security enterprise to our collaborative investigation.
As member of the theme group, Winifred Poster aims to explore how and why women are often recruited to do the labor of handling digital bodies. Despite the fact that tech and military domains have been traditionally dominated by men, women are brought in to be the interface between them. Winifred argues it reflects formations of techno-affective labor for the state. Specifically, it represents the convergence of databased strategies in the security industry, with women’s historical rootedness in interpersonal tasks, identity management, and dirty work for the state. Implications lie in the way their labor assists the surveillance of crossers and the obfuscation of borders themselves. Evidence from the US and India, and the security industries across them, provides material for this analysis.
Research Interests:
Gendered security labor; techno-affective work; surveillance industries; women in tech-military domains
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