In the nineteenth century, English textile workers responded to the introduction of new technologies on the factory floor by smashing them to bits. For years the Luddites roamed the English countryside, practising drills and manoeuvres that they would later deploy on unsuspecting machines. The movement has been derided by scholars as a backwards-looking and ultimately ineffectual effort to stem the march of history. For Gavin Mueller, the movement gets at the heart of the antagonistic relationship between all workers, including us today, and the so-called progressive gains secured by new technologies. The Luddites weren’t primitive and they are still a force, however unconsciously, in the workplaces of the twenty-first-century world.
This talk is based on material from the book Breaking Things at Work, published by Verso in 2021. Breaking Things at Work is an innovative rethinking of labour and machines, leaping from textile mills to algorithms, from existentially threatened knife cutters of rural Germany to surveillance-evading truckers driving across the continental United States. Mueller argues that the future stability and empowerment of working-class movements will depend on subverting these technologies and preventing their spread wherever possible. The task is intimidating, but the seeds of this resistance are already present in the neo-Luddite efforts of hackers, pirates, and dark web users who are challenging surveillance and control, often through older systems of communication technology.
About the Speaker
Gavin Mueller is an Assistant Professor of New Media and Digital Culture at the University of Amsterdam. He is the author of Media Piracy in the Cultural Economy: Intellectual Property and Labor under Neoliberal Restructuring (published by Routledge in 2019). He is a Contributing Editor at Jacobin and a member of the Viewpoint Magazine editorial collective.
About CAMRI
The Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI) is a world-leading centre in the study of media and communication and is renowned for its critical and international research. CAMRI is situated in the School of Media and Communication. It builds on a long tradition of research in media and communication that spans five decades, as the university launched the first British media studies degree in 1975. The University of Westminster has been consistently ranked highly in media and communication studies according to the Research Excellence Framework and the QS World University Rankings.
CAMRI’s objective is to serve as a platform for critical media and communication studies that develop the legacy of the “Westminster School”. Our research analyses communication power in light of current transformations in society and the communications landscape. CAMRI’s research is organised in five thematic networks focusing on global media, political economy and communication policy, digital media, cultural identities and social change, as well as communication theory, history and philosophy. CAMRI studies the media and communication from an international and global perspective. Our work privileges sociological inquiry and qualitative methods. It takes a contextual approach that is historical, sceptical and nuanced. Our research is grounded in theory and is rich in empirical detail, thereby informing both a critical understanding of contemporary media, as well as new approaches to policy-making and practice.
CAMRI’s research is based on a broader purpose and vision for society. Our work examines how the media and society interact and aims to contribute to progressive social change, equality, justice, and democracy. CAMRI takes a public interest and humanistic approach that seeks to promote participation, facilitate informed debate and strengthen capabilities for critical thinking, complex problem solving and creativity.
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