97284 - SOCIOLOGIA DELLE TRASFORMAZIONI ECONOMICHE E DEL LAVORO

Learning outcomes

Learning outcomes - At the end of the course the student: - possesses knowledge and analytical skills with respect to the most recent transformations of the production system, the governance of labor and its main regulatory forms, the employment system, the characteristics of the emerging production sectors, the training needs, the social criticalities related to them.

Course contents

This course examines how artificial intelligence is profoundly redefining the relationships between technology, labor, and society, generating processes that resist singular interpretation. From one perspective, AI emerges as a force of discipline and exploitation, extending historical capitalist logics into the digital sphere through cognitive automation, the precarization of immaterial labor, and the commodification of creativity. From another vantage point, AI appears as a threshold toward unprecedented post-human configurations, where intelligence migrates from biological bodies to algorithmic networks, challenging traditional boundaries between nature and culture.

This analytical complexity will be tested through concrete case studies: the recomposition of working classes in the platform era (from micro-tasking to ghost work), structural inequalities produced by algorithms (from racial biases to neo-colonial data extraction), and social practices resisting so-called technological determinism. Special attention will be devoted to how AI - analyzed through transfeminist scholarship - reconfigures social reproduction, transforming care work, affective labor, and community organizing into both a new frontier of exploitation and potential emancipation.

Readings/Bibliography

Pasquinelli M. (2023). The Eye of the Master: A Social History of Artificial Intelligence, Verso Books.

Hayles, N.K. (2025). Bacteria to AI. Human Futures with Our Nonhuman Symbionts, UChicago Press.

Additional bibliography may be provided to attending students. Students will be able, upon agreement with the instructor, to substitute some parts of the above texts with personal in-depth proposals. In this regard, for attending students, an in-class discussion of the following article is planned: Zechner M., Struggles for Work Beyond the Wage: Keep Kindling Rebellious Spirits and Other Imaginaries of Work.

Teaching methods

The course is primarily based on the instructor’s lectures. However, a significant portion will be structured to encourage in-class discussion and the formation of working groups, which will support a deeper exploration of the course topics. Critical discussion sessions will also be organized—that is, opportunities for students to engage in structured exchanges between different viewpoints on specific issues (e.g., “Does AI reproduce or transform exploitation?”). Students will prepare short critical notes to support their arguments. Lastly, group project presentations in class will contribute to the student’s overall assessment. Multimedia resources may be used during lectures, and documentaries and/or films related to the course topics may be screened and discussed in class.

Finally, two classes will be held jointly with Professor Emanuele Leonardi’s course, Political Ecology of Work, based on the text by Manuela Zechner listed in the bibliography.

Assessment methods

Assessment will be conducted in oral form.

For students who actively attend the course, the first part of the evaluation will be based on the quality of the presentations (and subsequent discussions) of the activities developed and coordinated by the working groups formed during the course under the instructor’s supervision. The second part of the evaluation will be based on an oral exam at the end of the course, focusing on the texts listed in the bibliography and any additional materials indicated by the instructor. In summary, the final grade for attending students will be composed as follows:
– 50% Active participation (quality of contributions during debates and in the position paper, engagement in discussions and in the in-class analytical work on course materials);
– 50% Final oral exam (critical discussion of the texts and course topics).

Non-attending students will be assessed through an oral exam evaluating their critical understanding of the two texts listed in the bibliography.

Teaching tools

To support the lessons, the teacher will often use multimedia tools available in the classrooms where the lessons will be held. Finally, some complementary teaching materials will be made available to the students on the dedicated portal unibo.

Office hours

See the website of Federico Chicchi