Putting the selfie to work: Image making and work/time discipline in the margins of the Indian state
Material, Visual and Digital Culture seminar by Martin Webb (Lecturer of Anthropology at Goldsmiths)
Putting the selfie to work: Image making and work/time discipline in the margins of the Indian state
07 Oct 2024, 17:00 – 18:30
In India the taking of “selfies” as a means of checking if workers or school children are present is becoming increasingly prevalent. Facial recognition software is used to log pupils into classrooms. Corporations offering “at home services” via digital platforms use selfies to confirm the identity of operatives. Workers in community facing roles, often working remotely in the margins of the neoliberal state, circulate selfies and other images as evidence of presence and tasks completed via WhatsApp groups set up by project managers.
Drawing on fieldwork carried out in Delhi this talk explores the everyday production of networks of visibility within projects by employers and workers, and the informal repurposing as organizational tools and ‘transparency devices’ of messaging and social media apps designed to facilitate participatory digital cultures of pleasure, leisure and self-making. By paying attention to these practices we begin to develop a grounded view of the ways in which technology, media, and image making practices play a key role in the everyday organization of projects and services and are becoming woven into regimes of transparency, accountability and work/time discipline.
Martin Webb
Lecturer
Goldsmiths
Martin Webb is a lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at Goldsmiths. His research engages with themes of activism and active citizenship, ethical politics, transparency and accountability, urban governance, mediation, and most recently, the effects of digital technology on citizen-state interfaces and access to social protection. He has carried out research exploring these themes in urban India and in the UK.
Riad Azam
Assistant Vice-President - Research and Evaluation
M-CRIL
Riad Azam works as Assistant Vice-President - Research and Evaluation at M-CRIL; a development research firm in New Delhi. He holds a PhD in English Literature from the Aligarh Muslim University, India and an MSc in International Development from the University of Bath, UK. His academic and research interests are citizenship rights and entitlements, urban poverty, caste, and political violence.
Farhat Salim
Doctoral fellow of Law and Governance
Jawaharlal Nehru University
Farhat Salim is a Doctoral fellow of Law and Governance at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. He currently serves as the Transversal Project Coordinator for DEI and Environment at Doctors Without Borders International/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) South Asia. With over a decade of experience working with communities and marginalized groups across South Asia, he has expertise on issues ranging from segregation, social security, ghettoization, spatial dynamics, health to emergency response among others.