Jamie Woodcock joins Matteo to talk about the rapid rise of the game workers movement, culture as a site of struggle and transformation, and how tech and games are being recoded through worker self-activity.
Jamie is a sociologist and labor organizer whose work explores class struggle in the digital economy. His research and activism bridge academia and movement work, focusing on how creative and tech workers are reclaiming control over their labor and shaping the future of digital culture. Today’s discussion centers on Marx at The Arcade, his groundbreaking study of the labor and culture of videogames.
Show Notes
Game Workers Unite is a worker-run, labor rights group seeking to organize the video game industry.
The Game Worker Solidarity Project is mapping and documenting collective movements by game workers striving to improve their working conditions. It is collecting materials created by workers from the movement. It aims to document the longer history of resistance in the industry which goes back to its formation.
Stuart Hall on Pop Culture
Popular culture is one of the sites where this struggle for and against a culture of the powerful is engaged: it is the stake to be won or lost in that struggle. It is the arena of consent and resistance. It is partly where hegemony arises, and where it is secured. It is not a sphere where socialism, a socialist culture - already fully formed - might be simply “expressed”. But it is one of the places where socialism might be constituted. That is why “popular culture” matters. Otherwise, to tell you the truth, I don’t give a damn about it.
Antonio Gramsci was an Italian philosopher and politician. He was a founding member and one-time leader of the Italian Communist Party. A vocal critic of Benito Mussolini and fascism, he was imprisoned in 1926, and remained in prison until shortly before his death in 1937. During his imprisonment, Gramsci wrote more than 30 notebooks and 3,000 pages of history and analysis. His Prison Notebooks are considered a highly original contribution to 20th-century political theory. He is best known for his concepts of:
Star Trek / Deep Space Nine – The fourth-season episode “Bar Association”—a must-watch for Trekkies interested in unions—depicts a labor struggle at the station’s prominent entertainment spot: Quark’s Bar, Grill, Gaming House and Holosuite Arcade.
Notes From Below is a publication committed to the self-emancipation of the working class.
