Gig Work, Telework, Precarity, and the Pandemic

This issue examines technology-driven economic developments during the global COVID-19 pandemic in Europe, Asia, and the Americas. Specifically, the articles cover the ways that gig work, the platform economy, and remote work have evolved during the course of the pandemic. The issue leads with articles that chart the interplay of the platform economy with various facets of the pandemic from the inequalities and risks faced by gig workers to market forces shaping the commercialization of hosting platforms. The following articles concentrate on the ways in which specific structural conditions—digital infrastructure as well as the structure of the economy—influence the unequal distribution of telework in Uruguay and the relationship between informality and remote work opportunities across Latin America. The last two articles explore remote work in Asia and North America. In the first of these two articles remote work in Japan is examined in order to investigate the cultural sources of resistance to the adoption of remote work. In the second and concluding article, the remote work preferences of U.S. adults are analyzed as a function of technology usage (videoconferencing versus instant messaging) as well as sociodemographic and occupational attributes.

Risk Governance in the Early Pandemic: Governance Roles and Coleman’s Taxonomy of Social Actors

This article takes the ongoing conversation around risk governance in the context of the early stages of the COVID pandemic in a new direction. It does so by connecting public health risk governance to James Coleman’s formulation of social actorhood in the contemporary US. Risk governance across a variety of social settings can be fruitfully conceptualized according to Coleman’s taxonomy of natural and constructed social actors. Unveiling the risk governance schemes operating within distinct social settings is a matter of teasing out the governance roles played by the three primary types of social actor introduced by Coleman: natural persons, agents/principals, and citizen-sovereigns. The parts played by these types of actors are examined within distinct meso-level settings such as households, employment settings, public-facing retail settings, and colleges. In this way, the study is able to distinguish specific governance schemes in terms of how they mobilize particular kinds of social actors characterized according to Coleman’s taxonomy. The study represents a step toward developing an account of risk governance which can accommodate a wide variety of actors, settings, and dynamics within a coherent theoretical framework. In carrying out this exercise, this study applies sociological theories to open a window into crucial aspects of risk governance during the pandemic era.

Theories and Politics of COVID-19

This issue brings theoretically driven analyses to bear on the COVID-19 pandemic, a development which shines a singularly revealing light on some of the most significant political, cultural, and social trends of the 21st century. Leading off with three explicitly theoretical treatments of the pandemic, this issue directs several complementary theoretical lenses at the early stages of the pandemic as it unfolded in the US and Europe. The initial contributions grapple explicitly with the ways in which social conflicts, social solidarities, and social traumas have been refracted—and in many cases magnified—by the pandemic in terms of moral cultures and forms of communication. The focus then shifts to how risk governance during the pandemic operates in different levels and domains of the social architecture as conceptualized in theoretical treatments of social actorhood pioneered by James Coleman. In the second part of the issue, the theme of politic. The upsurge of politically distinctive protests in the United States related to pandemic restrictions—as well as social and racial inequalities rendered visible by the pandemic—is the subject of the first piece. The final article explores the historical specificity of the many popular mobilizations in relation to the pandemic across the globe and across the political spectrum. In this article, we see how the popular mobilizations vary not only in terms of their political orientation, but in their general orientation toward information and authority—increasingly crucial issues in a world facing a trust deficit. [ FROM AUTHOR]

Digital Automation and AI: Trajectories and Cultures in and Outside the Workplace

This issue of the American Behavioral Scientist brings together seven contributions that explore different facets of the two overarching themes connected to digital automation. The first section of the issue delves into the complex ways in which digital automation interacts with preexisting social and economic institutions, specifically professions, markets, and formal organizations. The second section includes contributions that explore the cultural side of digital automation in terms of time and humanness. The issue concludes with an examination of the complex entanglement of digital automation and the covid-19 pandemic as they reshape the post-automation/post-pandemic economic landscape, including labor markets, jobs, consumption, and economic growth. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of American Behavioral Scientist is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Future Shocks: Automation Meets the Pandemic

This article surveys the effects of what can be called two confluent agents of economic and societal transformation, digitally enabled automation and the covid-19 pandemic, on the contemporary economy. Examining shifts in work, occupations, labor markets, and consumption, the article ventures some conjectures on the consequences of this confluence, particularly across developed economies. The article contends that, while long-term automation tends to disrupt jobs and occupations which involve screen-facing work and, to a lesser extent, object-facing work, person-facing work is most exposed to the reallocation shocks precipitated by the covid crisis. Where consumption is concerned, both automation and pandemic-driven shocks lead to mutually reinforcing shifts. Seen together, automation and the pandemic phenomena can be regarded as intertwined socioeconomic stressors which will likely lead to even more divergent trajectories between the winners and the losers in the new economy. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of American Behavioral Scientist is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

The Multifaceted Impact of COVID-19: Health, Emotions, Well-Being, and Risk Assessment: PROD

Analyzing diverse and rich data on the COVID-19 pandemic, this issue of the American Behavioral Scientist offers important insights into health and risk assessment in a time of unprecedented crisis in the 21st century. This issue explores health, emotions, and well-being vis-à-vis the pandemic and its societal impacts. Across the articles, we see the complex ways that this global health crisis has consequences for individuals and groups as they engage in risk assessment and grapple with the secondary effects of the pandemic. Within this issue, we observe the importance of information exchange, networks and relationships, emotional and economic well-being, and risk perception. All of these phenomena converge in the myriad ways that the COVID-19 pandemic forces people to reevaluate everyday activities in consequential life realms. As the issue as a whole illuminates, human emotions and risk assessment are powerful forces that prompt practices and behaviors even in a time of public health crisis.

Cascading Crises: Society in the Age of COVID-19: PROD

The tsunami of change triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic has transformed society in a series of cascading crises. Unlike disasters that are more temporarily and spatially bounded, the pandemic has continued to expand across time and space for over a year, leaving an unusually broad range of second-order and third-order harms in its wake. Globally, the unusual conditions of the pandemic—unlike other crises—have impacted almost every facet of our lives. The pandemic has deepened existing inequalities and created new vulnerabilities related to social isolation, incarceration, involuntary exclusion from the labor market, diminished economic opportunity, life-and-death risk in the workplace, and a host of emergent digital, emotional, and economic divides. In tandem, many less advantaged individuals and groups have suffered disproportionate hardship related to the pandemic in the form of fear and anxiety, exposure to misinformation, and the effects of the politicization of the crisis. Many of these phenomena will have a long tail that we are only beginning to understand. Nonetheless, the research also offers evidence of resilience on several fronts including nimble organizational response, emergent communication practices, spontaneous solidarity, and the power of hope. While we do not know what the post COVID-19 world will look like, the scholarship here tells us that the virus has not exhausted society’s adaptive potential.

An Unequal Pandemic: Vulnerability and COVID-19: PROD

This collection sheds light on the cascading crises engendered by COVID-19 on many aspects of society from the economic to the digital. This issue of the American Behavioral Scientist brings together scholarship examining the various ways in which many vulnerable populations are bearing a disproportionate share of the costs of COVID-19. As the articles bring to light, the unequal effects of the pandemic are reverberating along preexisting fault lines and creating new ones. In the economic realm, the rental market emerges during the pandemic as an economic arena of heightened socio-spatial and racial/ethnic disparities. Financial markets are another domain where market mechanisms mask the exploitative relationships between the economically vulnerable and powerful actors. Turning to gender inequalities, across national contexts, women represent an increasingly vulnerable segment of the labor market as the pandemic piles on new burdens of remote schooling and caregiving despite a variety of policy initiatives. Moving from the economic to the digital domain, we see how people with disabilities employ social media to mitigate increased vulnerability stemming from COVID-19. Finally, the key effects of digital vulnerability are heightened because the digitally disadvantaged experience not only informational inequalities but also aggravated bodily manifestations of stress or anxiety related to the pandemic. Each article contributes to our understanding of the larger mosaic of inequality that is being exacerbated by the pandemic. By drawing connections between these different aspects of the social world and the effects of COVID-19, this issue of American Behavioral Scientist advances our understanding of the far-reaching ramifications of the pandemic on vulnerable members of society.

Cascading Crises: Society in the Age of COVID-19

The tsunami of change triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic has transformed society in a series of cascading crises. Unlike disasters that are more temporarily and spatially bounded, the pandemic has continued to expand across time and space for over a year, leaving an unusually broad range of second-order and third-order harms in its wake. Globally, the unusual conditions of the pandemic—unlike other crises—have impacted almost every facet of our lives. The pandemic has deepened existing inequalities and created new vulnerabilities related to social isolation, incarceration, involuntary exclusion from the labor market, diminished economic opportunity, life-and-death risk in the workplace, and a host of emergent digital, emotional, and economic divides. In tandem, many less advantaged individuals and groups have suffered disproportionate hardship related to the pandemic in the form of fear and anxiety, exposure to misinformation, and the effects of the politicization of the crisis. Many of these phenomena will have a long tail that we are only beginning to understand. Nonetheless, the research also offers evidence of resilience on several fronts including nimble organizational response, emergent communication practices, spontaneous solidarity, and the power of hope. While we do not know what the post COVID-19 world will look like, the scholarship here tells us that the virus has not exhausted society’s adaptive potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of American Behavioral Scientist is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The COVID Connection: Pandemic Anxiety, COVID-19 Comprehension, and Digital Confidence

This article presents logistic models examining how pandemic anxiety and COVID-19 comprehension vary with digital confidence among adults in the United States during the first wave of the pandemic. As we demonstrate statistically with a nationally representative data set, the digitally confident have lower probability of experiencing physical manifestations of pandemic anxiety and higher probability of adequately comprehending critical information on COVID-19. The effects of digital confidence on both pandemic anxiety and COVID-19 comprehension persist, even after a broad range of potentially confounding factors are taken into account, including sociodemographic factors such as age, gender, race/ethnicity, metropolitan status, and partner status. They also remain discernable after the introduction of general anxiety, as well as income and education. These results offer evidence that the digitally disadvantaged experience greater vulnerability to the secondary effects of the pandemic in the form of increased somatized stress and decreased COVID-19 comprehension. Going forward, future research and policy must make an effort to address digital confidence and digital inequality writ large as crucial factors mediating individuals? responses to the pandemic and future crises.

An Unequal Pandemic: Vulnerability and COVID-19

This collection sheds light on the cascading crises engendered by COVID-19 on many aspects of society from the economic to the digital. This issue of the American Behavioral Scientist brings together scholarship examining the various ways in which many vulnerable populations are bearing a disproportionate share of the costs of COVID-19. As the articles bring to light, the unequal effects of the pandemic are reverberating along preexisting fault lines and creating new ones. In the economic realm, the rental market emerges during the pandemic as an economic arena of heightened socio-spatial and racial/ethnic disparities. Financial markets are another domain where market mechanisms mask the exploitative relationships between the economically vulnerable and powerful actors. Turning to gender inequalities, across national contexts, women represent an increasingly vulnerable segment of the labor market as the pandemic piles on new burdens of remote schooling and caregiving despite a variety of policy initiatives. Moving from the economic to the digital domain, we see how people with disabilities employ social media to mitigate increased vulnerability stemming from COVID-19. Finally, the key effects of digital vulnerability are heightened because the digitally disadvantaged experience not only informational inequalities but also aggravated bodily manifestations of stress or anxiety related to the pandemic. Each article contributes to our understanding of the larger mosaic of inequality that is being exacerbated by the pandemic. By drawing connections between these different aspects of the social world and the effects of COVID-19, this issue of American Behavioral Scientist advances our understanding of the far-reaching ramifications of the pandemic on vulnerable members of society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of American Behavioral Scientist is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)