{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"50b7f922-b940-4a05-8eb0-c4dc0d8ec9ed","title":"Digital Capitalism","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"2021022153","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"50b7f922-b940-4a05-8eb0-c4dc0d8ec9ed","id":"50b7f922-b940-4a05-8eb0-c4dc0d8ec9ed","uuid":"50b7f922-b940-4a05-8eb0-c4dc0d8ec9ed","title":"Digital Capitalism","normalized_title":"digitalcapitalism","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"2021022153","isbns":["2021022153","9781032119182","9781032119205","9781003222149","2405518376"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":343,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/50b7f922-b940-4a05-8eb0-c4dc0d8ec9ed","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Digital%20Capitalism","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/50b7f922-b940-4a05-8eb0-c4dc0d8ec9ed/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/50b7f922-b940-4a05-8eb0-c4dc0d8ec9ed/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/50b7f922-b940-4a05-8eb0-c4dc0d8ec9ed","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/50b7f922-b940-4a05-8eb0-c4dc0d8ec9ed/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/50b7f922-b940-4a05-8eb0-c4dc0d8ec9ed/search"},"page":{"printed_page":241,"pdf_page":255,"physical_index":255,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"edf55bde522486981b7c93318cafadcb4822b9724dd1188249d376b66cd72b0a"},"chapter":"DIGITAL CAPITALISM","content":"According to estimates, in the year 2016 there were 45.8 million slaves in the world (Walk Free Foundation 2016), including high numbers in India, China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Uzbekistan, North Korea, Russia, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Indonesia, Egypt, and Myanmar (Walk Free Foundation 2016, 30). The same report provides a concise definition of slavery as “situations of exploitation that a person cannot refuse or leave because of threats, violence, coercion, abuse of power or deception, with treatment akin to a farm animal” (p. 158).\n\nDigital technologies are based on minerals such as cassiterite, coltan, gold, cobalt, or wolframite. Large amounts of it are extracted in conflict-ridden regions in the Congo. As a result, rebels and warlords that enslave villagers control some of the mines. Parts of the minerals used in mobile phones, laptops, etc. are based on slave-labour and child labour. This phenomenon has come to be known as conflict minerals (Fuchs 2014, chapter 6). Cobalt is an important mineral for the production of batteries used in phones and laptops. More than half of the world’s supply comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.\n\nAmnesty International and Afrewatch conducted research in artisanal mining areas in southern DRC in April and May 2015, visiting five mine sites. […] Chronic exposure to dust containing cobalt can result in a potentially fatal lung disease, called ‘hard metal lung disease’. […] Many of the miners complained that they coughed a lot or had problems with their lungs. […] UNICEF estimated in 2014 that approximately 40,000 boys and girls work in all the mines across southern DRC, many of them involved in cobalt mining. The children interviewed by researchers described the physically demanding nature of the work they did. They said that they worked for up to 12 hours a day in the mines, carrying heavy loads, to earn between one and two dollars a day. (Amnesty International 2016, 5–6)\n\nOne can be a slave for a limited time period (Qiu 2016, 41)? Qiu documents how Foxconn workers, who manufacture iPhones, iPads, and other digital gadgets, faced “tremendous difficulty […] to quit” and how “student interns were used as inexpensive and involuntary labor on a massive scale” (p. 47). He shows how forced labour and the lack of freedom to quit employment, two types of slavery, exist within the manufacturing domain of the international division of digital labour (IDDL) (see also Fuchs 2014, 2015, 2016, for a detailed discussion of the IDDL). Qiu also documents Foxconn’s refusal to pay out wages to workers, violent and abusive factory guards, and the control of Foxconn workers’ leisure and sleeping time. The example also shows that wage-labour can be a form of slavery. Qiu concludes that Foxconn’s management system should be seen as “institutions and practices similar to slavery” (p. 82). The forms of control exercised include physical violence and structural, bureaucratic violence (forced internships, wage restraint, contracts that cannot be broken, etc.), so that any control of labour-time (its start and end) is forcefully removed from workers decision-power.\n\nChapter Ten | Capitalism, Patriarchy, Slavery\n\n241\n\nSlavery and Racism in the Age of Digital Labour","previous_page":240,"next_page":242}