Home » Articles posted by Gina Neff

Author Archives: Gina Neff

Books

Self Tracking
Venture Labor
Surviving the New Economy

British Academy Award for “Data Work” Project

I propose to complete a book manuscript on the future of work based on over a decade of qualitative research on data-driven transformation in the construction industry. Contrary to received wisdom, my research shows that when faced with new categories of data in their jobs, front-line ‘data workers innovated to incorporate new data into the existing social structures of their workplaces. The data, funded by US NSF, includes 350 interviews and 8 years of participant-observation in 3 teams work who designed and built a hospital, a major research laboratory, and a 40-storey high-rise building. I have co-authored 28 journal and conference publications based on this research to date. For this project, I will complete a book manuscript in the sociology of technology that focuses the experience of digital transformation for workers in construction and the lessons that their experience holds for others in the era of AI and big data.

The Gendered Affordances of Craigslist “New-in-town Girls Wanted” Ads

Sex-for-rent schemes have emerged on online sites as rental options. We analyzed 583 advertisements that were posted on Craigslist in London and Los Angeles and interviewed 34 women who were or had been in these arrangements. This research yielded four key tensions: (1) navigating innuendo (mis)interpretation versus preserving arranged ambiguity, (2) the guise of amateurism and romance versus persistent specificity, (3) calculated sacrifice versus narrative of a better life, and (4) consent versus consensual non-consent. Findings attest to the affordances online platforms offer by connecting geographically dispersed parties in a low risk, anonymous forum. Furthermore, present research joins discourses on the commercialization of intimacy and forms of precarious, gendered labor while asserting Internet features are pivotal in facilitating these arrangements. We propose gendered affordances to conceptualize how individual aspirational labor efforts, combined with platform affordances, commodify intimacy for sale on the moral marketplace.

  • Schwartz, Becca, & Gina Neff. “The Gendered Affordances of Craigslist ‘New-in-Town Girls Wanted’ Ads.” New Media & Society, (May 2019). doi:10.1177/1461444819849897.  

Culture Digitally: Article Translated Into Spanish

My piece on genetic information markers, published in Culture Digitally in 2013, has been translated into Spanish.