Recoding Power

Digital transformation increasingly drives economic growth in the rich capitalist democracies, but orienting production around digital technologies is associated with rising inequality and spreading precarity. In Recoding Power, Rothstein outlines three tactics that workers can use to build power in the current episode of economic transition, where they otherwise lack access to traditional power-resources like unions and institutions for social protection. Drawing on four in-depth case studies of workers responding to mass layoffs at tech firms in the United States and Germany, Rothstein shows how workers can develop creative tactics to "recode" management's discursive techniques for control, transforming them from obstacles into resources for collective action. By centering workers' lived experiences in the workplace, Recoding Power develops an account of existing digital transformation, illustrating how the path of capitalist development is shaped not by economic necessity, but by political creativity.