Pedagogies of Struggles: Workers Failing and Learning to Govern Platforms in Latin America

Dr Rafael Grohmann, Assistant Professor of Media Studies with focus on Critical Platform and Data Studies, University of Toronto Scarborough (UTSC)

Around the world, workers are trying to build collectivities while dealing with digital platforms. Whether in cooperatives, unions, associations, and other collectives, workers are learning to govern these technologies through bargaining and/or technology development. The talk analyzes the collective journeys of Latin American workers as they navigate, challenge, and reshape platforms from their perspectives. This presentation emphasizes the importance of understanding the pedagogies of struggles in the digital labor landscape, as aspects of class struggles. No one is born an organizer, and no one is born knowing all the risks and possibilities designing technologies from below. The presentation proposes a radical rethinking of failure—not as defeat, but as a generative process of critical learning and resistance that embraces contradictions. The case studies - based in Brazil and Argentina - shed light on how worker cooperatives and collectives are learning to develop collectivities, technologies and pushing for policy changes, updating Latin America’s rich history of alternative forms of technology and labor - such as solidarity economy.

The event is co-organized by Autonomy and COVER

Register for this event

This event is being held at Pelican House, 144 Cambridge Heath Road London E1 5QJ.

Attendance is free, please register on Eventbrite.