The 2021-22 GEM Seminar is organized around the problem of In/Convenience and is co-organized by the Platform Lab. 

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The felt sense that we inhabit a convenience economy and culture is by now widespread. Nested in this understanding are ideas about ease and comfort, perpetually new technologies, and empowered consumers, on the one hand, and growing inequalities and frictions between the speed and exhaustion that convenience engenders, on the other. While conveniences involve the social production of inequality, a focus on ease, time, and technologized efficiency are not sufficient to grasp and critique this shared sense of a divided world. Convenience is a condition we inhabit within contemporary capitalism, and must be submitted to rigorous analysis, historical and conceptual. That even proponents of radical politics assume that convenience will be part of a post-capitalist society, suggests the relational nature of what the working group will explore as in/convenience. Responding to this condition requires us to think beyond simply not clicking “buy now." 

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The seminar draws on a collaborative research project led by Joshua Neves and Marc Steinberg examining the culture and politics of in/convenience, and will include three reading group meetings and culminate in a virtual conference on April 21-22, 2022 (featuring: Neta Alexander, Armin Beverungen, Darren Byler, Susan Cahill, Melissa Gregg, Orit Halpern, Mél Hogan, Tung-hui Hu and Josh Lepawsky). 

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Meetings:

• February 4th @ 1pm >> Read and discuss Joshua Neves and Marc Steinberg’s essay, “In Convenience” 

• February 24 @ 4pm >> Read and discuss Seb Franklin’s The Digitally Disposed: Racial Capitalism and the Informatics of Value 

• March 17 @ 4pm >> Read and discuss Emily West’s Buy Now: How Amazon Branded Convenience and Normalized Monopoly 

• April 21-22 >> Conference

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To register for the working group please email: gem.lab.info@gmail.com (use subject “convenience”). The success of the working group depends on building a conversation over the course of the term, so we ask participants to commit to attending each of the sessions and to carefully reading the suggested material.