News from the Collective

‘Will the post-corona universe be just another future or something new “to come”?’ – Slavoj Žižek

Corona is a reset. A chance to learn. An opportunity to grow. After all: never let a good crisis go to waste. True enough, there’s plenty of injustice in the world to justify a thorough reset. But the question that crossed everyone’s mind at least once in the past year is: what kind of reset will this be? Or, to use the phrase commonly used in the Dutch public debate, what will the ‘new normal’ be like?

During the better part of 2020 and the start of 2021, in-person gatherings have been reduced to a minimum. While understandable in terms of crisis management, these measures deeply affect public life: education stalled, cultural activities were decimated, and the institutions of Dutch democracy have entered into uncharted and wobbly territories.

Funny enough, a part of the public debate moved to the streets in the meanwhile. A wild discussion about the old and the new normal has unfolded – through posters and stickers. The beauty of this debate is its conciseness: a poster or sticker only has to get across its message (whether political, cultural, or nonsensical) in one image. Let’s take a tour.

 

Stay Sane Stay Safe

During the first months of the first lockdown, the international – but predominantly Dutch – campaign Stay Sane Stay Safe was launched. It seemed like every socially aware designer alive was on board. Within a matter of days, hundreds of posters were uploaded, promoting to ‘flatten the curve’, ‘stay in’, ‘keep distance’, and ‘call your grandma’.

This was nice. Harmless. Sane and safe. It was March, and the weather outside was beautiful. You would almost think that corona was nothing more than a reason to make sleek posters and act woke.

 

The New Normal

Not much later, Dutch graphic designer Rob Simon made a series of posters around the ‘new normal’ (signed with ‘Georgies’). Rather than promoting social distancing and mask-wearing, he raised questions. Simon stated in an interview with a local newspaper that he wanted to ‘trigger people to think’.

While these posters show a degree of discomfort about temperature checks at supermarkets and bonuses in the banking sector, they’re not necessarily critical. They refrain from any overt political statement and remain purposely vague. But there is a shift when compared to Stay Sane Stay Safe: from happy obeying to active thinking.

 

What Do You Really Really Feel?

Well into the summer (August-September), a group of Amsterdam-based community artists also started raising questions under the hashtag #HoeGaatHetEchtMetJe? Going back to the local basics, and realizing that those hit hardest by the crisis are often least visible in public space, these artists went into the different neighborhoods of Amsterdam and asked people intimate questions to find out how they were ‘really’ doing. From the conversations, a selection of quotes was printed on posters, distributed through the city, and launched at Framer Framed. The more political (although by no means party-political) reasoning behind the project is not hard to guess: it is the task of artists and art institutions to challenge the aesthetic regimes of the sensible, that determine what is visible and what is not.

 

Corona and Solidarity

There were skeptics from the start, mainly among the ranks of anthroposophists and conspiracy theorists. Vague critiques of the child-rape by the ‘deep state’ or collective poisoning by ‘big pharma’. Sentiments and fantasies that represented a materially valid dissatisfaction, a good Marxist would say. I don’t want to be the Big Psychologist here (or the Big Material Dialectician, for that matter). However, I think it’s fair to say that they hardly presented any serious threat to the dominant political narrative of crisis management.

 

But in November 2020, while the measures were loosening, the first real cracks started appearing in the narrative of common cause and uniform solidarity. It started becoming obvious how the corona measures impacted certain parts of the population more heavily than others. The education gap was demonstrably widened. Reports of domestic violence rose. Some people fled to their holiday destinations while others stayed home because of financial troubles. As the sociologist Justus Uitermarkt put it: the common trust and conformism started to wear off. No-brainer solidarity once of a sudden turned into a political question.

In fact, already since July 2020, a poster was circulating in Amsterdam (as well as on Reddit), which read: ‘We cannot go back to normal. Because “normal” was exactly the problem.’

 

The Great Reset

From something that we all just had to do and accept, it slowly became clear how corona measures – and the political decisions behind them – impacted some people harder than others, materially as well as psychologically. Now the end is in sight, the question is no longer so much if we will get there, but how. Which companies and organizations will make it through? Who will lose their job (or sanity) before it’s all over? Do we let students go to university, or do we rather open nail and hair salons first?

In a recent Jacobin Magazine article, Slavoj Žižek joined the discussion. We should reject, he asserts, the false dilemma of choosing between things that we can imagine. The left-leaning and liberal world sighed with relief as Biden was elected president of the US. But we know that Biden’s centrist and bipartisan politics of reconciliation and ‘healing’ in fact signal a return to pre-Trump normality. Alternatively, the great reset might lead to a tech bro utopia – a corporate Great Reset.

We can imagine both of these post-reset normalities, either as a return to 2019 or as an extrapolation of the ever-increasing power of Big Tech. But do we have to choose between a return to the old, exploitative normality and a post-Covid corporate Great Reset that promises to be even worse? What we really need, Žižek states, is ‘a socialist reset that can win justice for all and save the planet from climate apocalypse’.

This is where the public discussion is at in The Netherlands as well. We’re close to a reset, but what kind of reset? Do we stick with the lazy and unpolitical narrative of unavoidable crisis management, or will we manage to stretch and expand our imaginations?

Who remembers the first time they heard the term ‘Girl Boss?’ For most, it was around the time founder of the fashion brand Nasty Gal, Sophia Amoruso, published her autobiography ‘#GirlBoss’ in 2014. Since then, the term has grown in popularity to the extreme, creating its own aspirational ‘category’ of woman, archetypal image, and countless spin-off self-help guides, websites, YouTube channels, podcasts, ‘influencers,’ a Netflix series, merchandise, seminars and courses – to name but a handful of #GirlBoss lifestyle commodities.

Amoruso’s #GirlBoss book covers her path growing a multi-million-dollar company, Nasty Gal, out of an eBay vintage-resell store. It tells/sells an authenticity story of a woman going against the grain (including shoplifting, which “saved her life”) in the face of changing media, technologies, and social circumstances. Amoruso’s mantra is “Life is short. Don’t be lazy.” It captures the zeitgeist of millennial women ‘thinking divergent,’ ‘being fearless,’ and ‘staying game strong,’ to pursue and monetise their passions. Shortly after the book’s release, marketeers caught onto the sellability of the Girl Boss ideal, which quickly spread into visual culture. Seven years later, the Girl Boss continues to linger on social media platforms, but who is she now? What does she indicate about real contemporary setbacks? And how does she fit into today’s discourses? First, let’s begin with an explanation of what exactly is a ‘Girl Boss.’

How to Construct a Girl Boss

The Girl Boss is a boss, but not in the traditional sense. The Girl Boss does not perpetuate the image of a middle-aged CEO dressed in a suit. After all, that image is unattainable, being reserved to only one gender identity. The Girl Boss might wear a suit, but she will make it playful and pop-coloured. It will be a statement. For a magazine feature, she will pose with her arms crossed, camera aimed from below, and shot against a skyscraper backdrop. Then, she will gush over her children in the interview and reveal her favourite beauty products and fitness routines. She may be the owner of a fast fashion brand that mistreats garment workers in Bangladesh, but she will sell you a banging t-shirt with ‘The Future is Female” printed across it.

Since the Girl Boss has had to pave her way, having been overlooked or underappreciated by fellow (male) entrepreneurs, her story hinges on self-determination and unparalleled work ethic (what Amoruso calls “sweat equity.”) Having ‘made it’ despite no end of obstacles, the Girl Boss now has it all; a successful business, incredible discipline, an army of assistants and interns, a loyal squad of girlfriends, and a wardrobe of effortlessly chic fashion to go with it.

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The enduring appeal of the Girl Boss lies in her ability to succeed as a business owner whilst retaining traditionally ‘feminine’ characteristics. She’s a killer in the boardroom, and never has bags under her eyes. The Girl Boss elevates herself beyond the need to act like ‘one of the boys.’ She is 100% herself, and unapologetically so. A girl’s girl in a world of businessmen with all the accessories to prove her success: an It bag, red-soled stilettos, and a bad-ass sports car to zoom away in.

Not only has the Girl Boss achieved financial independence; she hasn’t given anything up to achieve it. The Girl Boss promise is that great monetary success is possible and can be attained without compromise. In ‘having it all’, the Girl Boss embodies a post-feminist dream of equal-opportunity access to educational resources, mentoring, start-up capital, and financial security. Not just security – abundance. In this dream, no patriarchal structures are holding her back. Her life, imagined collectively on social media platforms through pastel images and energetic videos, is not a humble brag. In this rendering, her life also does not include dealing with workplace misogyny, harassment, and she does not have to experience ongoing derogatory treatment. There are no pay gaps, no sexism or racism in the workplace. There are no gatekeepers. Only a free market, which any woman can circumnavigate via hard work. “Life is short. Don’t be lazy.” The Girl Boss is a queen of her kingdom, and nothing can snatch her crown.

The Girl Boss makes no apologies for her femininity because her femininity is an asset. It is a crucial ingredient in the recipe of how to make a Girl Boss; the construction of a business owner who refuses to change herself to blend into a male-dominated field. In this sense, the Girl Boss challenges the preconceived notions of what success looks like. Emerging into the world of money and power, the Girl Boss brings the promise of change with her. Her mere presence in this space represents all women everywhere, paving the way for others to follow, and displaying that it is possible to reach such levels of success as a woman. The Girl Boss is the poster child for equal opportunity. However, behind her dazzling facade still lies a reinforcement of patriarchal archetypes that restrict women more than they empower them. It calls to question: Who actually benefits from the presence and prominence of the Girl Boss? Scholar Mary Beard offers some food for thought, suggesting that “We have to be more reflective about what power is, what it is for, and how it is measured.”^[1]

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TikTok, Instagram, and Pinterest overflow with Girl Boss content. Here, you will find luxurious shoes and bags, important-looking paperwork, beautiful pens, extravagant sunglasses, fun on rooftops, glamorous cars, champagne flutes, and flawless manicures, all sewn together with inspirational quotes about perseverance. Girl Boss social media grids are sleek, colour-coded, and establish an alluring image of independence and wealth. These images of playful expensive nail art and impractical-but-‘boss’ heels run counter to the content of the male ‘hustler’ entrepreneur – equally ubiquitous on social media platforms. Despite the now household-ness of the Girl Boss ideal, the majority of the entrepreneurial lifestyles promoted and venerated across social media still minorly cater to women. The aforementioned self-identifying ‘hustlers’ mainly identify as male and are generally ignorant towards misogyny in the world of business – which it doesn’t take long to notice when perusing their sub-Reddit homes such as /r/entrepreneur, /r/investing, /r/CareerSuccess, /r/startups, or /r/growmybusiness. Hustlers are not interested in addressing the inequalities that affect access to education, funding, and mentorship. They’re interested in making money. What lingers, no matter the sub, is a pervasive association between positions of power and masculinity. One that endures as a signifier to the past when the subjugation of women made it impossible for them to pursue independent careers or make self-governing decisions.

The Construct Crumbles

It comes as no surprise that many journalists and theorists link the term ‘Girl Boss’ with the infantilisation of women. The ‘Girl Boss’ label categorises the successes of women as separate from, and inferior to, the achievements of their male counterparts. Since the glory days of Sophia Amoruso’s brand (circa 2010-2015), the popularisation of Girl Boss wavered, and critical engagements with the concept weakened its persuasive powers. The year 2020 saw many Girl Bosses resign over allegations of toxic workplace cultures. Still, #GirlBoss tags persist on social media and millions of users interact with Girl Boss content every day, seeking to personify the (unattainable) ideal of the Girl Boss that presents itself as something within reach. After all, being perceived as a success is just as important as success itself; and perhaps the aesthetics of life in big business alone are more compelling than the reality of pursuing such a career. More on this in the next section.

The Girl Boss imaginary romanticises the idea of wealth but does not take into account the methods by which it may be acquired. In this sense, the Girl Boss is a neoliberal pawn; an affluent individual whose inspiring story supposedly proves the accessibility of success and demonstrates that opportunities wait for anyone willing to work hard enough. Don’t spend too much time thinking about what business the Girl Boss owns, how it operates, or who may be affected by it.

 

“Simply incorporating women into positions of power does not guarantee equality or justice in the larger sense. We always seem prime to celebrate individual advancements of black people, people of colour, women, without taking into consideration it might simply mean that previously marginalised individuals have been recruited to guarantee a more efficient operation of oppressive systems.” – Angela Davis

 

Reflecting Angela Davis’ expanded contemplation; would it be sensible when examining the Girl Boss figure to consider a more communal approach instead of accepting another archetype representative of individual success? How else might we reach a collective redefinition of ideas of power and influence? This is not a proposal that seeing women in business is a setback for women everywhere. On the contrary, it is necessary to elevate women’s voices and provide increased access to positions of power. However, that in itself does not guarantee structural changes in the workplace, or the conduct of influential bodies of power. Ruby Staley writes: “When female CEOs and managers mimic the behaviour of the archetypal male boss, the patriarchal barriers placed in front of women in the world of work remain the same – they aren’t deconstructed, instead, they’re reinforced.”^[2] The Girl Boss facade of glamour and empowerment might be exciting and motivating to some aspiring women in business, but the prominence of this figure does not automatically challenge expectations, nor does it change the fabric of economic inequalities. Here, we also encounter the danger of tokenism; women and marginalised people are regularly exploited as tokens of diversity in conglomerates that could not care less about truthful representation, nor more equal access to opportunities and professional development. Women deserve more than a pity promotion motivated by pressure to meet a diversity quota.

What Comes Next?

Girl Boss and hustle cultures share many characteristics. For one, they refuse to acknowledge wider contexts of individual success stories. They both thrive on social media platforms where inspiring imagery and self-help tips taken out of context convey a message of an unhealthy dependence on work and quantifiable achievement. Both versions love easily digestible images and use short videos that entice users with promises of financial independence and lives of luxury. The more one encounters this kind of content, the more likely they are to start seeing their employment status as a definer of self-worth and identity. I fell victim to this trap when diving into online Girl Boss culture. Even though I lack the aspiration to be a business owner or a millionaire, I did catch myself feeling envious of the status enjoyed by these figures. Like many people, I too long for a life free from financial worries, unrestricted by the high prices of some comforts. It did provoke me to think… If I bit the bullet and went corporate, maybe it would be worth it? If I started to seek out a highly paid job, maybe I would be happier?

What Girl Boss culture has never really acknowledged is that the very incident of becoming a CEO might not automatically lead to satisfaction. Juliette O’Brien states: “It’s not just that hustle culture and productivity obsessions are exhausting, incurious, and self-aggrandizing. It’s that, on their own, they can offer an anemic, superficial, and tedious experience of life.”^[3] In an ironic turn of events, O’Brien’s critique was published by none other than GirlBoss.com, a networking platform Amoruso founded in 2017, and abandoned two years later. It seems as though through its evolution over the past few years, GirlBoss.com’s online content – created by Amoruso and others – has gradually increased its nuance around issues like toxic productivity, whilst its male-counterpart ‘hustle culture’ continues to hold strong with the workaholic mantra of doing “whatever it takes.”

The destabilising ripple effect of the COVID-19 pandemic marks a seismic shift in relationship to work. For one, it makes start-ups, side hustles and passive income more desirable and marketable. Anything to stop feeling threatened and endangered by an unpredictable economy and unstable employment. Some Girl Bosses claim a pandemic is a prime time to set up a business. These calls only multiply existing pressures to perform productivity, monetise interests, and invest whatever time and money you might have left into new sources of stress and anxiety. Instead, let’s follow Davis’ lead and focus on how oppressive systems dictate and demand these unattainable standards.

Plenty of work remains to be done about improving the societal positions of women within self-employment, labour, business, kinship and family. It might not be the kind of work the Girl Boss undertakes. Today’s online activity needs to shift in a new direction, away from the mythologisation of an egocentric figure and their individual successes in a “man’s world.” In recent years, there is a tendency to provide platforms to marginalised voices and to consider the bigger picture of intersections between labour, gender, race and class. Mobilisation via the online is another way to shift away from the hustle narrative, instead offering mutual support and resources to those interested in business and ethics. These gatherings can and should include users who resonate(d) with the Girl Boss narrative. Pink typography is not all bad; it might encourage users to dream and speculate about a future where gender does not dictate access to wealth and power. However, it is not sufficient, and the aesthetics of the online Girl Boss are much more likely to mask the impossibilities of standards they propose, instead of debunking them.

References

^[1] Mary Beard, Women in Power, https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v39/n06/mary-beard/women-in-power [Accessed Feb 2021]

^[2] Ruby Staley, Thank God We’re Finally Moving Past Girl Boss Culture, https://fashionjournal.com.au/life/thank-god-were-finally-moving-past-girl-boss-culture/ [Accessed Feb 2021]

^[3] Juliette O’Brien, Is Hustle Culture Actually Hurting Us?, https://www.girlboss.com/read/productivity-culture [Accessed Feb 2021]

The Institute of Network Cultures is looking for an

intern with production and research skills

Internship period: April 1st until July 1st, 2021 (0.6-0.8 fte/3-4 days a week).

The Institute of Network Cultures (INC) is a media research center that actively contributes to the field of network cultures through research, events, publications, and online dialogue. The INC was founded in 2004 by media theorist Geert Lovink as part of the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (Hogeschool van Amsterdam). The Institute of Network Cultures has a tradition of experiment in digital and hybrid publishing.

For more information, see: https://networkcultures.org/.
For an overview of all INC publications, go to: https://networkcultures.org/publications.
For previous work on this topic, check out our research programs Making Public, The Art of Criticism, the Digital Publishing Toolkit, MoneyLab and Tactical Visual Culture.

You will be a part of a small team within a large institution. Tasks within the team may include:

• assisting with general office operations
• attending meetings
• collecting and reviewing interesting and relevant literature
• being part of the crew at INC events

We are looking for an enthusiastic, energetic, inquisitive (former) student with knowledge of and a demonstrated interest in internet culture, net-critique and/or digital publishing. As the INC has an international scope, active English skills are required, in speaking and writing. In addition, you have strong writing and communication skills, and experience with social media management and web administration. You balance a desire to learn, take initiative and suggest better practices and take constructive feedback. A background in (graphic or interaction) design, art (history), cultural studies, or media studies is an advantage.

Monthly compensation: € 400 gross (0.6-0,8 fte)

For further information, you can contact info[at]networkcultures[dot]org or send a CV and motivation letter to the same email address.

by: Xuan Zhao, Luan Borges, & Heather Morrison

Abstract

The Directory of Open Access Journals http://doaj.org is an excellent service that fulfills many important functions, in particular facilitating access to a vetted collection of over 15,000 freely available peer-reviewed journals. The DOAJ search services and metadata download are very useful for researchers as well. The purpose of this post is to alert researchers to some of the limitations of the DOAJ metadata that researchers need to take into account to avoid drawing erroneous conclusions. First, when downloading DOAJ metadata, it is necessary to open the .csv file in Unicode in order to retain non-English characters. We open in Open Office for this reason, then save as an excel file. The nature of the metadata means that some data is inserted in the wrong column; clean-up, as discussed below, is necessary before data analysis. When journal editors or others working on their behalf enter metadata into DOAJ, research is not the primary purpose of this exercise; for this reason, in-depth assessment and corrections may be necessary before analysis. Below, we present publisher size analysis as an example of what researchers may encounter. Finally, because the main purpose of DOAJ is connecting readers with content, the metadata of interest to a particular research project may not be up to date. As demonstrated below, as of Jan. 5, 2021, only 30% of DOAJ journals have a “last update” date within the previous year (2020). We do not know whether the “last update” date reflects a full or partial metadata review. We illustrate the potential impact on research results with the example of the SKC longitudinal APC study. Of the 4,292 DOAJ journals that responded “yes” to the APC question, only 30% have a last update date of 2020 or 2021. Even with this 30% of journals, we have no way of knowing whether the APC status and/or amount per se was updated, or only other unrelated metadata. This means that if we compare 2019 prices obtained from publisher websites in 2019 with 2021 DOAJ APC metadata, we will almost certainly get incorrect results, for example falsely assuming that matching APC amounts means no change in the prices. DOAJ provides rich and useful metadata for the researcher and the research question “is this journal listed in DOAJ?” is of value in and of itself. For this reason, we intend to continue using DOAJ metadata in addition to data derived from other sources, particularly data derived directly from publisher websites.

Details

Correcting for displaced observations

As previously mentioned, the first step to confidently use the DOAJ metadata for analysis and research is identifying and correcting data inserted in the wrong column, herein also called displaced observations. 

Below we can see an example of a displaced observation from the DOAJ metadata. Column BB has no assigned variable while containing some observations, apparently displaced one column to the right. 

Users may follow different steps to correct for displaced data. Here we explain in more detail how we have identified these displacements and corrected them.  

Before proceeding with any analysis, it is important to get familiarized with the DOAJ metadata first. We recommend users to read the DOAJ Guide to applying, available online, because the metadata reflects responses to questions asked in the application process. The DOAJ metadata, as of 5 Jan. 2021, possesses 53 variables ranging from Journal Title to Country to Most recent article added. It may be helpful to start correcting observations from variables with easily identifiable responses, such as « Country » or « Country of Publisher », or variables that allow only two types of answers (i.e Yes or No), such as Author holds copyright without restrictions and APC. It is recommended to create a pivot table to identify displaced observations, repeating this process until no observations are identified in a wrong column. 

When cleaning-up the DOAJ metadata, users will notice that in some cases only one observation was displaced; in other cases, an entire row was displaced beginning on a specific variable. In the example highlighted in yellow below, all observations beginning at variable Publisher were displaced one column to the right. 

Data entry inconsistencies

When correcting for displaced observations, we have also identified some inconsistencies in the way observations are registered in the DOAJ metadata. The table below lists the main visible inconsistencies found for some variables. In the majority of instances, the inconsistencies will not impact DOAJ users looking up information for a particular journal. However, it is important to take into account these inconsistencies before proceeding to any automated statistical analysis. For example, DOAJ metadata as is can be used to identify the number of journals with persistent article identifiers, but automated counting of DOI v. ARK or other approaches would require some advance data manipulation.

Variable	Example
Alternative title	Some journals alternative titles may be registered as a number. Some examples are  “2300-6633” and “0”.
Keywords	Some observations have some special characters as follows:  6.         rheology, tribology, hydrodynamics, thermodynamics, mechanics of structures, mechatronics.             water cycles, water environment, water treatment and reuse, water resource, water quality, hydrology  •          natural sciences, •      environmental sciences, •      social sciences, agricultural sciences, veterinary medicine, medical sciences
Copyright information URL	Some URLs lack a letter « h » at the beginning or the end. The example below illustrates this small error. There should be an “h” at the beginning and an  “l” at the end of the link. ttp://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/services/publishing/jiuc/authors.htm
Plagiarism information URL	Some URLs lack a letter « h » at the beginning or the end. The example below illustrates this small error. There should be an « h » at the beginning and an  « l » at the end of the link. ttp://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/services/publishing/jiuc/authors.htm
URL for journal’s instructions for authors	Some URLs lack a letter « h » at the beginning or the end. The example below illustrates this small error. There should be an « h » at the beginning of the URL ttps://revistas.unasp.edu.br/LifestyleJournal/about/submissions
Other submission fees information URL	Some URLs have extra letters. The example below, for instance, has a letter « i » at the beginning of the URL ihttps://journals.univie.ac.at/index.php/voebm/m/index Some URLs lack a letter « h » at the beginning or the end. The example below illustrates this small error. There should be an « h » at the beginning of the URL ttp://psr.ui.ac.id/index.php/journal/about/submissions#authorGuidelines ttps://www.karger.com/Journal/Guidelines/261897#sec62
Preservation Services	Preservation services can be registered as a name or a website
Preservation Service: national library	Preservation services – national library can be registered as a name or a website
Preservation information URL	Some URLs lack a letter « h » at the beginning or the end. The example below, for instance, has a small error. There should be an « h » at the beginning of the URL tps://periodicos.uff.br/revistagenero/about/editorialPolicies#focusAndScope ttp://ejournal.stkip-pgri-sumbar.ac.id/index.php/economica
Deposit policy directory	Deposit policy directory can be registered as a name or a website
Persistent article identifiers	Persistent article identifiers can be registered as an acronym (UDC, DOI, ARK), but also as a website, such as dc.identifier.uri (DSpaceUnipr) or NBN http://www.depositolegale.it/national-bibliography-number/.  Another example is the occurrences UDC and UDC (Universal decimal Classification), which are equivalents but were registered differently
URL for journal’s Open Access statement	Some URLs lack a letter « h » at the beginning or at the end, or they have an extra h at the beginning of the URL. The example below has an extra letter « h » at the beginning of the URL.  hhttp://www.revistas.usp.br/gestaodeprojetos/about

Publisher’s names duplicates investigation and clean-up

The purpose of this project is preparation to develop a rough picture of publisher size to compare with Solomon & Björk’s findings (2012). In order to better perform publisher size analysis, we have specifically investigated the publisher duplicates and corrected most of the obvious errors, such as small differences in punctuation and/or characters, extra spaces at the beginning and/or at the end, and minor differences in entering the publisher name when it is the same, etc. (Please see examples in Table 4 – Investigative Strategies – Publisher Names Duplicates).

The process of clean-up was divided into three stages. Firstly, we created a pivot table for the publisher column to identify the entries in rows which were slightly different but weren’t gathered. Secondly, when potential duplicates were found, we conducted an investigation to confirm duplicates and/or to decide which name to keep (in priority order: use the name with the most journal entries; correct name with obvious typo; use the first name listed). Please see the investigative strategies below:

Thirdly, after identifying inconsistencies in publisher names, we created a table (please see Table 5 – Corrections Gathering – Publisher Names Duplicates) to register all the corrections on the variable Publisher. About 500 inconsistencies were corrected. Thus, the number of publishers in the pivot table has decreased from 7218 entries (data resource: pivot table based on DOAJ metadata) to 6804 entries (data resource: pivot table based on the cleaned-up version of database).

As illustrated in the two tables above, there were different types of data inconsistencies. In order to respect metadata to the greatest extent, we acted prudently when making decisions. In some minor variation cases, we tried to click on the URLs to check publisher websites and to collect convincing evidence. However, we met some intricate complex challenges.

One of the challenges was the language. Due to the massiveness and the wide-range of publishers (124 countries, 80 languages, DOAJ, 7 Feb. 2021) [https://doaj.org/], we were unable to identify all of the sources of information. Besides, when there were invalid URLs or unmatched information, it was difficult to seek out any precision. What’s more, among 7218 entries of publisher names, some of the potential duplicates weren’t gathered because of their different beginning words. For example, “Editora da Universidade Estadual de Maringá (Eduem)” vs. “Eduem – Editora da Universidade Estadual de Maringá” and “Academica Brâncuşi” vs. “Editura Academica Brâncuşi”. They were usually far apart and hard to be detected. More details can be found in the Table 6 below:

Different beginning words (examples)

“Academica Brâncuşi” vs. “Editura Academica Brâncuşi”; “Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iaşi” vs. “Editura Universităţii ‘Alexandru Ioan Cuza’ Iaşi”; “Editora da Universidade Estadual de Maringá (Eduem)” vs. “Eduem – Editora da Universidade Estadual de Maringá”

Unmatched publisher names (examples):

Original publisher names	Possible correct names	URLs
Canadian Society for the Study of Education.	The Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies	https://jcacs.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/jcacs/index
Badan Penelitian dan Pengembangan Kesehatan	URL directs to a new web link: https://ejournal2.litbang.kemkes.go.id/index.php/jki/index whose publisher name is: Pusat Penelitian dan Pengembangan Biomedis dan Teknologi Dasar Kesehatan	http://ejournal.litbang.kemkes.go.id/index.php/jki
Shaheed Beheshti University of Medical Sciences and Health Services	Kowsarmedical	http://journals.sbmu.ac.ir/jme

Invalid URLs (examples):

Original publisher names	Original URLs (invalid)
Alborz University of Medical Sciences (URLs wrongly directs to a website whose contents are meaningless; when we searched the journal title, we were directed to this website : https://enterpathog.abzums.ac.ir/)	http://enterpathog.com/?page=home ; https://jehe.abzums.ac.ir/index.php?slc_lang=en&sid=1
Instituto Nacional de Salud (INS)	http://revistas.ins.gov.py/index.php/rspp/
Instituto Superior de Ciências de Educação do Huambo	http://revista.isced-hbo.ed.ao/rop/index.php/ROP/index

Given the barriers and challenges mentioned above, we can draw a conclusion to the limitations of publisher names clean-up project. Precision is not possible in this project because the question “who is the publisher” is complex. Instead of making any definitive claims about publisher size, we are primarily interested in whether the long tail effect (a few big publishers, a few more middle-sized, most very small) reported by Solomon & Björk (2012) can still be observed in DOAJ in 2021.

DOAJ metadata update analysis

The following analysis was conducted to determine whether DOAJ metadata on article processing charges (APCs) – charging status and amount – would be sufficient for SKC’s longitudinal study on APC trends over time. The answer is clearly no. The metadata for the vast majority of journals in DOAJ (overall and APC charging) has not been updated for more than a year, and it is unknown whether the most recent update would have included an update to APC or other metadata. We will continue to use DOAJ metadata as it is rich and the question “is this journal listed in DOAJ” is of value in and of itself, however for price comparisons we cannot rely on this data as it would likely result in erroneous conclusions.

This chart illustrates the percentage of DOAJ journals last update by year. Detailed figures are in the table below. Note that just under half the journals were last updated 2 or more years ago (2018 or earlier).

DOAJ last update as of Jan. 5, 2021
Year	# journals last updated	% journals last updated
2015	294	2%
2016	1,469	9%
2017	2,864	18%
2018	2,951	19%
2019	3,412	22%
2020	4,662	30%
2021	39	0%
Total	15,691	100%

The chart above illustrates the percentage of journals that answered “yes” to the DOAJ question about charging APCs by year of last update. The table below provides the detailed figures. Note that only 30% of DOAJ journals that charge APCs were updated in the past year (2020 or 2021). It is also unknown whether in these cases the last update was a thorough review of the metadata, or might have been an update of non-APC data.

DOAJ last update APC journals only Jan. 5, 2021
Year of last udpate	# of journals last updated	% journals last updated
2015	47	1%
2016	238	6%
2017	499	12%
2018	930	22%
2019	1,286	30%
2020	1,276	30%
2021	16	0%
Total	4,292	100%

References

The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) online: https://doaj.org/

Solomon, D. J., & Björk, B. (2012). A study of open access journals using article processing charges. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 63(8), 1485–1495. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.22673

“30 years. 18-hour days. Not 8-hour days, 10-hour days, 12-hour days, 18-hour days. If anybody thinks you can be successful without paying that price, you’re wrong.” – Grant Cardone

If you have an account on any of the most prominent social media platforms, you are already somewhat familiar with ‘hustlers’. Sure, you might have seen a relative promoting their side business or a distant friend sharing content about their start-up, but hustlers are something else. Think less personal and more marketable. In recent years, ex-life coaches, motivational speakers and business owners developed a habit of sharing their insights on being a successful entrepreneur – or ‘hustler’ – online.

The term ‘hustling’ was popularised two centuries ago, used both within and towards black communities in the US. Isabella Rosario explains that depending on the context, it either referred to demanding work conditions black people had to endure or was used in a derogatory sense to link black people’s labour to laziness. Then, “throughout the 20th century, hustle was used to describe the reality of what many poor black people had to do to make ends meet.”[1]

This version of ‘hustling’ recognises the inequality of the economic playing field, where engrained prejudice halts opportunities and access to better working conditions and better worker rights. Rosario notes that the term was eventually noticed by corporations like Uber in the mid-2010s when it was appropriated and slowly transformed into a label for a movement which worships the middle-aged white CEO. It rid itself of most race and class consciousness to give way for the contemporary digital hustler to form.

The hustler creates online content that matches the mannerisms and presentation of what we imagine a successful business owner may be. They provide life advice, share inspirational quotes and promise land of equal opportunity where anything is possible. The hustler is a capitalist hero. They observe the free market as it spontaneously evolves and harnesses its potential. How do I achieve anything I want? – you might ask the hustler. They provide answers: aim for constant productivity and dedicate most of your time to work. In short, you have to commit to the grind if you want to reach new heights. It’s like a digitized American Dream, repackaged into bite-sized shareable content. How does this dogma function online?

 

The Making of a Hustler

The hustler shudders at the thought of working a 9 to 5 job, ‘making someone else rich.’ They would rather make himself rich. If you do not succeed, well, you did not try hard enough. Inspirational entrepreneurial images and videos often rely on ‘masculine’ buzzwords and aspirations, inadvertently setting up an unrealistic standard for virtually everyone: those who aspire to live like this and those who don’t but are bombarded by the expectations anyway. Never give up, master your daily routine, work when they sleep, never look back, be your own boss, be confident, don’t you want this new watch or car? Don’t you want to provide financial security for your family? Working for someone else is not very masculine of you. You should take your future into your own hands.

 

“Pay the price today so you can pay any price in the future.” – Cardone

 

Take Grant Cardone, a real estate mogul who built his career in part providing entrepreneurial courses and life advice. As a hustler-influencer, he serves as a blueprint for other budding entrepreneurs and hustlers, showing up on social media feeds in a suit, showing off his lavish lifestyle, and promising you that you can do it too. In the same breath, he will claim that if you think life is too expensive, you are simply not making enough money. Do not stop to think why so many services are unattainable, sometimes for people who indeed work one, two, three jobs and still struggle to make ends meet. Structural issues and inequity dissolve in the eyes of the hustler-influencer. The identity of a hustler offers salvation from these dire circumstances, allowing entrance into a neoliberal haven where innovation and hard work always pay off, judged by the neutral gaze of the market.

   

In unscripted, chaotic news anchor-style videos accompanied by his wife Elena, Cardone rambles about what men should provide for women, cutting her off at every possible moment, and proclaiming authenticity is his best feature. He frames his derogatory and uneducated claims as something positive, unapologetic, masculine. Fellas, sometimes people will dislike you, and you just pay them no mind. “I’m just an authentic person. You either like me or you don’t,” he says, leaving no space for criticism or reflection, claiming they are distractions. And of course, his fans should follow if they want to stay focused on the things that matter; money, money, money.

Occasionally, in fragments taken from longer motivational videos, Cardone shares a down-to-earth anecdote or past struggle on social media to ensure you know that successful businessmen are just like you. And you can be like him if you commit.

Cardone blends business advice with personal advice, a popular approach amongst hustler-influencers. It comes as no surprise since their version of reality sees the individual and their profession as inseparable entities, a brand which depends on being perceived as a success. Keep following his content to grow your chance of making it big. Increase his wealth just in case it leads to increasing yours. And if it doesn’t, well, it might be time to purchase another coaching course. The creation of the hustler continues; he should be like Action Man, built to optimise his performance in the workplace and inside a nuclear family unit. It screams 1950s, except now the hustler also exists in code, on marketable websites and on social media apps, where he waits for the algorithm to match him with users in need of a little entrepreneurial inspiration.

  

Why join the grind?

The aspiring hustler asks: What is the point in working so many hours just to make someone else up top richer? Why am I expected to work 40+ hours a week in a job I do not find useful or fulfilling? What’s in it for me? Hustler-influencers answer; you cannot let yourself be exploited by some big corporation (but look at my one, how successful!). Don’t you want to be like me? I don’t have to worry about living from paycheck to paycheck. I don’t have to meticulously budget my expenses, I just spend. And you can have it too.

The aspiring hustler gives into the equal-opportunity narrative. They embrace the grind, deciding to utilise the ‘free market’ they simultaneously fear and worship to become a business owner or a CEO. And they wish to find others who are on a similar journey. Online hustle culture awaits, inviting them to join like-minded hard workers and dreamers who are not like the rest. Sometimes, the hustler is still a teenager, worried about their prospects and searching for alternative ways of making money. They find #grindtok or #hustletok and they are inspired. Look at these people, working for themselves and earning so much, making it look so easy. I want what they have. And the algorithm provides, offering videos like “Ages 13-25 and wanting to make money online?” or “How to make $50/hour even if you are just 14 years old!”. The pressure builds – what’s your excuse?

Forget inherited wealth, unethical business practices, manipulative marketing tactics, and capitalising on others’ financial worries. Hustling is an equal-opportunity endeavour, remember? Many budding entrepreneurs online ignore the skeletons dwelling in the closets of these figures. Besides, if overworking yourself is so glamorous, then those who are the most successful must be working the hardest. Right? The hustler-influencer is a creature of conflictual ambiguities, preaching hard work but automating and outsourcing much of the labour he performs. Claiming authenticity is his best asset, but operating like a charlatan, lining his own pockets while he promises you wealth. He praises small business endeavours, but supports tactics and policies that crush their potential, and elevate already well-established conglomerates. As long as you believe the hustler-influencer’s act, he will continue to benefit from the attention.

We all want financial freedom and fulfilment. But when we dream of freedom, we do not dream of exploitation. Still, such is the root of many businesses that hustlers and budding entrepreneurs idolise. On his never-ending path to exorbitant wealth, the aspiring hustler becomes a target of exploitation. A self-inflicted unsustainable work ethic makes their journey all the more painful. It makes them depend more on continuing help from hustler-influencers. Don’t stop until you succeed. No matter how compelling, this cult of the self-made entrepreneur is showing cracks and has been for some time. Echoing the growing criticism of ‘the hustle’ and marketable workaholism, many TikTok users identify glamorisation of exhaustion, gentrification, and manipulation in comment sections of hustle videos. I invite them to dream bigger and consider how the near future would look if we transitioned away from toxic productivity towards something more beneficial.

 

How to Be Hustle-Free

Fernández-Herrería and Martínez-Rodríguez propose a deconstruction of the neoliberal entrepreneurial self. They believe it is possible through the embrace of the Internet as a tool for establishing communication paths focused on cooperation and collaboration, not on predatory competition. In this way, a new identity can emerge; one “far removed from the capitalist worldview, now establishing emerging entrepreneurial visions which feed on values and forms of collaborative commons.”[2] In an adjusted search for community, the online hustler could soon find alternative bonds through the Internet of Things: advice instead of pressure, support instead of guilt, and connection instead of rivalry.

In the meantime, the aspiring hustler should allow themselves leisure time, rest, and critical reflection away from hustler-influencers and their clickable life advice. This is the only way to start to minimise immense pressure to perform, which inevitably leads to exhaustion and burnout. We must create some distance between our work and self-worth. This task is daunting since the waves of glamorised workaholism seem to be crashing from all sides. But if we challenge this way of thinking, we will preserve our mental health and function better in the long run. What would our routines look like if we were able to separate ourselves from our labour? Here, we might find enjoyment in daily tasks, and grow to appreciate many aspects of our lives we are often too busy to notice.

Aspiring entrepreneurs deserve better than empty promises from millionaires who sell unachievable daily routines and convince them to take big financial risks in exchange for the promise of eventual monetary gain in the future. At the centre of this is the conviction that hard work is empowering and a one-way ticket to success. Understandably, many people want this to be true. In a sense, it would signal a meritocracy and an equal-opportunity society.

However, this mentality serves the continual protection of individuals who stockpile wealth and utilise it to dominate industries, keeping smaller businesses from flourishing and silencing workers who demand better conditions. To deconstruct hustle culture, we must make it clear that so many business owners who are put on pedestals as self-made geniuses came from generational wealth, which increased their chance of launching and maintaining businesses. This perspective should help the hustler realise that reaching heights of Bezos, Zuckerberg or Musk is unachievable for reasons other than a lack of determination or self-discipline. Billionaires might humour new entrepreneurs and aspiring hustlers with quotable tips and tricks about productivity and hard work. It is nothing but a mirage. They have no profitable reason to expose their pitfalls and collective efforts on which they rely to maintain their conglomerates. But if we start to shift attention away from big business owners and hustler-influencers, we will make space for more meaningful bonds with like-minded people who deserve real advice and support from more reliable sources.

   

Following a passion, pursuing a career or starting a business all require resources, education, and support. We do not achieve anything alone, and it is in our collective interest to recognise the value in networks of support and care. There is work to be done. Debunking the myth of the great self-made CEO demands many structural changes. We can start by gathering together online and using the Internet of Things to our advantage. It would no longer benefit an influencing and capitalising minority. If an online hustler shares his productive 5 am morning routine, but no one is there to hear him, did he make a sound?

 

References

[1] Isabella Rosario, When The Hustle Isn’t Enough (npr.org), https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/04/03/826015780/when-the-hustle-isnt-enough?t=1612350702554 [Accessed 20 Jan 2021].
[2] Alfonso Fernández-Herrería, Fransisco Miguel Martínez-Rodríguez, “Deconstructing the neoliberal Entrepreneurial Self: A critical perspective derived from a global “biophilic consciousness,” Policy Futures in Education, Vol. 14(3), pp. 314-326.

(re)programming is a season of close encounters with world-class thinkers debating key issues, from infrastructure and energy to community and AI, hosted by the Spanish author Marta Peirano and live-streamed every third Monday of the month.

The curator

Program

See the full program here

15-02-2021: Trigger (with Kim Stanley Robinson)

15-03-2021: Infrastructure

19-04-2021: Energy

17-05-2021: Interdependence

21-06-2021: AI

20-09-2021: Data

18-10-2021: Community

15-011-2021: Accountability

Theory on Demand #40
COVID-19 from the Margins.
Pandemic Invisibilities, Policies and Resistance in the Datafied Society
Edited by Stefania Milan, Emiliano Treré and Silvia Masiero

 

COVID-19 from the Margins: Pandemic Invisibilities, Policies and Resistance in the Datafied Society stems from the blog ‘COVID-19 from the Margins’, launched in May 2020 to amplify the multilingual voices of social groups and individuals silenced in the overly-quantified narrative of the pandemic. Featuring contributions in five idioms, the anthology explores five core themes of the first pandemic of the datafied society seen from the perspective of the disempowered: human invisibilities and the politics of counting; perpetuated vulnerabilities and inequalities; datafied social policies; technological reconfigurations in the datafied pandemic; and pandemic solidarities and resistance from below. The five themes offer a snapshot of the social costs of the pandemic in countries as diverse as South Africa, China, Peru, Iran, Spain, New Zealand, India, Brazil, Indonesia, Russia—and counting. It gives voice to the untold stories of communities struggling to survive in the crisis, such as gig workers, indigenous groups, domestic violence survivors, impoverished families and vulnerable people, racialized individuals, migrants, rural dwellers, and the LGBTQ+ community.

‘COVID-19 from the Margins caringly and thoughtfully demonstrates why the multiplicity we call “the poor” is more than ever at the receiving end of the worst effects of globalized, patriarchal/colonial racist capitalism. But they are not passive victims, for their everyday forms of activism and re-existence, including their daily tweaking of the digital for purposes of community, care, and survival, has incredible insights about design and digital justice that this book takes to heart as we strive to undo the lethal effects of “the first pandemic of the datafied society”,’ wrote anthropologist Arturo Escobar (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill & Universidad de Caldas, Manizales) commenting on the book.

The book is a multilingual conversation that celebrates linguistic and cultural diversity but also de-centers dominant ways of being and knowing while contributing a decolonial approach to the narration of the COVID-19 crisis. Moreover, it brings researchers, activists, practitioners, and communities on the ground into dialogue to offer timely, critical reflections in near-real time and in an accessible language. The result is a heterogeneous, polycentric and pluriversal narration, which invites the reader to enact and experience the “Big data from the South(s)” approach as an interpretive lens to read the pandemic.

Order and download to the book HERE