New MPIfG Book: Recoding Power by Sidney Rothstein

June 2022 saw the publication by Oxford University Press of Recoding Power: Tactics for Mobilizing Tech Workers, in which author Sidney A. Rothstein explores worker power in the current phase of economic transition. As digital transformation progresses and policy-makers dismantle labor’s traditional power resources – particularly institutions for social protection and unions – workers are left on their own to defend against rising economic inequality and precarity. Tracing worker response to mass layoffs at four tech firms in the United States and Germany in in-depth case studies, Recoding Power shows how workers can develop creative tactics to “recode” management’s discursive techniques for collective action and build power even where it appears impossible. Sidney Rothstein was a postdoctoral researcher at the MPIfG until January 2020, when he took up his current post as assistant professor at Williams College in Massachusetts.