Instrumentarian sociality creates new stratification instead of dissolving class divisions

Evidence

In light of these findings, one UK medical specialist comments on the young people in her practice: “People are growing up to want to be influencers and that is now a job role.… I am not sure if parents are fully aware of the pressure people face.…” Indeed, only 12 percent of respondents in that 2017 survey reckoned that their parents understood these pressures. The reports confirm that social pressure is well institutionalized as the means of online social influence, but contrary to Pentland’s belief that “class” divisions would disappear, life in the hive produces new cleavages and forms of stratification: not only tune or be tuned but also pressure or be pressured. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1428

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the book’s key theoretical claim that instrumentarianism reverses Marx’s prediction of class-leveling — a fresh form of inequality rather than its abolition. — connects to: Social class fuses both serial and group structures simultaneously — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 558; Differentiated schooling reproduces rather than abolishes class divisions; Instrumentarian power governs through inducement and reinforcement rather than overt coercion — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1629 (+1 more)
• SEED: The ‘pressure or be pressured’ inversion — social pressure itself as the institutionalized medium of online influence — is a strong angle for a piece on influencer culture as unpaid labor and new hierarchy.

Broader Connections

• Differentiated schooling reproduces rather than abolishes class divisions #corroborates (0.92)
• Instrumentarian power governs through inducement and reinforcement rather than overt coercion #expands (0.85) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1629