A. Aneesh

A. Aneesh is the author of Virtual Migration (2006) who put forward the concept of "algocracy" now widely used to convey the growing importance and threat of algorithms in social life. In Virtual Migration Aneesh discusses the effects of the movement of labor through technology. The idea of algocracy means governance by computer algorithms, instead of bureaucratic rules or surveillance. He is Director of the Institute of World Affairs and Associate Professor of Sociology and Global Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Previously, he taught in the Science and Technology Program at Stanford University (2001–04). His scholarship intersects several areas of research: globalization, migration, science & technology, and intellectual property. With a wide background in the social and cultural landscape of India and the United States, Aneesh has spent a decade researching and writing about the world of programmers. Over the years his scholarship has included awards and grants from the McArthur Foundation, Social Science Research Council, Population Council, and the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe. Recently, Aneesh has published a book, Neutral Accent, on India’s call centers where he has coined a new term "system identities" to denote identity assigned by algorithms to the individual.
Aneesh has been interviewed on public radio and public television, and his work is taught in many universities around the world. He has lived in California, New Jersey, New Mexico, Wisconsin in United States and Delhi, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh in India.

Books

He has written or edited the following books:

• Neutral Accent: How Language, Labor and Life Become Global (Duke University Press 2015).
• Virtual Migration: the Programming of Globalization, Duke University Press (2006).
• Beyond Globalization: Making New Worlds in Media, Art, and Social Practices, Rutgers University Press (2011) Editors: A. Aneesh, Lane Hall, and Patrice Petro
• The Long 1968: Revisions and New Perspectives, Indiana University Press (2012). Editors: A. Aneesh Daniel Sherman, Ruud van Dijk, and Jasmine Alinder.

Scholarship

• School for Advanced Research, SAR Resident Scholar, Santa Fe, 2006–07
• MacArthur Foundation: Program in Global Security and Sustainability, 2004–05
• Social Science Research Council – Ford Foundation, Program on Information Technology, International Cooperation and Global Security, Summer Research Fellowship, June–August 2001
• Louis Bevier Fellowship, Rutgers University, 2001–02
• Population Council, Doctoral Fellowship for dissertation fieldwork, 1999–2000
• Social Science Research Council – Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Program on International Migration, Dissertation Fellowship, 1999
• Matilda White Riley Prize in Sociology for the paper titled "Nations and the Shape of Communities: The Production of the National Languages of India and Pakistan," Rutgers University, 1999.

Media

• Interviewed on Asia Pacific Forum, WBAI 99.5 New York, on digital labor and social entrepreneurship, 27 June 2011

"Julian Assange and Osama Bin Laden – enemies of the state?" an op-ed article in the San Francisco Chronicle, 10 December 2010 Interviewed on International Focus, Milwaukee Public Television. Topic: Patenting Life, 17 October 2010 Interviewed on the Gary Null Radio Show on the topic of globalization and poverty (August 2006). Interviewed on At Issue with Ben Merens, Wisconsin Public Radio, on employment and outsourcing, 12 July 2006.

Articles

• "Bloody Language: Clashes and Constructions of Linguistic Nationalism in India," in Sociological Forum, 25, 1, March 2010.
• "Global Labor: Algocratic Modes of Organization," in Sociological Theory, 27, 4, 2009. Translated in German for publication in Internationale Arbeitsräume: Unsicherheiten und Herausforderungen (International Workplaces: Uncertainties and Challenges), edited by Esther Ruiz Ben (Centaurus Verlag 2010).
• "Body Shopping," an invited entry in The Palgrave Dictionary of Transnational History, edited by Akira Iriye and Pierre Saunier. London: Palgrave McMillan, 2009.
• "Imperial Neutrality: Clashes of the Future in India’s Call Centers," an invited essay, Global-E, 2, 1, 2008.
• "Specters of Global Communication," an article in Frakcija, 44, 2007.
• "Time and the Biological Consequences of Globalization," an invited commentary in Current Anthropology, 48: 2, 2007
• "Between Fantasy and Despair: Nationalist Closures in the Transnational Lives of Indian Programmers," a peer-reviewed article in Immigrant Life in the United States: Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives, edited by Colin Wayne Leach and Dona Gabaccia. Routledge 2003.
• "Kanpur," in Encyclopedia of Urban Cultures, edited by Melvin Ember and Carol R. Ember. Grolier Education Corp, 2002.
• "Skill Saturation: Rationalization and Post-industrial Work," a peer-reviewed article in Theory and Society (Volume 30, Issue 3, June 2001). Reprinted in Post-Industrial Society (Sage Key Debates in Sociology) edited by Barry Smart. SAGE Publications, September 2010
• "Rethinking Migration: High-skilled Labor Flows from India to the United States," a peer-reviewed article in The International Migration of the Highly Skilled: Demand, Supply, and Development Consequences, edited by Wayne A. Cornelius, Thomas J. Espenshade, and Idean Salehyan. La Jolla, CA: Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, University of California-San Diego, 2001.
• "Immigration and Naturalization Service," Encyclopedia of American Immigration, edited by James Ciment. New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2001.
• "The Birth of God," Indian Philosophical Quarterly, vol. XVII (2), April 1990.