Embodied narratives of Amazon workers. A critical cartography of the warehouse

Abstract

Warehouses are fundamental enclaves within global supply chains. They are characterised for the use of digital Taylorism, automation and algorithmic control to intensify labour processes and deskill workers. Amazon accompanies these practices with an anti-union policy and the projection of a narrative that emphasizes the benefits of its organizational model. However, several voices have contested the company’s narrative. This article aims to investigate Amazon workers’ embodied counter-narratives about their work experiences and labour relations. To this purpose, the article will employ body mapping as a participatory tool to enrichen our understanding of the spatiality of labour processes. The results show that Amazon practices about employment relations, work safety, mental health, salaries, pace of work and technological control, and work-life balance have a deep impact on workers’ bodies, and, hence, workers’ narratives are strongly connected to their bodies. Finally, the article advocates for the inclusion of body-mapping within critical cartography and labour geography to a better understanding of workers’ bodies as spaces of class struggle.