Content factories: the subordination of academic labour under the logic of financialisation and platformisation

Abstract

This article aims to present elements of ongoing research that investigates the reconfiguration of academic labour in Brazil based on the phenomenon of "content factories", understood here as companies that produce didactic material for private Higher Education Institutions. In front of the growing expansion of the private sector and the Distance Learning modality, driven by processes of financialisation and platformisation of education, it becomes crucial to investigate how educational content is produced. The central hypothesis is that content factories materialise a project that, under the veil of technocentrism, promotes the subordination of knowledge to the logic of capitalist accumulation. Through processes of fragmentation, standardisation, and intensification, teaching work is reconfigured and precarious. This article presents an analysis of the structure of these factories and their implications for teaching labour, challenging technological determinism and pointing to the need for resistance.