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This interdisciplinary collection rethinks the political economy of the digital market by asking what came before platforms and suggesting what might come after them.
By unpacking the concept of ‘platform economies’ into locally embedded variations of digital markets, the book identifies what is new about contemporary platforms and what is characteristic of wider historical, social and economic currents.
The diverse team of authors employ various analytical approaches, including in-depth ethnographic studies, and theoretical and analytical reconceptualisations of platforms and the industries they encompass.
Tapping into current themes including the decolonisation of the internet, this book offers a timely assessment of the implications of emerging reconfigurations between technology, information, society and markets.
Recent decades have witnessed the creation of new types of property systems, ranging from data ownership to national control over genetic resources. This trend has significant implications for wealth distribution and our understanding of who can own what.
This book explores the idea of ownership in the realm of plant breeding, revealing how plants have been legally and materially transformed into property. It highlights the controversial aspects of turning seeds, plants and genes into property and how this endangers the viability of the seed industry.
Examining ownership not simply as a legal concept, but as a bundle of laws, practices and technologies, this is a valuable contribution that will interest scholars of intellectual property studies, the anthropology of markets, science and technology studies and related fields.
EPDF and EPUB available open access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.
Money is central to capitalism and to our many sustainability crises. Could we remake money so as to advance sustainable economies and fair societies? A growing number of scholars, politicians, and activists think we can, and they are doing it from the bottom up.
This book examines how grassroots groups, municipalities and radical cryptoentrepreneurs are remaking money by designing and organising complementary currencies. It argues that in their novel ideas and governance practices lie the key for building green and inclusive economies.
Engaging imaginatively with the future of money, this accessible book will appeal to anyone interested in constructing a more sustainable and just world.
Why does scholarship on innovation fixate on certain classes of technology? Could our research tools and techniques be concealing as much as they reveal?
Ryan T. MacNeil shows how the common instrumentalities of innovation research carry neoliberal market biases. He calls for critical scholars to examine how we observe and understand innovation, offering ways forward to deconstruct and reform disciplinary conventions.
This book makes a valuable contribution to critical management and science and technology studies by shedding light on the ‘dark matter’ of innovation. This will be an important resource for scholars and practitioners interested in disruptive ideas about innovation.
This book examines the evolution of digital platform economies through the lens of online gaming.
Offering valuable empirical work on Valve’s ‘Steam’ platform, Thorhauge examines the architecture of this global online videogame marketplace and the way it enables new markets and economic transactions. Drawing on infrastructure, software, platform and game studies, the book interrogates the implications of these transactions, both in terms of their legality, but also in how they create new forms of immaterial labour.
Shedding new light on a previously under-explored branch of the study of digital platforms, this book brings a unique economic sociology perspective into the growing literature on videogame studies.
We are often expected to trust technologies, and how they are used, even if we have good reason not to. There is no room to mistrust.
Exploring relations between trust and mistrust in the context of data, AI and technology at large, this book defines a process of ‘trustification’ used by governments, corporations, researchers and the media to legitimise exploitation and increase inequalities.
Aimed at social scientists, computer scientists and public policy, the book aptly reveals how trust is operationalised and converted into a metric in order to extract legitimacy from populations and support the furthering of technology to manage society.
This book explores the relationship between the state and war within the context of seismic technological change.
As we experience a fourth industrial revolution, technology already exerts a huge impact on the character of war and military strategies in the form of drones and other types of ‘remote’ warfare. However, technological developments are not confined to the defence sector, and the diffusion of military technology inevitably also affects the wider economy and society.
This book investigates these possible developments and speculates on their ramifications for the future. Through its analysis, the book questions what will happen to war and the state and whether we will reach a point where war leads to the unmaking of the state itself.
In this stimulating analysis, Hannes Gerhardt outlines the potentials and challenges of a technology-enabled, commons-focused transition out of capitalism.
The book shows that openness and cooperation are more beneficial in today’s economies and societies than competition and profit-seeking. Driven by this conviction, Gerhardt identifies key imperatives for overcoming capitalism, from democratizing our digital, material, and financial economies to maintaining a robust, political mobilization. Using clear examples, he explores tactical openings through the lens of ‘compeerism’, a newly constructed framework that highlights the latent counter-capitalist possibilities, but also limits, of our emerging technological landscape.
This is an accessible contribution to counter-capitalist discourse that is both inspiring and pragmatic for academics and activists alike.
Much of the debate on the future of work has focused on responses to technological trends in the Global North, with little evidence on how these trends are impacting on work and workers in the Global South.
Drawing on a rich selection of ethnographic studies of precarious work in Africa, this innovative book discusses how globalisation and digitalisation are drivers for structural change and examines their implications for labour. Bringing together global labour studies and inequality studies, it explores the role of digital technology in new business models, and ways in which digitalization can be harnessed for counter mobilisation by the new worker.
A wave of innovation driven by the convergence of digital and molecular technologies is transforming food production and ways of eating in the US, Western Europe and Australasia. This book explores a range of contemporary agri-food issues, such as the digitalisation of farm production, aka Precision Agriculture, farmer independence, gene editing, alternative proteins and the rise of app-based home food deliveries.
This is the first book to provide a systemic analysis of technological innovation and its socio-economic consequences in modern food systems, including the ‘hollowing out’ of rural communities and pronounced industrial concentration. The food system is under growing public pressure to respond to global climate change, but this book finds little evidence of transition to sustainable low-carbon trajectories.
