How should we share the truth about the environmental crisis? At a moment when even the most basic facts about ecology and the climate face contestation and contempt, environmental advocates are at an impasse. Many have turned to social media and digital technologies to shift the tide-but what if their strategy is not only flawed, but dangerous? The Truth about Nature follows environmental actors as they turn to the internet to save nature. It documents how conservation efforts are transformed through (...) the political economy of platforms and the algorithmic feeds that have been instrumental to the rise of post-truth politics. Developing a novel account of post-truth as an expression of power under platform capitalism, Bram Büscher shows how environmental actors attempt to mediate between structural forms of platform power and the contingent histories and contexts of particular environmental issues. Bringing efforts at wildlife protection in Southern Africa into dialogue with a sweeping analysis of truth and power in the twenty-first century, Büscher makes the case for a new environmental politics: one that radically reignites the art of speaking truth to power. (shrink)

The rise of digital platforms is growingly acknowledged as a pivotal characteristic of contemporary capitalism. A subset of the literature on digital platforms scrutinized the political economy of platform companies, their data-driven business models along with the economic, social, and political consequences of platformization. Yet, this strand has been overwhelmingly interested in Big Tech companies in the United States and China. In this article, I aim to expand the geographical span of this emerging literature by scrutinizing platformization dynamics (...) in Turkey, a middle-income country that has not been systematically examined so far along these lines. To this end, I present an assessment on the overall platform landscape in Turkey by focusing on three highlight digital platforms (Trendyol, Hepsiburada, and Getir). My analysis on the trajectory of these three platforms indicates the following. First, these platforms have exhibited meteoric growth rates and have risen among the most valuable companies in Turkey in a tremendously short period of time. Second, their aggressive growth strategies based on data extraction and network externalities have led to a strong monopolization drive. Third, they have rapidly expanded into adjacent business areas, transforming themselves into infrastructural components of the domestic economy, with profound impacts on production, trade, and labor relations. Fourth, they remain dependent on the infrastructure laid by Big Techs. These findings suggest that platformization is rapidly transforming economic landscapes other than the United States and China as well, yet in an uneven and dependent form, underlining the need to broaden the geographical focus of the concerned literature. (shrink)

Samson Liberman ABSTRACT: The aim of this paper is a socio-philosophical analysis of attention deficit phenomenon, which is being detected at the intersection of several subject areas. The main methodological instrument of the study is a Marxist principle of alienation. Alienation of attention, which, on the one hand, is being ….

Mechanism design is a form of optimization developed in economic theory. It casts economists as institutional engineers, choosing an outcome and then arranging a set of market rules and conditions to achieve it. The toolkit from mechanism design is widely used in economics, policymaking, and now in building and managing online environments. Mechanism design has become one of the most pervasive yet inconspicuous influences on the digital mediation of social life. Its optimizing schemes structure online advertising markets and other multi-sided (...) platform businesses. Whatever normative rationales mechanism design might draw on in its economic origins, as its influence has grown and its applications have become more computational, we suggest those justifications for using mechanism design to orchestrate and optimize human interaction are losing traction. In this article, we ask what ideological work mechanism design is doing in economics, computer science, and its applications to the governance of digital platforms. Observing mechanism design in action in algorithmic environments, we argue it has become a tool for producing information domination, distributing social costs in ways that benefit designers, and controlling and coordinating participants in multi-sided platforms. (shrink)

This article explores the changing nature of twenty-first-century capitalism with an emphasis on illuminating the political coalitions and institutional conditions that support and sustain it. Most of the existing literature attributes the changing nature of the firm to developments in markets and technology. By contrast, this article emphasizes the political forces that have driven the transformation of the twentieth-century consolidated firm through the firm as a “network of contracts” and toward the platform firm. Moreover, situating the United States (...) in a comparative perspective highlights the distinctive ways US political-economic institutions have facilitated that transformation and exacerbated the associated inequalities. (shrink)

From a socio-theoretical and media-theoretical perspective, this article analyses exemplary practices and structural characteristics of contemporary digital political campaigning to illustrate a transformation of the public sphere through the platform economy. The article first examines Cambridge Analytica and reconstructs its operational procedure, which, far from involving exceptionally new digital campaign practices, turns out to be quite standard. It then evaluates the role of Facebook as an enabling ‘affective infrastructure’, technologically orchestrating processes of political opinion-formation. Of special concern are various (...) tactics of ‘feedback propaganda’ and algorithmic-based user engagement that reflect, at a more theoretical level, the merging of surveillance-capitalist commercialization with a cybernetic logic of communication. The article proposes that this techno-economic dynamic reflects a continuation of the structural transformation of the public sphere. What Jürgen Habermas had analysed in terms of an economic fabrication of the public sphere in the 1960s is now advancing in a more radical form, and on a more programmatic basis, through the algorithmic architecture of social media. As the authors argue, this process will eventually lead to a new form of ‘infrastructural power’. (shrink)

In this study, we discuss the colonial project as an eliminatory structure of indigenous ways of knowing and doing that is built into Canadian social and health institutions. We elaborate on the role nursing plays in maintaining systemic racism, marginalization and discrimination of Indigenous Peoples. Based on historical practices and present‐day circumstances, we argue that changing language in research and school curriculums turns decolonization into what Tuck and Yang call a ‘metaphor’. Rather, we propose decolonization as a political project where (...) nurses acknowledge their involvement in colonial harms and disrupt the assumptions that continue to shape how nurses interact with Indigenous people, including knowledge systems that perpetuate colonial interests and privilege. Decolonization requires nurses to understand the colonial practices that led to dispossession of land, erasure of knowledge, culture and identity, while upholding indigenous ways of knowing and doing in health, healing and living. As a political manifesto that liberates indigenous life from oppressive structures of colonialism and capitalism, The Red Deal is presented as a visionary platform for decolonization. The aim of this study is to articulate three dimensions of caretaking within The Red Deal as a framework to decolonize nursing knowledge development and practice. Based on the philosophical dimension embedded in The Red Deal that revoke norms and knowledge assumptions of capitalism that destroy indigenous ways of knowing and doing, we underscore an approach toward decolonizing nursing. Our approach rejects the apolitical nature of nursing as well as the unilateral western scientific knowledge approach to knowledge development and recognition. A critical emancipatory approach that addresses the socio‐political and historical context of health care, recognizes dispossession of land and adopts a ‘multilogical’ vision of knowledge that gives space for representation and voice is needed for true decolonization of nursing. (shrink)

This essay samples and describes the state of architectural scholarship across various platforms in the age of Cognitive Capitalism. The premise is that, much like scholarship in the Arts and Humanities generally, architectural scholarship suffers from the Either/Or schism between traditional academic research of a non-utilitarian form and the heavily mediatic practices of the mainstream – “mainstream” defined as both online and print publications that eschew the long-form essay or book in favor of the populist modality that serves the (...) neo-liberalization of the discipline. -/- The sampling includes the devolution of the thesis or dissertation to socio-cultural report and/or pseudo-scientific study, with speculative works relegated to the margins of architectural discourse. This shift, while emblematic of the “trade school” mentality of many architecture schools today, also signals a bias at large in the post-recession 2010s where research must be monetized to justify funding, or speculative work must adhere to a format that is dictated from the outside (from the regimes of capitalization imposed by publishers). (shrink)

Currently, new business models created in the sharing economy differ considerably and they differ in the formation of trust as well. If and how trust can be created is shown by a comparison of two examples which diverge in their founding philosophy. The chosen example of community-based economy, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), no longer trusts the capitalist system and therefore distances itself and creates its own environment including a new business model. It is implemented within rather small groups where trust (...) is created by personal relations and face-to-face communication. On the contrary, the example of a platform economy, the accommodation-provider company Airbnb, shows trust in the system and pushes technological innovations through the use of platform applications. It promotes trust and confidence in the progress of technology. For the conceptual analysis, the distinction between personal trust and system trust defined by Niklas Luhmann is adopted. The analysis describes two different modes of trust formation and how they push distrust or improve trust. Grounded on these analyses, assumptions on the process of trust formation within varying models of the sharing economy are formulated as well as a hypothesis about possible developments is introduced for further research. (shrink)

The key role played by online platforms in the neo-intermediation of the public debate requires a review of current tools for mapping the digital information ecosystem, highlighting the political nature of such an analysis: Starting from a synoptic overview of the main models of platform governance, we try to understand whether the ongoing European shift towards the Limited Government Regulation (LGR) model will be able to counterbalance the “systemic opinion power” of the giant platforms and restore the “health” of (...) the digital information ecosystem. A close analysis of the European Digital Services Act (DSA) has highlighted some limitations in achieving its goals, because of the features of the LGR on the one hand, and the disruptive features of the algorithmic neo-intermediation phenomenon on the other. Thus, we suggest a tripartite regulatory model, that can be defined as “neo-editorial accountability.” However, increasing users’ critical algorithmic awareness is an essential prerequisite for implementing the suggested template, and mitigating an outstanding effect of the LGR model: the normalization of the ideological assumptions underlying informational capitalism. (shrink)

Online, or platform economy, is no different than offline economy. Platforms are in this day and age what land was in agrarian times and the means of production for the industrial revolution period — i.e., basic resources. As such, the prime questions to be addressed are the same as ever: who owns the resources, who controls them, who profits from them, and who makes the decisions regarding all of the above. Analyzing online economy by these parameters elicits three major (...) categories: Online Capitalism — economic activities designed to maximize profits; Sharing Economy, using a substance-based definition — allowing underused resources to be used by others and adding social value: connecting people, contributing to the environment, and creating communities; and Platform Cooperativism — using online technology to promote economic and social goals and interests, as in the sharing notion, adding power-building components: ownership, control – democracy. This classification is both an identifying tool that allows for an objective evaluation of enterprises and a basis for future legislation and public policy that favors democratic and community-based enterprises. Platform Economy poses great threats: It allows for concentration of power, wealth and control, but it also holds great opportunities as it constructs mechanisms that enable mass participation in decision-making, and thus allows to develop a new and exciting future in which democracy re-claims its front seat, and people regain the power to make a difference. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to show the peculiarities of modernity in a peripheral capitalist country like Brazil. To do this, our understanding of modernity and its relationship with capitalist progress will be explained. Subsequently, the particular character of capitalism in peripheral regions, with an emphasis on the Brazilian experience, will be analysed. More specifically, we shall explore the meaning of capitalist progress in Brazil in the last two decades, underlining Brazil’s role as an international platform for (...) financial valorization and the retrocession of the country’s industrial production in a context of monetary stability. These observations on a peripheral economy and its historical trajectory will allow us, in a third step, to analyse the particularity of Brazilian modernity today. Finally, we shall discuss the role of compensatory income programs and the rise of the so-called ‘new middle class’ in this scenario. (shrink)

The rise of the platform economy in the past two decades (and neoliberal capitalist expansion and crises more in general), have on the whole negatively affected working conditions, leading to growing concerns about the “human side” of organizations. To address these concerns, the purpose of this paper is to apply Axel Honneth’s recognition theory and method of normative reconstruction to working conditions in the platform economy. The paper concludes that the ways in which platform organizations function constitutes (...) a normative paradox, promising flexibility and autonomy while at the same time creating working conditions that undercut these promises. The paper ends with a critical discussion of Honneth’s approach, possible supplementing ideas and further lines of future research. (shrink)

The article develops the idea of forming postcapitalist social relations as a social revolution of an individual, which consists in the fact that popularity becomes a key advantage, the “possession” of which is a desired goal and a significant resource of political influence. At the same time, it is shown that this process leads to forming a new dominant stratum — personalities (“people with personality”): celebrities, popular bloggers, social media influencers, micro- and nanosignature. It is substantiated that the personaliat domination (...) is a consequence of contradictory social relations between the new aristocracy represented by the representatives of the personaliat and many people who do not “possess” a popular personality - the impersonaliat (“extra people”, “lower” precariat, those who turn out to be outsiders in the world of social platforms). This contradiction is associated with the rooting of a celebrity’s culture, which encourages a lot of people to fight for popularity and focus on finding advantageous differences from others in the process of self-realization. However, this struggle in the end for the overwhelming majority turns into an increase in creative competition and subtraction. Various new forms of subtraction that appear in situations of widespread self-realization are revealed. Accordingly, arguments are given in favor of the fact that in the context of the “personality revolution”, the truly left will be rather an alternative that will call into question the ways of solving social problems formulated by popular personalities. In other words, it will be possible to oppose the total pursuit of popularity with the projects of society, in which the person is relied not as someone who rises above the others, but as an involved person who values life in harmony with others higher than his own “I”. (shrink)

Marx conceives of capitalism as a production mode based on the exploitation of labour-power, whose productive consumption in the labour process is considered as the main source of value creation. Capitalists seek to obscure and secure workers’ contribution to the production process, whereas workers strive to have their contribution fully recognized. The struggle between capitalists and workers over labour-time is thus central to capital’s valorization process. Hence, capital–labour antagonism is structured over the capture and exploitation of unpaid labour-time. Building (...) on Marx’s labour value theory, as well as on some of its contemporary interpretations, I call this struggle over labour-time capture a process of ‘invisibilization’ of labour. I claim that this invisibilization process is still a relevant form of surplus-value extraction in contemporary capitalism, especially in the platform economy, characterized by remote but pervasive control by algorithms. The rediscovery of this form of surplus-value extraction and its manifestation in platform labour is the main contribution of this study. To corroborate this contribution, I compare the case of platform labour with that of textile-clothing, where value production is more clearly based on the classical forms of surplus-value extraction (i.e., absolute and relative). This comparison helps to cast a new light on the nexus between work-process transformations and surplus-value creation, which is the core of the Marxian labour theory of value, and which – I argue – is crucial to understanding contemporary capitalist developments. (shrink)

Research on privacy practices in digital environments has oftentimes discovered a paradoxical relationship between users’ discursive appraisal of privacy and their actual practices: the “privacy paradox.” The emergence of this paradox prompts us to conduct ethnography of a health and fitness platform in order to flesh out the structural mechanisms generating this paradox. We provide an ethnographic analysis of surveillance capitalism in action that relates front-end practices empirically to the data economy’s back-end operations to show how this material-semiotic (...) setup elicits users’ desire to become self-determined subjects in a way that makes them amenable as objects of behavioral engineering. We combine different ethnographic methods and materials to specify how different types of values are produced and translated on the investigated platform. The latter offers users the values of self-mastery and social visibility. However, the data generated in this process serve to translate these values into the value of economic amenability and thereupon ultimately into economic profit. What gets lost in translation, though, is the front-end promise of self-mastery. It is these structural mechanisms that generate the privacy paradox in the first place. (shrink)

This paper, based on an invited Thesis Eleven presentation, provides a ‘map of technopolitics’ that springs from an investigation of the theoretical notion of technological convergence adopted by the US National Science Foundation, signaling a new paradigm of ‘nano-bio-info-cogno’ technologies. This integration at the nano-level is expected to drive the next wave of scientific research, technology and knowledge economy. The paper explores the concept of ‘technopolitics’ by investigating the links between Wittgenstein’s anti-scientism and Lyotard’s ‘technoscience’, reviewing the history of the (...) notion in the work of the Belgium philosopher Gilbert Hottois. The ‘deep convergence’ representing a new technoscientific synergy is the product of long-term trends of ‘bioinformational capitalism’ that harnesses the twin forces of information and genetic sciences that coalesce in the least mature ‘cognosciences’ in their application to education and research. The map of technopolitics systematically identifies the political relations between Big Tech and ‘new digital publics’ to reveal that the new paradigm is based on the supreme value of cognitive efficiency. There are a closely-knit cluster of concerns that frame a map of political issues about the fifth-generation technological impacts on human beings, their bodies and minds, and public institutions, not least the logic of the distribution and ownership of data, information and knowledge, and its effects on democracy. (shrink)

This article explores left critiques of neoliberalism in light of the Black Lives Matter movement’s recourse to the notion of ‘racial capitalism’ in their analyses of anti-Black oppression. Taking a cue from BLM, I argue for a critical theory of racial capitalism that historicizes neoliberalism within a longue durée framework, surfacing racialized continuities in capitalism’s violence. I begin by revealing how neo-Marxist and neo-Foucaultian approaches to neoliberalism, particularly that of David Harvey and Wendy Brown, respectively, partition race (...) from the workings of contemporary capitalism. Such analyses obscure neoliberalism’s differential impact on non-white racialized populations, while simultaneously casting anti-racist struggles as divisive. In contrast, I then trace how the Movement for Black Lives policy platform invokes Cedric Robinson’s work on racial capitalism, investigating the utility of this framework for the movement’s demands. Building on BLM’s turn to the concept of racial capitalism, I finally offer an outline of a critical theory of racial capitalism to better theorize neoliberalism. By historicizing neoliberalism within racial capitalism’s historical arc, such a theory unravels the qualitatively different mechanisms through which racialized populations are pressed into circuits of capital accumulation. It also paves the way to move past the entrenched class-versus-identity debate on the American left. (shrink)

A critique of neo-liberal academia and platform cultures, Knowledge, Spirit, Law: Book 2, The Anti-capitalist Sublime closes the "Knowledge, Spirit, Law" project (2014-2016). The project included the conclusion of PhD studies in Australia, in 2014, and subsequent post-doctoral activities in Europe and the USA, 2014-2016.

This article illustrates how racial capitalism can enhance understandings of data, capital, and inequality through an in-depth study of digital platforms used for intervening in gender-based violence. Specifically, we examine an emergent sociotechnical strategy that uses software platforms and artificial intelligence chatbots to offer users emergency assistance, education, and a means to report and build evidence against perpetrators. Our analysis details how two reporting apps construct data to support institutionally legible narratives of violence, highlighting overlooked racialised dimensions of the (...) data capital generated through their use. We draw attention to how they reinforce property relations built on extraction and ownership, capital accumulation that reinforces benefits derived through data property relations and ownership, and the commodification of diversity and inclusion. Recognising these patterns are not unique to anti-violence apps, we reflect on how this example aids in understanding how racial capitalism becomes a constitutive element of digital platforms, which more generally extract information from users, rely on complex financial partnerships, and often sustain problematic relationships with the criminal legal system. We conclude with a discussion of how racial capitalism can advance scholarship at the intersections of data and power. (shrink)

El artículo recorre la obra de Rodolfo Kusch posicionando sus principales propuestas en la construcción de tres enfoques convergentes en su filosofía. El primer enfoque está relacionado con la fenomenología y la cultura. El segundo enfoque se refiere a la influencia de la antropología y el cuestionamiento por el símbolo. El tercer enfoque despliega una aproximación filosófico-política. Estos enfoques permiten introducir tres “horizontes de pregunta” principalmente relacionados con el método, con lo popular y con lo indígena, que son expuestos como (...) asuntos centrales en toda su obra. Estos “horizontes de pregunta” buscan comprender los alcances de la filosofía de Kusch y su contribución al pensamiento filosófico americano. This paper analyses the work of Rodolfo Kusch remarking his main philosophical proposals through three correlated perspectives. The first perspective refers to phenomenology and culture. The second focuses on the influence of anthropology and the problem of symbols. The third posits a political-philosophical approximation. These perspectives operate interdependently as the background for Kusch’s philosophy and allow us to introduce three “questioning horizons” related to the method, the popular and the indigenous as the central issues of his philosophical work. Thus, these “questioning horizons” build a platform to understand Kusch’s philosophy and his contribution to the Latin American philosophy. (shrink)

As scholars anticipate the structural reconfigurations arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, resistance to pandemic measures remains a site of rich discussion. While previous researchers have studied anti-mask, anti-vaccine, and anti-lockdown action, here called anti-restriction movements, as a series of actions informed by individual characteristics like psychological profiles, political leanings, or gender, this paper emphasizes how anti-restriction actions evolved into social movements articulating the antagonisms between state and subject. This paper applies Jürgen Habermas’s theory of New Social Movements (NSMs) to theorize (...) anti-restriction movements as reactions to bureaucratic and economic regulation in cultural and private life. Habermas’s original theory assigned NSMs a radical potential in reinvigorating public political discourse and democratic processes which remains to be seen today. By contrasting the discourses of anti-restriction movements in Indigenous communities in Chiapas, Mexico and suburban communities in Orange County, California, this paper describes how profit-driven market algorithms steer social movements away from their radical potential towards sensationalism and misinformation. Not only do social media platforms “colonize” communication on the national level, but western countries’ control of social media platforms “digitally colonizes” peripheral countries by redirecting subaltern social movements with the hybridized discourses of imperial nations. (shrink)

Throughout the 20th century, market capitalism was defended on parallel grounds. First, it promotes freedom by enabling individuals to exploit their own property and labor-power; second, it facilitates an efficient allocation and use of resources. Recently, however, both defenses have begun to unravel—as capitalism has moved into its “platform” phase. Today, the pursuit of allocative efficiency, bolstered by pervasive data surveillance, often undermines individual freedom rather than promoting it. And more fundamentally, the very idea that markets are (...) necessary to achieve allocative efficiency has come under strain. Even supposing, for argument’s sake, that the claim was true in the early 20th century when von Mises and Hayek pioneered it, advances in computing have rekindled the old “socialist calculation” debate. And this time around, markets—as information technology—are unlikely to have the upper hand. -/- All of this, we argue, raises an important set of governance questions regarding the political economy of the future. We focus on two: How much should our economic system prioritize freedom, and to what extent should it rely on markets? The arc of platform capitalism bends, increasingly, toward a system that neither prioritizes freedom nor relies on markets. And the dominant critical response, exemplified by Shoshana Zuboff’s work, has been to call for a restoration of market capitalism. Longer term, however, we believe it would be more productive to think about how “postmarket” economic arrangements might promote freedom—or better yet, autonomy—even more effectively than markets, and to determine the practical steps necessary to realize that possibility. (shrink)

The book titled The Collaborative Economy in Action: European Perspectives is one of the important outcomes of the COST Action CA16121, From Sharing to Caring: Examining the Socio-Technical Aspects of the Collaborative Economy that was active between March 2017 and September 2021. The Action was funded by the European Cooperation in Science and Technology - COST. The main objective of the COST Action Sharing and Caring is the development of a European network of researchers and practitioners interested in investigating the (...) collaborative economy models, platforms, and their socio-technological implications. The network involves scholars, practitioners, communities, and policymakers. The COST Action Sharing and Caring helped to connect research initiatives across Europe and enabled scientists to develop their ideas by collaborating with peers. This collaboration opportunity represented a boost for the participants’ research, careers, and innovation potential. The main aim of this book is to provide a comprehensive overview of the collaborative economy in European countries with a variety of its aspects for a deeper understanding of the phenomenon as a whole. For this reason, in July 2017, an open call for country reports was distributed among the members of the COST Action Sharing and Caring. Representatives of the member countries were invited to produce short country reports covering: definition of the CE; types and models of the CE; key stakeholders involved; as well as legislation and technological tools relevant for the CE. Submitted reports varied in length and regarding the level of detail included, in accordance with how much information was available in each respective country at the time of writing. Editors of the book have compiled these early reports into a summary report, which was intended as a first step in mapping the state of the CE in Europe. The Member Countries Report on the Collaborative Economy, edited by Gaia Mosconi, Agnieszka Lukasiewicz, and Gabriela Avram that was published on the Sharing and Caring website, represented its first synergetic outcome and provided an overview of the CE phenomenon as interpreted and manifested in each of the countries part of the network. Additionally, Sergio Nassare-Aznar, Kosjenka Dumančić, and Giulia Priora compiled a Preliminary Legal Analysis of Country Reports on Cases of Collaborative Economy. In 2018, after undertaking an analysis of the previous reports’ strengths and weaknesses, the book editors issued a call for an updated version of these country reports. Prof. Ann Light advised the editorial team, proposing a new format for country reports and 4000 words limit. The template included: Introduction, Definition, Key Questions, Examples, Illustration, Context, Developments, Issues, Other Major Players, and Relevant Literature. The new template was approved by the Management Committee in October 2018. The task force that had supported the production of the first series of country reports acted as mentors for the team of authors in each country. The final reports arrived at the end of 2018, bringing the total number of submissions to 30. A call for book editors was issued, and a new editorial team was formed by volunteers from the participants of the COST Action: Andrzej Klimczuk, Vida Česnuityte, Cristina Miguel, Santa Mijalche, Gabriela Avram, Bori Simonovits, Bálint Balázs, Kostas Stefanidis, and Rafael Laurenti. The editorial team organized the double-blind reviews of reports and communicated to the authors the requirements for improving their texts. After reviews, the authors submitted updated versions of their country reports providing up-to-date interdisciplinary analysis on the state of the CE in 2019, when the reports were collected. During the final phase, the chapters were again reviewed by the lead editors together with all editorial team members. At the time, the intention was to update these reports again just before the end of the COST Action Sharing and Caring in 2021 and to produce a third edition. However, the COVID-19 pandemic changed these plans. Thus, this final volume was created by 82 scholars-editors and contributors-and consists of reports on 27 countries participating in the COST Action. M4 - Citavi. (shrink)

I develop a socialist republican conception of economic liberty and show how it can be used to understand the domination of workers. It holds that both paid and unpaid workers can be deprived of economic freedom when they are exposed to an arbitrary power to undermine their access to the economic capabilities needed for civic equality. Measures intended to reduce domination are recommended, including public ownership of productive property, workplace democracy, and robust unconditional basic income and services. Finally, I discuss (...) the implications of this approach for platform capitalism, digital surveillance, the rise of automation, and post-work politics. (shrink)

The term collaborative economy itself is relatively new, and according to the European Commission, the term is used interchangeably with the term sharing economy. The term SE was frequently used when early models, such as Airbnb or ZipCar, appeared and gained popularity, especially in the United States, but it was afterwards substituted with the term CE in the European contexts. The country reports in this collection often use the two terms interchangeably, further illustrating the fact that a generally agreed definition (...) is still missing. However, the ambition driving the term CE is to create specific European economic models with greater emphasis on the community’s involvement. In Europe, it is still the case that the definition of the CE and SE remains fuzzy, including both non-profit and for-profit models, supported by both monetary and non-monetary exchanges among participants. The phenomenon is complex, covering various fields of activity, as well as operating at various levels, ranging from the international to the national, regional, and local. Some definitions focus mostly on sustainability, while others highlight technological and financial aspects and business models specific to the phenomenon. This chapter is organized as follows. First, a short overview of the basic theoretical approaches to CE is presented. Further, the structure of the book is discussed in detail, and the text closes with a summary. M4 - Citavi. (shrink)

In this article, I intend to propose an ethical model for digital solidarity. On the one hand, it emphasises the importance of adopting a solidarity model to escape the logic of surveillance capitalism and the race for profits typical of the digital giants’ business model. On the other, it is intended to point out that a model of solidarity embodied in the digital network may instead offer a more universalistic alternative to the types of solidarity that have often imposed (...) themselves in our contemporary political landscape, namely solidarity limited to groups in opposition to others. In order to show what economic and political characteristics this model should respect, two case studies will be examined, namely Wikipedia and Occupy Wall Street. (shrink)

This paper elaborates on a theory of the ideological public sphere in the age of digital media. It describes the public sphere as an initially ascending and then descending communication process that includes both polarising and integrating publics, which are organised by antagonistic media and compromise-building mass media. This framework allows us to distinguish between hegemonic, populist, and popular-oriented flows of communication, as well as register changes in the interplay of different publics driven by digital media platforms. Digital transformations of (...) the public sphere give rise to antagonistic and networked-individualistic flows of populist communication that put public hegemony under constant pressure. The challenge is to find ways to strengthen popular communications that enable democratic learning processes and the flourishing of communicative competences of all citizens. (shrink)

This article analyzes how the cooperative principles and values of the social economy are the most pertinent to enhance a relational intelligence that overcomes the potential adverse effects for people and territories of the delegation of human relations in an artificial intelligence built on capitalist values. The analysis is based on the case study of the French cooperative digital platform Les Oiseaux de Passage, which supports different European heritage communities in enhancing their cultural heritage through activities linked to the (...) tourism sector. In this case, the technology operates as a de-intermediary, de-automated and de-standardizer, providing greater transparency and equity to the set of relationships that are established and contributing to the development of more horizontal relationships and economic democracy among partners and with visitors. (shrink)

This paper describes the relationship between technics and desire in light of Bernard Stiegler’s new critique of political economy. The starting point for the analysis is Stiegler’s critique of the reinterpretation of Freud’s legacy by Herbert Marcuse in Eros and Civilization. The context of the analysis is the ongoing mutation of consumer capitalism into computational capitalism—one in which automated calculation systems are used to control all forms of mental and affective human activity. Digital automatization, I argue, encourages a (...) different view of what Marcuse called “the automatization of the superego.” It also requires us to rethink to what extent desire is conditioned techno-logically beyond the limits of Marcuse’s critique of Freud, capitalism and technology. The article pays special attention to Stiegler’s reinterpretation of the theory of sublimation in relation to contemporary capitalism and its technological infrastructure (from television to digital platforms). It is also an attempt to include the question concerning technology in psychoanalytic thinking. (shrink)

With the cascading effects of multiple ongoing health and economic crises, conditions are ripe for the emergence of a global progressive social project capable of moving us beyond business-as-usual and eradicating the fundamental causes of misery: namely, a global Green New Deal. But simply creating new "green jobs" within the current capitalist system is not nearly enough. If we are to take on climate change, it is imperative that we first of all engage in "system change," a process rooted in (...) socialism. Shifting beyond the American notion of the Green New Deal and adding vital internationalist dimension, A Left Green New Deal provides just such a blueprint for this worldwide undertaking. Written by Bernd Riexinger and his team in the German DIE LINKE [the left] Party, A Left Green New Deal unveils the powerful opponents of a genuine, left-wing Green New Deal-corporations, the wealthy, the ultra-rich and their political allies. But it also discloses the creation of a potent new counterforce, embodied in a left-wing mobilization strategy developed by DIE LINKE. This organizing model is based in "connective party politics"- transformative organizing practices that reach across class lines within and beyond the party. This essential book provides both a Left Green New Deal platform and the inspiration necessary to lay a path towards an alternate future. (shrink)

In a world of increasing right-wing populism, global capitalism, and a climate emergency, leading thinkers come together to interrogate the meaning and practice of being outspoken. The violence, nativism, persecution, and social hostilities of the twenty-first century demand a call to order: philosophical and theoretical communities must commit their intellectual resources to confronting and articulating the structures, desires, and resentment driving the dismantling of democratic values. Action in the absence of understanding and political vision devoid of inclusive ideas are (...) all the more vulnerable to taking a reactionary turn. Contributors to this volume challenge the return of fascism, dehumanization of immigrants, distrust of science, intolerance of fair and equitable economic models, and suspicion of inclusive political platforms. All, in their own way, tackle the burning question of how we might reimagine twenty-first-century life in the face of divisive forces. Outspoken includes essays by some of the world’s most radical thinkers – Rosi Braidotti, Henry A. Giroux, Amelia Jones, and Slavoj Žižek, among others – who together chart multiple progressive courses for political antagonism and social intervention. (shrink)

While driving, one night, Chris got distracted by a notification on his phone and provoked the car accident that killed his fiancé. Smithereens is centered on the idea that digital devices are constantly calling for our attention and that their design makes their use addictive. This happens because big internet companies are earning a fortune through a new economic model based precisely on the managing of attention and the extraction of behavioral data. This chapter looks at the reasons and strategies (...) behind the monetization of attention and considers the dynamics through which a pathological use of online platforms and digital devices is forced on the user. (shrink)

This book examines the complexities of the hipster through the lens of art history and cultural theory, from Charles Baudelaire's flan̂eur to the contemporary 'creative' borne from creative industries policies. It claims that the recent ubiquity of hipster culture has led many artists to confront their own significance, responding to the mass artification of contemporary life by de-emphasising the formal and textual deconstructions so central to the legacies of modern and postmodern art. In the era of creative digital technologies, long (...) held characteristics of art such as individual expression, innovation, and alternative lifestyle are now features of a flooded and fast-paced global marketplace. Against the idea that artists, like hipsters, are the 'foot soldiers of capitalism', the institutionalized networks that make up the contemporary art world are working to portray a view of art that is less a discerning exercise in innovative form-making than a social platform--a forum for populist aesthetic pleasures or socio-political causes. It is in this sense that the concept of the hipster is caught up in age-old debates about the relation between ethics and aesthetics, examined here in terms of the dynamics of global contemporary art."--Publisher's website. (shrink)

This article asks how the application of digital technologies is changing the organization of the agri-food system in the context of the third food regime. The academic debate on digitalization and food largely focuses on the input and farm level. Yet, based on the analysis of 280 digital services and products, we show that digital technologies are now being used along the entire food commodity chain. We argue that digital technologies in the third food regime serve on the one hand (...) as a continuation of established information and communication technologies, thus deepening certain features of the existing food regime such as the retail sector’s control over global commodity chains. On the other hand, digital technologies also introduce new forms of control and value extraction based on the use of data and pave the way for large tech companies to take over market shares in the agri-food sector. Finally, we find that multinational agri-food companies are starting to take on the business models of leading digital tech companies, for instance by developing digital platforms throughout the agri-food system. We argue that this shows that the broader economic restructuring of neoliberal capitalism towards digital capitalism is also making its way into the agri-food system. (shrink)

Are we paying enough attention? At least since the nineteenth century, critics have alleged a widespread and profound failure of attentiveness—to others, to ourselves, to the world around us, to what is truly worthy of focus. Why is there such great anxiety over attention? What is at stake in understanding attention and the challenges it faces? This book investigates attention from a range of disciplinary perspectives, including philosophy, history, anthropology, art history, and comparative literature. Each chapter begins with a concrete (...) scene whose protagonists are trying—and often failing—to attend. Authors examine key moments in the history of the study of attention; pose attention as a philosophical problem; explore the links between attention, culture, and technology; and consider the significance of attention for conceptualizations of human subjectivity. Readers encounter nineteenth-century experiments in boredom, ornithologists conveying sound through field notations, wearable attention-enhancing prosthetics, students using online learning platforms, and inquiries into attention as a cognitive state and moral virtue. Amid mounting concern about digital mediation of experience, the rise of “surveillance capitalism,” and the commodification of attention, Scenes of Attention deepens the thinking that is needed to protect the freedom of attention and the forms of life that make it possible. (shrink)

We bring together recent discussions on data capitalism and biocapitalization by studying value flows in consumer genomics firms—an industry at the intersection between health care and technology realms. Consumer genomics companies market genomic testing services to consumers as a source of fun, altruism, belonging and knowledge. But by maintaining a multisided or platform business model, these firms also engage in digital capitalism, creating financial profit from data brokerage. This is a precarious balance to strike: If these companies’ (...) business models consist of assetizing the pool of genomic data that they assemble, then part of their work has to revolve around obscuring to consumers any uncertainties that would potentially impinge on these processes of assemblage. We reflect on the nature of these practices and the market relationships that enable them, and we relate this reflection to debates around alternative market arrangements that would potentially mitigate the extractive tendencies of these and other digital health firms. (shrink)

This paper presents a feminist analysis of corporate social responsibility in a male-dominated industry within a developing country context. It seeks to raise awareness of the silencing of women’s voices in CSR reports produced by mining companies in Tanzania. Tanzania is one of the poorest countries in Africa, and women are often marginalised in employment and social policy considerations. Drawing on work by Hélène Cixous, a post-structuralist/radical feminist scholar, the paper challenges the masculinity of CSR discourses that have repeatedly masked (...) the voices and concerns of ‘other’ marginalised social groups, notably women. Using interpretative ethnographic case studies, the paper provides much-needed empirical evidence to show how gender imbalances remain prevalent in the Tanzanian mining sector. This evidence draws attention to the dynamics faced by many women working in or living around mining areas in Tanzania. The paper argues that CSR, a discourse enmeshed with the patriarchal logic of the contemporary capitalist system, is entangled with tensions, class conflicts and struggles which need to be unpacked and acknowledged. The paper considers the possibility of policy reforms in order to promote gender balance in the Tanzanian mining sector and create a platform for women’s concerns to be voiced. (shrink)

Much has been written about data politics in the last decade, which has generated myriad concepts such as ‘surveillance capitalism’, ‘gig economy’, ‘quantified self’, ‘algorithmic governmentality’, ‘data colonialism’, ‘data subjects’ and ‘digital citizens’. Yet, it has been difficult to plot these concepts into an historical series to discern specific continuities and discontinuities since the origins of modern power in its three major forms: sovereign, disciplinary and regulatory. This article argues that the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 brought these three forms (...) of power into sharp relief but made particularly visible a fourth form of power that we name ‘sensory power’, which has been emerging since the 1980s. The article draws on early studies of power by Michel Foucault, subsequent studies on biopower and biopolitics that expanded on them, and studies in the past decade that focused on data produced from apps, devices and platforms. Yet, despite its ambition, the article is inevitably an outline of a much larger project. (shrink)

This review seeks to present a comprehensive picture of recent discussions in the social sciences of the anticipated impact of AI on the world of work. Issues covered include: technological unemployment, algorithmic management, platform work and the politics of AI work. The review identifies the major disciplinary and methodological perspectives on AI’s impact on work, and the obstacles they face in making predictions. Two parameters influencing the development and deployment of AI in the economy are highlighted: the capitalist imperative (...) and nationalistic pressures. (shrink)

During the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, open science has become central to experimental, public health, and clinical responses across the globe. Open science is described as an open commons, in which a right to science renders all possible scientific data for everyone to access and use. In this common space, capitalist platforms now provide many essential services and are taking the lead in public health activities. These neoliberal businesses, however, have a problematic role in the capture of public goods. This paper (...) argues that the open commons is a community of rights, consisting of people and institutions whose interests mutually support the public good. If OS is a cornerstone of public health, then reaffirming the public good is its overriding purpose, and unethical platforms ought to be excluded from the commons and its benefits. (shrink)

PurposeThere are a lot of discussions about privacy in relation to contemporary communication systems (such as Facebook and other “social media” platforms), but discussions about privacy on the internet in most cases misses a profound understanding of the notion of privacy and where this notion is coming from. The purpose of this paper is to challenge the liberal notion of privacy and explore foundations of an alternative privacy conception.Design/methodology/approachA typology of privacy definitions is elaborated based on Giddens' theory of structuration. (...) The concept of privacy fetishism that is based on critical political economy is introduced. Limits of the liberal concept of privacy are discussed. This discussion is connected to the theories of Marx, Arendt and Habermas. Some foundations of an alternative privacy concept are outlined.FindingsThe notion of privacy fetishism is introduced for criticizing naturalistic accounts of privacy. Marx and Engels have advanced four elements of the critique of the liberal privacy concept that were partly taken up by Arendt and Habermas: privacy as atomism that advances; possessive individualism that harms the public good; legitimizes and reproduces the capitalist class structure; and capitalist patriarchy.Research limitations/implicationsGiven the criticisms advanced in this paper, the need for an alternative, socialist privacy concept is ascertained and it is argued that privacy rights should be differentiated according to the position individuals occupy in the power structure, so that surveillance makes transparent wealth and income gaps and company's profits and privacy protects workers and consumers from capitalist domination.Originality/valueThe paper contributes to the establishment of a concept of privacy that is grounded in critical political economy. Owing to the liberal bias of the privacy concept, the theorization of privacy has thus far been largely ignored in critical political economy. The paper contributes to illuminating this blind spot. (shrink)

Today, the US pursues the global capture of data (understood as a significant engine of growth) by way of bi- and plurilateral trade agreements. However, the project of securing the global free flow of data has been pursued ever since the dawn of digital telecommunication in the 1960s and the US has made significant legal efforts to institutionalise it. These efforts have two phases: In the first 1970s and 80s “freedom of information” phase, the legal justification (and contestation) of the (...) global free flow of data hinged on imagining data as information, and its exchange as a practice of liberty. The second phase began in the late 1990s and continues today. In this phase, the free flow of data is aligned with a free-trade agenda in the context of first e-commerce and, starting in the 2000s, through attempts at creating a global public domain of personal data for the platform economy. The global free flow of data is an intrinsic aspect of informational capitalism. Assuming a constitutive, but not commanding role for law in informational capitalism, we conclude that the US attempt at ensuring free flow for its informational corporations is neither an entirely contingent nor a necessary outcome. It is a product of legal imagination. (shrink)

This article argues that the algorithms known as neural nets underlie a new form of artificial intelligence that we call indexical AI. Contrasting with the once dominant symbolic AI, large-scale learning systems have become a semiotic infrastructure underlying global capitalism. Their achievements are based on a digital version of the sign-function index, which points rather than describes. As these algorithms spread to parse the increasingly heavy data volumes on platforms, it becomes harder to remain skeptical of their results. We (...) call social faith in these systems the naive iconic interpretation of AI and position their indexical function between heuristic symbol use and real intelligence, opening the black box to reveal semiotic function. (shrink)

This study argues for three main theses: (1) Immanuel Kant’s ethics is a social ethics; (2) the basic premises of his social ethics point to a socialist ethics; and (3) this socialist ethics constitutes a suitable platform for criticizing and improving Karl Marx’s view of morality. -/- Some crucial aspects of Kant’s social ethics are that we must promote the “realm of ends” as a moral society of co-legislators who assist each other in the pursuit of their individual ends, (...) which requires in turn that we seek the realization of the republican state and peace between the nations. Thus, hope for progress, as supported by the enthusiasm engendered among the spectators of the French Revolution, becomes pivotal to Kant’s ethics as well as other moral feelings such as moral indignation and solidarity with the victims of oppression. -/- Kant views the moral society in the final instance as an “inner” unification of good wills. In a decisive elaboration of Kant, the neo-Kantian Hermann Cohen argues that all our social institutions, and notably economic enterprises, must instantiate the “realm of ends,” leading him to support cooperative socialism in Wilhelmine Germany. In his own words, Kant “is the true and real originator of German socialism” (1896). -/- There are important evaluative similarities between Kantian socialist ethics and Marx, such as a condemnation of capitalism as a system of servitude and an understanding of the ideal society as a cooperative society, but only Marx contends that the ideal society does not set a moral task and that there is a dialectic operative in human history that inevitably leads to communist society. This dogmatic Hegelian understanding of history must be replaced by Kantian regulative understanding of progress in support of revolutionary praxis as moral praxis. -/- We need a “Kantianization” of Marx, as Cohen and other neo-Kantian socialists also proclaimed in the three decades leading up to World War I. This study concludes with “A Historical Note on Kantian Ethical Socialism,” addressing, among others, Cohen, Karl Vorländer, Eduard Bernstein, and Kurt Eisner and the Munich Revolution of 1918. Their voices were largely silenced by the rise of fascism, and this study hopes to show that their voices still need to be heard. -/- Awarded the 1985 Johnsonian Prize in Philosophy. (shrink)