We reccomend you to read and download for free this interesting book edited by Sandro Mezzadra, Niccolò Cuppini, Mattia Frapporti and Maurilio Pirone on the impact of platform capitalism into urban spaces. The book is the final publication of the Horizon 2020 project PLUS. below you find the presentatio and the index of the volume.
This open access book provides an overview of urban digital platforms such as Airbnb and Deliveroo, which, along with Amazon, Google, Facebook, and other IT companies, constitute by now the infrastructures for other businesses to operate on and for our social life to go on. These platforms serve as standards-based techno-economic systems that simultaneously capture cooperation through remote coordination and organize labor via algorithm management.
Based on a three-years research project, this contributed book outlines a general theory of platform capitalism that conceives these platforms not only as technical devices, but as generative engines that operate at the interface of several aspects, such as digitalization of forms of social cooperation; algorithm-based management of labor and participation; and private and vertical appropriation of profits. These elements are somehow iconic of the capitalist evolution of the last decades, and they open up a reflection on new forms of “primitive accumulation” (in particular regarding data), on the mechanisms used to capture and extract social surplus value, and on the logistic-financial dimensions of capital. Finally, in light of the transformations associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, the authors examine how platforms can evolve into hegemonic organizational structures.
Assuming we are all already living in the age of the platform, this book takes a multifaceted approach—combining sociology with urban studies, and political sciences with economics—to grasp the challenges our societies face in terms of ensuring fair economic growth, adequate social protections, and labor rights. It will appeal to anyone interested in digital platforms and how they are changing the organization of labor, urban spaces, and forms of governance.
Part I: Theoretical Foundations
1. Introduction. The Platform Age
Sandro Mezzadra, Niccolò Cuppini, Maurilio Pirone, Mattia Frapporti
2. Operations of Platforms. A Global Process in a Multipolar World
Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson
3. The process of valorization in the platform capitalism
Andrea Fumagalli
4. Out of the Standard. Towards a Global Approach to Platform Labour
Maurilio Pirone
5. What Urban Future: Do High-Tech Metropolises Dream of Electric Sheep?
Niccolò Cuppini
6. The Politics of Platforms. Exploring Platform’s Infrastructural Role and Power
Mattia Frapporti
7. Managing the Will: Managerial Normativity from the Wage Society to the Platform Age
Massimilano Nicoli, Luca Paltrinieri
8. Digital labour, informal unionism and the rise of a new workers subjectivity
Marco Marrone and Federico Chicchi
9. Platform capitalism: Infrastructuring migration, mobility, and racism
Stefania Animento
10. Affect, precarity and feminised labour in Airbnb in London
Eleni Kambouri
Part II: Notes from the Field
1. Why the sectoral context matters for platform work
Bettina Haidinger, Bernhard Saupe, Philip Schörpf
2. A Variegated Platform Capitalism? Algorithms, Labour Process and Institutions in Deliveroo in Bologna and Uber in Lisbon
Marco Marrone and Giorgio Pirina
3. Perceiving platform work as decent work? Views regarding working conditions among platform taxi drivers in Tallinn
Marge Unt, Kairit Kall, Triin Roosalu, Liis Ojamäe
4. Skills development as a political process: Towards new forms of mobilization and digital citizenship among platform workers
Filippo Bignami, Maël Dif-Pradalier, Julie Tiberghien
5. How to build alternatives to platform capitalism?
Mayo Fuster Morell, Ricard Espelt, Melissa Renau Cano
6. Labour policies for a fairer gig economy
Annamaria Donini, Beatrice Dassori
7. Engaging stakeholders with platform labour: The social lab approach
Raúl Tabarés, Tatiana Bartolomé, Jorge García
8. Local best practices. Urban governance and the ongoing platformization process
Michelangelo Secchi, Franco Tomassoni, Giovanni Allegretti
9. Social protection, basic income and taxation in the Digital economy
Cristina Morini, Sandro Gobetti, Rachele Serino, Andrea Fumagalli
10. Latent conflict, invisible organisation: Everyday struggles in platform labour
Moritz Altenreid and Valentin Neibler
