LEVIATHAN(S) 4.0: THE POLITICAL POWER OF PLATFORMS AND OPTIONS FOR LIBERATION

Abstract

Expanding the growing collaboration between platform studies and infrastructure studies, we argue that platforms shape behaviours into a form of algorithmic governmentality through data accumulation. However, we present how the development of digitisation also raises social forces to overturn the power of platforms.Counter-behaviours, counter-power, exit or democratisation are four paths that are increasingly widespread within society to appropriate or oppose digital governmentality.

Keywords

infrastructures

platform labour

algorithmic management

data

References

Allen, W.B. (1997). The Logistics Revolution and Transportation. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 553(1), 106-116. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002716297553001010

Aloisi, A. & De Stefano, V. (2022). Your Boss Is an Algorithm: Artificial Intelligence, Platform Work and Labour. Bloomsbury Publishing. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781509953219

Altenried, M. (2022). The Digital Facotry. The Human Labor of Automation. Chicago University Press. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226815503.001.0001

Angelo, H. & Wachsmuth, D. (2015). Urbanizing urban political ecology: a critique of methodological citycism. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 39(1), 16-27. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.12105

Batalla, O. (2023). Me reporto en línea: socio-digital network and insecurity in the work of transport platforms in Puebla, Mexico. Vitam. Revista de investigación en humanidades,7(1). https://revistavitam.mx/index.php/vitam/article/view/50

Benoit, F. & Celnik, N. (2022). Techno-luttes: Enquête sur ceux qui résistent à la technologie.euil.

Benvegnù, C., Cuppini, N., Frapporti, M., Milesi, F., & Pirone, M. (2020). Platform Battlefield: Digital Infrastructures in Capitalism 4.0. The South Atlantic Quarterly,120(4). https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-9443252

Bessa, I., Joyce, S., Stuart, D. M., Trappmann, V. & Umney, C. (2022). A global analysis of worker protest in digital labour platforms (Working Paper no. 70). International

Labor Organization. https://doi.org/10.54394/CTNG4947

Bonacich, E. & Wilson, J. (2008). Getting the Goods: Ports, Labor, and the Logistics Revolution. Cornell University Press.

Bratton, B. (2015). The Stack.: On Software and Sovereignty. MIT Press. https://doi. org/10.7551/mitpress/9780262029575.001.0001

Brenner, N. (2018), Debating planetary urbanization: For an engaged pluralism. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 36(3). https://doi.org/10.1177/0263775818757510

Brenner, N. (2024). New State Spaces: Urban Governance and the Rescaling of Statehood. Oxford University Press.

Chignola, S. (2022). Foucault oltre Foucault: Una politica della filosofia. Deriveapprodi.

Cowen, D. (2014). The deadly life of logistics. Minnesota University Press. https://doi. org/10.5749/minnesota/9780816680870.001.0001

Cuppini, N., Frapporti, M. & Pirone, M. (2023). Circulating through the Pipeline. Algorithmic Subjectivities and Mobile Struggles. Partecipazione e conflitto, 16(2). https:// doi.org/10.1285/i20356609v16i2p287

Cuppini, N., Frapporti, M., & Pirone, M. (2022). Platforms in Time of Pandemic. In E. Risi, E. Armano & M. Briziarelli, Digital Platforms and Algorithmic Subjectivities (pp.63-74). University of Westminster Press. https://doi.org/10.16997/book54.e

Delfanti, A. (2021a). The Warehouse: Workers and Robots at Amazon. Pluto Press.https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv2114fnm

Delfanti, A. (2021b). Humanly Extended Automation or the Future of Work Seen through Amazon Patents. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 46(3), 655-682.https://doi.org/10.1177/0162243920943665

Dyer-Whiteford, N. (2013). Red Plenty Platform. Culture Machine, 14, 1-27.

Frapporti, M. (2024), Governo materiale. Il potere politico delle infrastrutture. Meltemi.

Gherardi, R. & Ricciardi, M. (2009). Lo Stato Globale. CLUEB.

Gilbertson, J. & Salzberg, A. (2017, January 9). Introducing Uber Movement. Uber Newsroom. https://www.uber.com/newsroom/introducing-uber-movement-2/Gorwa,R. (2019). “What is Platform Governance?”, Information, Communication & Society,

-871. https://doi:10.1080/1369118X.2019.1573914.

Grohmann, R. et al. (2022). “Platform scams: Brazilian workers’ experiences of dishonest and uncertain algorithmic management”, New Media & Society, Vol. 24(7), 1611-1631. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448221099225

Hanaway, M. (2021, November 11). Infiltrating Amazon: What I learned going undercover at the corporate giant. Breach Media. https://breachmedia.ca/infiltrating-amazon-what-i-learned-going-undercover-at-the-corporate-giant/

Haraway, D. (2016). Manifestly Haraway. University of Minnesota Press.Hardt, M. & Negri, T. (2001). Empire. Harvard University Press. https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674038325

Huws, U. (2014). Labour in the Global Digital Economy: The Cybertariat Comes of Age. Monthly Review Press.

Huws, U., Spencer, N.H. & Coates, M. (2019). The Platformisation of work in Europe.

Foundation for European Progressive Studies. Into the Black Box (ed). (2024). Futuro presente. I dominio del mondo secondo Amazon.

Red Star Press.

Larkin, B. (2013). The Politics and Poetics of Infrastructure. Annual Review of Anthropology, 42, 327-343. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev anthro-092412-155522

Leonardi, D., Murgia, A., Briziarelli, M. & Armano, E. (2019). The ambivalence of logistical connectivity: A co-research with Foodora Riders. Work Organisation, Labour & Globalisation, 13(1). https://doi.org/10.13169/workorgalaboglob.13.1.0155

Maier, C. (2014). Leviathan 2.0: Inventing Modern Statehood. Belknap Press.

Mann, M. (1984). “The autonomous power of the state: its origins, mechanisms and results”. European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie, 25(2),185-213. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003975600004239

Marrone, M. (2021). Rights Agains the Machines! Il lavoro digitale e le lotte dei rider.Mimesis.

Marx, K. (2004). The Capital, Vol. 1. Penguin Classics.

Mezzadra, S. & Neilson, B. (2019). The Politics of Operation. Excavating Contemporary

Capitalism. Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478003267

Mezzadra, S. et al. (ed) (2024). Capitalism in the Platform Age. Emerging Assemblages of Labour and Welfare in Urban Spaces. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-49147-4

Muldoon, J. (2022). Platform Socialism. How to Reclaim our Digital Future from Big Tech. Pluto Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv272454p

Peterlongo, G. (2022) L'infrastruttura barocca del lavoro di piattaforma: Un'etnografia

multi-situata [Dissertation thesis]. Università di Bologna. https://amsdottorato.unibo.it/10286/

Pirina, G. & Tomassoni, F. (2019). Portugal: um laboratório para a Uber. Le Monde Diplomatique. https://pt.mondediplo.com/2019/11/portugal-um-laboratorio-para-a-uber.html

Pirone, M. (Ed.) (2023). Ultimo miglio. Fondazione Feltrinelli.

Plantin, J. C., Lagoze, C., Edwards, P. N. & Sandvig, C. (2018). Infrastructure studies meet platform studies in the age of Google and Facebook. New Media & Society, 20(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444816661553

Qiu, W. (2019, January 21). AWS Acquires a Fiber Pair on MAREA Cable System on IRU Basis. Submarine Networks. https://www.submarinenetworks.com/en/systems/trans-atlantic/marea/aws-acquires-one-fiber-pair-on-marea-cable-system-on-iru-basis

Sassen, S. (2006). Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages. Princeton University Press.

Stater, M. (2018, May 10). Cincinnati Mobility Lab taps Uber data to improve local transit. Statescope. https://statescoop.com/cincinnati-mobility-lab-taps-uber-data- to-improve-local-transit/

Srnicek, N. (2016). Platform Capitalism. Polity Press.

Srnicek, N., Williams, A. (2015). Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work. Verso Books.

Van Dijck, J., Poell, T., De Waal, M. (2018). The Platform Society: Public Values in a Connective World. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190889760.001.0001

Winner, L. (1980). Do artifacts have politics?. Modern Technology: Problem or Opportunity?, 109(1), 121-136.

Woodcock, J. (2020). The Limits of Algorithmic Management: on Platforms, Data and Workers Struggle. The South Atlantic Quarterly, 120(4). https://doi. org/10.1215/00382876-9443266

Zuboff, S. (2019). The age of surveillance capitalism: the fight for a human future at the new frontier of power. Public Affairs.