[Commlist] CfP: ISA2023 International Political Economy of Digital Platforms

Call for abstracts

*International Political Economy of Digital Platforms*

ISA world congress of sociology, June 25-July 01, 2023, Melbourne, Australia

Session ID: 18053

Research Committee:

RC02 Economy and Society (host committee)
Joint Session with RC23 Sociology of Science and Technology

Organiser

June WANG (City University of Hong Kong),

Julia TOMASSETTI (Swinburne Law School)

*Session Description:*

We aim to assemble interrogations of the variegated and actual 
experimentations of digital authoritarianism through the international 
political economy of digital platforms. Two currents of research are of 
particular interest.

First, we are interested in the international political economy of 
platforms, meaning how platform companies transcend sectoral and 
territorial boundaries to gain, exercise and justify their power. We 
will examine the tension between the state’s territorial sovereignty 
and‘functional sovereignty’that platforms advocate and claim based on 
infrastructural power. Through opaque decision-making on matters such as 
algorithms, gatekeepers such as search engines and social 
networks shape the realities of billions by governing information flows. 
If code is law, its makers, digital platform and firms are powerful 
sovereigns in their respective fields (Pasquale, 2018). They not only 
assume the role of government and courthouse to run dispute resolution 
schemes to settle conflicts between buyers and sellers (Rory van Loo, 
2020) but also intervene in law or regulation-making (Pinto et al., 
2019). As digital firms move to displace more government roles over 
time, the logic of territorial sovereignty is replaced with functional 
sovereignty.

Second, we are interested in the organisation, experience, meaning and 
mobility of platform labour. Platforms become the intermediary agents 
that give rise to a revised, flexible employment regime, linking 
different types of precarious workers, such as content producers without 
formal jobs and idle labour in the supply chain. In addition, new 
business practices, combined with “labour-saving technologies” in 
logistic platforms such as delivery platforms, have triggered the 
flexibilisation of transportation and distribution workers (Danyluck 
2018). Cheap labour forces are re-created, and workers' unions 
and regulations are weakened through outsourcing and subcontracting 
systems facilitated by the platform companies (Bonacich and Wilson 
2008). This perspective also highlights the role of the state in the 
process of internationalising capitals as local labour systems are 
mutually constructed through the infrastructural project of platforms.

Together, this session will illuminate how the platform economy is 
materially and ideologically reshaping essential Fordist distinctions 
between hierarchies and networks, markets, state and society, formal and 
informal work, and value creation and extraction.

Interested contributors, please send your abstracts (300 words) to June 
Wang ((june.wang /at/ cityu.edu.hk) <mailto:(june.wang /at/ cityu.edu.hk)>) on/before 
15 Aug 2022. We will send back the final result on 20 Aug 2022. Here are 
things that need your attention:

 1. abstract must be submitted to the session (our session ID: 18053)
    via the Confex Online Abstract Submission System:

https://isaconf.confex.com/isaconf/wc2023/cfp.cgi 
<https://isaconf.confex.com/isaconf/wc2023/cfp.cgi>

 2. please note the deadline for abstract submission is 30 Sept 2022 at
    24:00 GMT. The deadline is quite strict.
 3. You can find more logistical details here

<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.isa-sociology.org/en/conferences/world-congress/melbourne-2023/deadlines-2023__;!!KjDnqvtInNPT!k8-9BbAxb-5EFw7i5KRNtdahdfZZ8R5NnTZxVrogWucCSbfv5futWzmycvAPC0hwS6XIR8vQOeW3vgzQHo7hdjY$>:


https://www.isa-sociology.org/en/conferences/world-congress/melbourne-2023/deadlines-2023 
<https://www.isa-sociology.org/en/conferences/world-congress/melbourne-2023/deadlines-2023>

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