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

Sun Jul 03 10:37:02 GMT 2022




Call for papers

*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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