Who is pulling the strings in the platform economy? Accounting for the dark and unexpected sides of algorithmic control

This paper aims to address the dark side perspective on digital control and surveillance by emphasizing the affective grip of ideological control, namely the process that silently ensures the subjugation of digital labour, and which keeps the ‘unexpectedness’ of algorithmic practices at bay: that is, the propensity of users to contest digital prescriptions. In particular, the theoretical contribution of this paper is to combine Labour Process with psychoanalytically-informed, post-structuralist theory, in order to connect to, and further our understanding of, how and why digital workers assent to, or oppose, the interpellations of algorithmic ideology at work. To illustrate the operation of affective control in the Platform Economy, the emblematic example of ride-hailing platforms, such as Uber, and their algorithmic management, is revisited. Thus, the empirical section describes the way drivers are glued to the algorithm (e.g. for one more fare, or for the next surge pricing) in a way that prevents them, although not always, from considering genuine resistance to management. Finally, the paper discusses the central place of ideological fantasy and cynical enjoyment in the Platform Economy, as well as the ethical implications of the study.

Generalizing game-changing species across microbial communities

Microbes form multispecies communities that play essential roles in our environment and health. Not surprisingly, there is an increasing need for understanding if certain invader species will modify a given microbial community, producing either a desired or undesired change in the observed collection of resident species. However, the complex interactions that species can establish between each other and the diverse external factors underlying their dynamics have made constructing such understanding context-specific. Here we integrate tractable theoretical systems with tractable experimental systems to find general conditions under which non-resident species can change the collection of resident communities—game-changing species. We show that non-resident colonizers are more likely to be game-changers than transients, whereas game-changers are more likely to suppress than to promote resident species. Importantly, we find general heuristic rules for game-changers under controlled environments by integrating mutual invasibility theory with in vitro experimental systems, and general heuristic rules under changing environments by integrating structuralist theory with in vivo experimental systems. Despite the strong context-dependency of microbial communities, our work shows that under an appropriate integration of tractable theoretical and experimental systems, it is possible to unveil regularities that can then be potentially extended to understand the behavior of complex natural communities.

Biosociality in Online Interactions: Youths’ Positioning of the Highly Sensitive Person Category

This article examines how young people in a Swedish online forum and in blogs engage in discussions of one popularized psychological personality trait, the highly sensitive person (HSP), and how they draw on different positionings in discursive struggles around this category. The material is analysed with concepts from discursive psychology and post-structuralist theory in order to investigate youths’ interactions. The first is a nuanced positioning, from which youths disclose the weaknesses and strengths of being highly sensitive. Some youths become deeply invested in this kind of positioning, hence forming a HSP subjectivity. This can be opposed using contrasting positionings, which objects to norms of biosociality connected to the HSP. Lastly, there are rather distanced and investigative approaches to the HSP category. We conclude that while young people are negotiating the HSP category, they are establishing an epistemological community.

EVALUATING ENTREPRENEURS’ MOTIVES FOR PARTICIPATING IN THE INFORMAL SECTOR IN EUROPE

Informal entrepreneurs have been viewed variously as reluctant participants in such endeavors doing so out of economic necessity because of their exclusion from formal work and welfare (structuralist theory), or as willing entrepreneurs who voluntarily exit the formal economy either as a rational economic decision (neo-liberal theory) or as social actors who do not agree with the formal rules and regulations of the state (neo-institutional theory). The aim of this paper is to evaluate these competing theorizations of entrepreneurs’ motives for participating in the informal sector. Reporting evidence from a 2019 Eurobarometer survey involving 27,565 face-to-face interviews in 28 European countries, the finding is that five percent are reluctant participants, twenty percent are willing participants doing so as a rational economic decision, 21 percent are willing participants doing so because of their disagreement with the rules and 54 percent do so for a mixture of these motives. A logistic regression analysis reveals who is more likely to engage in informal entrepreneurship and who is significantly more likely to do so for each motive. The theoretical and policy implications are then discussed.

Literature, Theory and Politics of the Long ’68: The Last Season of Modernism and Peripherality

As part of the Yugoslav in-between periphery, Ljubljana became a site of interaction between an antisystemic movement, literature and theory, the fields that in Paris were arguably only co-present during the long 1968. Following Franco Moretti and Perry Anderson’s notion of modernism as a cultural field of force experiencing the imaginative proximity of social revolution, the experimental literature of the 1960s may be viewed as the last season of modernism. This is when modernism in Slovenia synchronized with Paris, the metropole that Pascale Casanova has described as the Greenwich meridian of literary modernity. Peripheries in the literary world-system are, for Moretti, forced into a belated compromise between local perspectives and globalized forms emanating from metropoles. In this case, however, it is due to its peripherality that Slovenian literature was able to produce an innovative political interlacement of theory and literature (for example, the internationally acclaimed neo-avant-garde group OHO and the Ljubljana Lacanian circle). In the 1960s and 1970s, the Ljubljana student journal Tribuna published experimental literature, (post)structuralist theory and antisystemic political writings. The mere contiguity of these discourses evoked their interaction. Even stronger modes of interaction characterized their production and mediation, such as writer-theorists translating French theory or various hybrids of theory and literature. Slavoj Žižek’s early hybrid texts show the emergence of theory as a parasite of literature and philosophy. They deconstruct the (nationalist) author function. A scandal provoked by Žižek in 1967 foretells the split of the ‘68 avant-garde between the theoretical and literary faction in the 1970s.

The Iconomics of New Developmentalism

ABSTRACT Current reviews of new developmentalism from a Political Economy perspective present its novelty in terms of a paradigm shift, a comparative analysis and a historical-ideological reconstruction. This paper reviews these complementary approaches so as to initiate an alternative, critical review of the new developmentalist agenda taking into consideration the emergence of yet another post-structuralist theory, namely, “iconomics”. The grounding of the iconomic perspective is a semiotic-sociological method inspired by the works of G.L.S. Shackle, Bernard Stiegler and Joseph Schumpeter. Knowledge-based theories of value, resilience and disruption are the key concepts that emerge out of this “iconomic” theoretical-methodological review which may lead to propositions in the field of economic policy, growth theory and political philosophy that extend the structuralist-developmentalist legacy. We propose an approach to the identification of developmentalism that supports a critical approach to the political economy of the ultraliberal, positivist and rational choice visions.

Turkey’s EEC membership as a canvas of struggle for identity: The NSP versus the JP

This article uncovers the relationship between the intra-paradigm power struggle of two rival political parties in 1970s Turkey and their identity formations. Given the economy-laden context of Turkish–European relations in the 1970s, the (re)production of Europe as an identificatory reference between the National Salvation Party (NSP) and the Justice Party (JP) is of special interest. This investigation will help shed light on how the power relations—that both actors were situated in—can be mirrored through their struggle for identity. Moreover, will it contribute to highlighting the functionality of foreign policy in the production of identity. In analytical terms, this study borrows case-restricted concepts from the post-structuralist theory of international relations, and gathers its case data from the 1970s National Assembly records.

Singkawang from Coser’s Perspective

History records that Singkawang was an inseparable part of the conflict between ethnic groups in West Kalimantan. This article aims to examine three things, namely (1) the description of Coser's structuralist theory, (2) the strategic role of the city of Singkawang, and (3) the relevance of Singkawang City to Coser's theory. This research was studied with a qualitative descriptive. The research subject is the object of research is the city of Singkawang. Data collection techniques are carried out by literature study, interviews, and observations. The results showed that (1) the presence of conflict can play a role in restoring the social integration of members of society. Besides, the presence of conflict also plays a role in strengthening the social and emotional bonds of its followers. (2) Singkawang had a strategic role as a trading area and transit point for gold miners during the Sambas Sultanate. This condition lasted for a long time and made the people of Singkawang at that time learn to blend in with each other. In its development, the history of assimilation made the city of Singkawang finally used as one of the locations when there was an inter-ethnic conflict in West Kalimantan. (3) Coser's theory teaches that to avoid conflict there needs to be a safety value. In Singkawang City, safety value is carried out through natural assimilation through marriage, including culture. Apart from that, there is also artificial assimilation carried out by creating associations of both ethnicity and religion.