Economy, Technology and Society
From Capital to Commons
Exploring the Promise of a World beyond Capitalism
This stimulating analysis from Hannes Gerhardt shows how technology-led and commons-oriented strategies can create fairer economies and societies. Setting out the role of various digital tools with concrete examples of their value, it is a constructive and optimistic guide to overcoming anti-capitalist barriers.
Recasting Workers' Power
Work and Inequality in the Shadow of the Digital Age
Drawing on ethnographic studies of precarious work in Africa, this innovative book discusses their implications for labour of how globalisation and digitalisation are drivers for structural change. It explores the role of digital technology in new business models, and ways in which digitalization can be harnessed for counter mobilisation.
Disrupted Urbanism
Situated Smart Initiatives in African Cities
The ‘smart city’ is often promoted as a technology-driven solution to complex urban issues. Drawing on original research conducted in urban African settings, this book provides a much-needed alternative view, exploring how ‘home-grown’ digital disruption, driven and initiated by local actors, upending the mainstream corporate narrative.
Work and Alienation in the Platform Economy
Amazon and the Power of Organization
Drawing on interviews with Amazon workers and original empirical data, this book explores how different working conditions estrange and alienate workers, and how, despite these, workers find ways to organize and express their agency. This is an important analysis of work on the digital shop floor for the scholars of platform economy.
Marketing Science Fictions
An Ethnography of Marketing Analytics, Consumer Insight and Data Science
This book pulls back the curtain on contemporary data-driven marketing, revealing the intricate ways marketers create value from online data. It offers valuable lessons for academics and students of marketing, technology and data science.
Algorithms and the End of Politics
How Technology Shapes 21st-Century American Life
EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. This book is a timely analysis of the growing impact of digital technologies on populism in the US and beyond.
The Political Economy of Digital Monopolies
Contradictions and Alternatives to Data Commodification
As outrage over the socially damaging practices of technology companies intensifies, this book asks what it actually means to hold a 'monopoly' in the tech world and offers an in-depth analysis of how these corporate giants are produced, financialized, and regulated.
The Economic Lives of Platforms
Rethinking the Political Economy of Digital Markets
This interdisciplinary collection rethinks the political economy of the digital market by asking what came before platforms and suggesting what might come after them. Addressing themes like internet decolonisation, the book makes a timely assessment of the impact of evolving connections between technology, information, society and markets.
Transforming Agriculture and Foodways
The Digital-Molecular Convergence
Agri-food systems in the Global North are experiencing a wave of technological innovation in food production and ways of eating. This book is the first to analyse technological and socio-economic change in leading food sectors and it concludes that despite innovation, the food industry is adapting too slowly to the challenges of climate change.
Labour Conflicts in the Digital Age
A Comparative Perspective
This book offers a complete view of the new labour conflicts in the platform economy. Through case studies in advanced economies in Europe and the US and with an original approach that combines social movement studies and industrial relations, it provides a radical interpretation on the changing nature of worker movements in the digital age.
The Age of Low Tech
Towards a Technologically Sustainable Civilization
A best-seller in France, this English language edition introduces readers to an alternative perspective on our technological future. Bihouix skilfully goes against the grain to argue that ‘high’ technology will not solve global problems and envisages a different approach to manage our resources and build a more resilient and sustainable society.
Social Media and the Automatic Production of Memory
Classification, Ranking and the Sorting of the Past
Social media platforms hold vast amounts of data about our lives. Content from the past is increasingly being presented in the form of ‘memories’. Critically exploring this new form of memory making, this unique book asks how social media are beginning to change the way we remember.