Operations of platforms : a global process in a multipolar world

The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic has engendered a crisis of mobility whose multiple dimensions have affected the movement of people and "stuff," border regimes and logistical supply chains, the daily life of people in many parts of the world and the organization of labor. In such a conjuncture, digital platforms have emerged as key devices to manage the crisis, in such diverse fields as communication, food delivery, and e-commerce. The booming profits and stock exchange value of companies operating in such fields have been defining features of the economic implications of the pandemic conjuncture, while platforms have become increasingly visible in public discourse. Accordingly, digital platforms have come to figure prominently among those "systems underpinning social and economic life" whose maintenance and reproduction played a key role in defining "essential labor" during lockdowns in different parts of the world. The connection between platforms and mobility management has been apparent in the pandemic conjuncture, while new forms of risk and new hierarchies emerged between people who were often compelled to risk contagion to provide services and people who were allowed to work from home and could do that also due to those services. Working at the intersection between the domains of circulation and social reproduction, the operations of platforms prompt significant mutations of capital and labor, which deserve a detailed investigation. At the same time the chapter follows the call to "de-Westernize platform studies" and connects processes of platformization of capital and labor with the turbulent emergence of a multipolar world (with a specific attention paid to China).