{"title":"Not just platform, nor cooperatives: worker-owned technologies from below","authors":"Rafael Grohmann","doi":"10.1093/ccc/tcad036","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article theorizes about how platform cooperativism is landing in Brazil, challenging dominant notions and presenting a more diverse meaning of worker-owned technologies from below. Drawing on research with platform co-ops under construction in Brazil, the article argues that, in Brazil, platform cooperativism does not necessarily present itself as either a cooperative or a platform. They are prototypes and experiments of worker-owned technologies anchored in local communities and their values. Instead of all these experiences being condensed and captured from Global North epistemic frameworks, there is the production of knowledge by the workers in search of autonomy. The article analyzes potentialities and critiques of platform cooperativism, especially from three dimensions of critique (economics, politics, and technology). It presents perspectives towards diversifying and expanding the meanings of technology in/from Latin America for understanding worker-owned technologies. It discusses two examples of worker-owned technologies: Senoritas Courier and the Homeless Worker Movement.","PeriodicalId":54193,"journal":{"name":"Communication Culture & Critique","volume":"17 2","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5000,"publicationDate":"2023-11-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Communication Culture & Critique","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ccc/tcad036","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"COMMUNICATION","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Abstract This article theorizes about how platform cooperativism is landing in Brazil, challenging dominant notions and presenting a more diverse meaning of worker-owned technologies from below. Drawing on research with platform co-ops under construction in Brazil, the article argues that, in Brazil, platform cooperativism does not necessarily present itself as either a cooperative or a platform. They are prototypes and experiments of worker-owned technologies anchored in local communities and their values. Instead of all these experiences being condensed and captured from Global North epistemic frameworks, there is the production of knowledge by the workers in search of autonomy. The article analyzes potentialities and critiques of platform cooperativism, especially from three dimensions of critique (economics, politics, and technology). It presents perspectives towards diversifying and expanding the meanings of technology in/from Latin America for understanding worker-owned technologies. It discusses two examples of worker-owned technologies: Senoritas Courier and the Homeless Worker Movement.
期刊介绍:
CCC provides an international forum for critical research in communication, media, and cultural studies. We welcome high-quality research and analyses that place questions of power, inequality, and justice at the center of empirical and theoretical inquiry. CCC seeks to bring a diversity of critical approaches (political economy, feminist analysis, critical race theory, postcolonial critique, cultural studies, queer theory) to bear on the role of communication, media, and culture in power dynamics on a global scale. CCC is especially interested in critical scholarship that engages with emerging lines of inquiry across the humanities and social sciences. We seek to explore the place of mediated communication in current topics of theorization and cross-disciplinary research (including affect, branding, posthumanism, labor, temporality, ordinariness, and networked everyday life, to name just a few examples). In the coming years, we anticipate publishing special issues on these themes.