The spatial politics of platformization: Negotiating platform power in everyday taxi driving in Mumbai

Abstract

A rich body of studies on platform urbanism investigating the (dis)embeddedness of digital platforms at the urban-digital interface has emerged in recent years. However, with growing attention to platformization in cities of the global south, and to practices of resistance against increasingly overarching platform power, the notion of urban space in the analysis of platform (dis)embeddedness needs to be better conceptualized. Beyond platform domination and subjugation, this contribution aims at offering a conceptual approach to understand and study empirically the politics of platformization in the context of heterogeneous southern cities. Building on Henri Lefebvre’s theory of the production of space and his differentiation between abstract and differential space, I draw on ethnographic fieldwork in Mumbai, India, to retrace the emergence of mobility platforms and their encounter with the long-established metered taxi services in the city. In doing so, I analyse the contentious negotiation between everyday practices and socialities of taxi driving, and historical and contemporary narratives and concepts that seek to govern transport and labor in Mumbai. As a result, attention is directed to the ambivalent role of state institutions in the case of Mumbai that try to come to terms with the logics of the platform economy and to take control of platformization processes in the city. Also, state institutions in their everyday, ground-level workings have provided a level of autonomy to metered taxis, and arguably provide a space for taxi drivers to maneuver the hardships of platform work. I conclude by highlighting the consequences of my observations for taxi driving in Mumbai, class relations in post-pandemic urban societies and the future of platform capitalism.