“…The type of assetization that interests Birch and Ward, therefore, goes hand in hand with the trajectories of contemporary companies which are more financialized and more heavily reliant on knowledge management, two characteristics shared by what Birch and his colleagues call ‘technoscientific capitalism’ (Birch et al, 2022; Birch and Muniesa, 2020). This form of capitalism also has the specificity of having adopted very specific practices for identifying and valuing companies’ accounting assets.…”
Section: Why Is Addressing Financial and Intangible Assets Together I...mentioning
Birch and Ward (2022) propose the concept of assetization to frame a research agenda in Human Geography. This interesting proposal suffers from a rather imprecise definition of what an asset is, and that is a gap I intend to fill. I argue that assetization, for Birch and Ward, does not concern every type of asset, but only what can be described as ‘financialized assets’, including financial as well as intangible assets. I underline what financialized financial and intangible assets have in common and how that makes them relevant for analyzing contemporary capitalism. More precise specification of the assets created by Birch and Ward's assetization process clarifies the concept's true potential contribution.
“…The type of assetization that interests Birch and Ward, therefore, goes hand in hand with the trajectories of contemporary companies which are more financialized and more heavily reliant on knowledge management, two characteristics shared by what Birch and his colleagues call ‘technoscientific capitalism’ (Birch et al, 2022; Birch and Muniesa, 2020). This form of capitalism also has the specificity of having adopted very specific practices for identifying and valuing companies’ accounting assets.…”
Section: Why Is Addressing Financial and Intangible Assets Together I...mentioning
Birch and Ward (2022) propose the concept of assetization to frame a research agenda in Human Geography. This interesting proposal suffers from a rather imprecise definition of what an asset is, and that is a gap I intend to fill. I argue that assetization, for Birch and Ward, does not concern every type of asset, but only what can be described as ‘financialized assets’, including financial as well as intangible assets. I underline what financialized financial and intangible assets have in common and how that makes them relevant for analyzing contemporary capitalism. More precise specification of the assets created by Birch and Ward's assetization process clarifies the concept's true potential contribution.
“…Various social actors can “pursue rentiership through their control over different techno‐economic conditions, practices, and formations, often entailing intense struggles with other social actors” (Birch et al. 2022:410). I conceptualised “citizen‐ rentier ‐ship” (CRS) as economic rents extracted by various parties from aspects of citizenship precarity, notably the right to work on modern labour platforms.…”
Section: Citizen‐rentier‐ship (Crs)mentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Firstly, I summarise some of the current research on modern platforms, urban precarity, and the role played by technology in capitalist urbanisation. I connect literature by citizenship and migration studies with the concept of "rentiership" (Birch 2020;Birch et al 2022). This leads to the conceptualisation of CRS and the presentation of the methodology used for this study.…”
Section: Introductionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…I connect literature by citizenship and migration studies with the concept of “rentiership” (Birch 2020; Birch et al. 2022). This leads to the conceptualisation of CRS and the presentation of the methodology used for this study.…”
Platform food delivery workers have been under much scrutiny over the last couple of years. Undocumented riders, and their recent strikes and protests in France, have not received as much attention as other issues regarding platform labour (contract work, algorithmic control, surveillance). This article follows fieldwork conducted in Paris and interviews with food couriers. Building on work by critical urban studies, migration studies and science and technology studies, this research puts forward citizen‐rentier‐ship, a tool to understand how multiple parties profit from aspects of precarious status. Interviews with undocumented couriers who worked in Paris highlight how the subletting of accounts, the complicit role of the state, the hypocrisy of employers and the interdependency with the “regularised” put undocumented couriers in hyper‐precarious situations. This article concludes that labour laws, misclassification and migration policies are at the centre of the struggles of Paris’ delivery workers and that they need changes.
“…Prior research shows that the hegemonic dominance of specific cultural representations via intermediary digital infrastructures has increased digital and social isolation for large segments of the population, as evidenced by the digital divide (Figueiredo & Borges, 2021;Kwet, 2022;Mihelj et al, 2019;Peters, 2022). This form of rentier capitalism, in which digital monopolies create and extract value, is contradictory and has been criticized (Birch et al, 2022). As a result, Western cultural platform capitalism has now become the shared culture, but diversity and differences in human interests continue to fuel resistance, conflict, and contestation of the digital space.…”
Section: Cultural/political View: Exploring Inscribed Cultural Knowledgementioning
Against the backdrop of escalating contradictions and critiques of the digital economy's trajectory, this study analyzes how the emerging digitalization issues might be philosophically understood from a systems viewpoint. Five systemic digitalization challenges including the circular economy (CE), cyberphysical systems (CPS), sharing economy (SE), digital transformation (DT), and smart systems were identified (SS). To investigate digitalization challenges, the machine, organism, cultural/political, societal/environmental, and interrelationship systems metaphors were used. The machine viewpoint demonstrates that the circular economy challenge may be examined utilizing Hard Systems Thinking (HST) methodologies, with a focus on sufficiency via product design and business model innovation. The organism approach demonstrated how the digital twin notion may be investigated using Socio-Technical Systems (STS) and the Viable System Model (VSM) to diagnose and forecast CPS viability in an increasingly linked Industry 4.5/5.0 environment. In analyzing SE's rentier capitalism, the cultural/political viewpoint demonstrated the applicability of purposeful systems techniques for "people complexity." The societal/environmental viewpoint stressed emancipatory systems approaches to "coercive complexity" as crucial to evaluating the perpetuation of digital exclusion by DT from an emancipatory systems perspective. The interrelationship viewpoint emphasized the significance of systems approaches for researching "structural complexity" in intelligent systems. These viewpoints aid decision- makers in identifying problem-solving strategies based on systems thinking.
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