Planetary carambolage: The evolutionary political economy of technology, nature and work

Abstract

The following editorial introduces the special issue (SI) on “Work, Environment and Planetary-scale Computation in Political-Economic Evolution”. Here, however, we go beyond an outline of what each contribution to the SI addresses, and attempt to draw a more pronounced shared embedding of the arguments that have come to the fore. The original idea of this SI was to synthesize a range of contemporary global political-economic challenges, i.e. (1) technology (esp. digital transformation), (2) nature (esp. ecological crisis) and (3) work (esp. precarization via the evolving platform economy). The main argument developed in this editorial reflection focuses on the common ground and origin of those processes found in the complex evolution of capitalist development. We frame the latter by assigning it a new term, i.e. “planetary carambolage”.

Datanalysing the uninsured: The coloniality of inclusive insurance platforms

“…Unsurprisingly, as the largest platform firms are based in the United States, a number of scholars view them as a logical continuation of the long-term underlying logic of U.S. imperialism (Jin, 2015). The monopolistic aspect of platforms has also prompted a debate on the extent to which this genuinely transforms capital accumulation, in particular regarding the type of rent upon which it relies (Acquier, 2017; Durand, 2020; Gruszka et al, 2020; Morozov, 2019).…”

“…Be that as it may, such an evolution of capitalist development has led to a collision of exploitative processes on a planetary scale – a so-called carambolage – not just of technology, but regarding the future of nature and work as well (Gruszka et al, 2020). As a result, platform capitalism needs distinct governing infrastructures.…”