Trajectories in platform capitalism

David W. Hill

Mobilities, 2021, vol. 16, issue 4, 569-583

Abstract: Platforms are digital ecosystems that bring together various actors to form multi-sided markets. This bringing together entails an organisation of trajectories that in turn organises those moved by them into experiential and existential orders. This article sets out a general account of trajectories under these conditions, first identifying three kinds that animate a system of platform capitalism: (1) Data Trajectory as the movement and representation of information; (2) Logistical Trajectory as the movement and organisation of commodities; and (3) Moral Trajectory as the movement of bodies that are moved by and towards others. Each kind is then given form by three properties: (i) the traject picks out what is in motion and how it is moving; (ii) trajectography is the space that is co-constituted by this movement; and (iii) trajectivity refers to the subjective positions that are encouraged by mobility through (or occupation of) these spaces. The article demonstrates the application of this schema through the example of the retail platform Amazon, showing as it goes how data and logistical trajectories combine to congest, reroute or derail moral trajectories.

Date: 2021
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DOI: 10.1080/17450101.2021.1917970

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