How to deal with Big Tech power? The “Big Tech Raj”, a new form of biopower in the digital age

Aurélie Leclercq Vandelannoitte () and Emmanuel Bertin
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Aurélie Leclercq Vandelannoitte: LEM - Lille économie management - UMR 9221 - UA - Université d'Artois - UCL - Université catholique de Lille - Université de Lille - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Emmanuel Bertin: IP Paris - Institut Polytechnique de Paris

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Abstract: Big Tech has profoundly reconfigured societies. With their size, financial power, logics of data extraction and accumulation, social influence, geopolitical role, and accomplishments of state missions, Big Tech firms have quickly gained a reputation as "new digital governments." However, academic research (notably platform, innovation, and information systems research) is rather uncritical of Big Tech's power. In this conceptual paper, we problematize the nature, meaning, and implications of Big Tech's power by proposing an integrative framework on "biopower" (rooted in "pastoral power," biopower refers to the subtle and pervasive regulation of life in modern societies). Drawing from Foucault's work, we argue that Big Tech firms produce a new form of biopower in the digital era by virtue of their material configurations (constituted by technology, such as applications, algorithms, AI systems), which create conditions for steering people's conduct. We use the "raj" metaphor (we refer to the ruling power exercised by the British East India Company in 17th century) to characterize Big Tech's power, which we describe as the "Big Tech Raj," thus detailing the significant evolutions, extensions, and sophistication in the target, scope, relationships, and purpose of classic pastoral power. We discuss the implications of this power (in terms of possible resistance and counter-conducts) and call for more scholarly attention to them.

Keywords: Big Tech; platforms; power relations; biopower; Michel Foucault; governmentality; pastoral power (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-04840171v1
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Published in Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 2024, 208, pp.123732. ⟨10.1016/j.techfore.2024.123732⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04840171

DOI: 10.1016/j.techfore.2024.123732

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