1,069
views
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
1 collections
    0
    shares

      Call for Papers: Hierarchies of domesticity – spatial and social boundaries. Deadline for submissions is 30th September, 2024Full details can be read here.

      Articles to be no longer than 6,000 words (excluding footnotes and bibliography) and submitted in two forms: an anonymised version in which all references to the authors’ institution and publications are omitted; and a full version including the authors’ titles and institutional affiliations. For complete instructions on style, formatting, etc., please consult: https://www.plutojournals.com/wp-content/uploads/WOLG-Instructions-for-Authors2023.pdf 

      scite_
       
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: found
      • Article: found
      Is Open Access

      Contested social relations in the platform economy: Class structurisation and collectivisation in ride-hailing services in India

      research-article
       
      Work Organisation, Labour & Globalisation
      Pluto Journals
      class, e-cab service, platform economy, ride-hailing services, solidarity
      Bookmark

            Abstract

            The development of platform capitalism is restructuring social relations across the globe by altering traditional hierarchical structures, internal labour relations and their micro-political interactions. Digitally mediated platforms appear to be changing relational dynamics, contributing to a growth in individualisation among the workers. The platform economy, in general, and ride-hailing services, in particular, represent an emerging capitalistic regime that is breeding a working class with often contradictory class locations and class positions. Because the class dimension in the existing literature concerning platform workers in India has been less critically approached, this research intends to use class-based theorisation to analyse capital–labour relations in the ride-hailing service, with the aim of reflecting on the linkages between class location, class consciousness and class practices among the workers. This article highlights how the internal contradictions, combined with the external structural factors, lead to growing instrumental collectivism among the platform working class that falls short of challenging the capitalistic platform regime.

            Content

            Author and article information

            Journal
            10.2307/j50010512
            workorgalaboglob
            Work Organisation, Labour & Globalisation
            Pluto Journals
            1745-641X
            1745-6428
            1 January 2021
            : 15
            : 2 ( doiID: 10.13169/workorgalaboglob.15.issue-2 )
            : 25-45
            Article
            workorgalaboglob.15.2.0025
            10.13169/workorgalaboglob.15.2.0025
            2bab4c65-0a98-4e57-a26f-a2c2c5917e8a
            © Padmini Sharma, 2021

            All content is freely available without charge to users or their institutions. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles in this journal without asking prior permission of the publisher or the author. Articles published in the journal are distributed under a http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

            History
            Custom metadata
            eng

            Sociology,Labor law,Political science,Labor & Demographic economics,Political economics
            ride-hailing services,e-cab service,class,solidarity,platform economy

            References

            1. Aglietta, M. (1976) A Theory of Capitalist Regulation: The US Experience, London: NLB.

            2. Aloisi, A. (2016) Commoditized Workers: Case Study Research on Labor Law Issues Arising from a Set of ‘On-Demand/Gig Economy’ Platforms, Milan: Luigi Bocconi University.

            3. Anwar, M.A. & M. Graham (2019) ‘Hidden transcripts of the gig economy: Labour agency and the new art of resistance among African workers’, Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 52 (7):1269–1291.

            4. Anwar, M.A. & M. Graham (2020) ‘Between a rock and a hard place: Freedom, flexibility, precarity and vulnerability in the gig economy in Africa’, Competition & Change, 25 (2): 237–258.

            5. Ashford, S.J., B.B. Caza & E.M. Reid (2018) ‘From surviving to thriving in the gig economy: A research agenda for individuals in the new world of work’, Research in Organisational Behaviour, 38:23–41.

            6. Atmore, E.C. (2017) ‘Killing the goose that laid the golden egg: Outdated employment laws are destroying the gig economy’, Minnesota Law Review, 102:887–922.

            7. Atzeni M (2010) Workplace Conflict: Mobilization and Solidarity in Argentina, London: Palgrave Macmillan.

            8. Barratt, T., C. Goods & A. Veen (2020) ‘Active intermediation and “entrepreneurial” worker agency in the Australian gig-economy’, Economy and Space, 52 (8):1643–1661.

            9. Barzel, Y. (1997) Economic Analysis of Property Rights. 2nd ed. New York: Cambridge University Press.

            10. Beck, V. & P. Brook (2020) ‘Solidarities in and through work in an age of extremes’, Work, Employment, and Society, 34 (1):3–17.

            11. Bettelheim, C. (1975) Economic Calculations and Forms of Property, tr. J. Taylor. New York: Monthly Review Press.

            12. Bonefeld, W. (1987) ‘Reformulation of state theory’, Capital and Class, 33: 96–127.

            13. Brenner, J. (1988) ‘Work relations and the formation of class consciousness’, Critical Sociology, 15 (1):83–88.

            14. Brown, W., S, Deakin, D. Nash, & S. Oxenbridge (2000) ‘The employment contract: From collective procedures to individual rights’, British Journal of Industrial Relations, 38 (4):611–629.

            15. Burawoy, M. (1979) Manufacturing Consent: Changes in the Labour Process under Monopoly Capitalism, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

            16. Burawoy, M. (2012) Manufacturing Consent: Changes in the Labor Process under Monopoly Capitalism, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

            17. Burris, V. (1989) ‘New directions in class analysis’ in E.O. Wright et al. (eds) The Debate on Classes, London: Verso:157–167.

            18. Carchedi, G. (1989) ‘Classes and class analysis’, in E.O. Wright et al. (eds), The Debate on Classes. London: Verso:105–125.

            19. Clarke, C. & M. Urata (2016) ‘Uber don't take us for a ride’, Global Labour Column, 239.

            20. Colling, T. (2003) ‘Managing without unions: The sources and limitations of individualism’, Industrial Relations: Theory and Practice, 2:368–391.

            21. Creswell, J.W. (1999) Educational Research: Planning, Conducting, and Evaluating Quantitative and Qualitative Research, 4th ed. Harlow: Pearson.

            22. Creswell, J.W. (2009) Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches, 3rd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

            23. De Moortel, D. & C. Vanroelen (2017) Classifying Self-Employment and Creating an Empirical Typology, Dublin: Eurofound.

            24. De Stefano, V. (2016) ‘The rise of the “just-in-time workforce”: On-demand work, crowdwork, and labour protection in the gig economy’, Comparative Labour Law and Policy Journal, 37 (3):471–504.

            25. De Stefano, V. (2017) ‘Non-standard work and limits on freedom of association: A human-rights based approach’, Industrial Law Journal, 46 (2):185–207.

            26. De Stefano, V. (2018) ‘Negotiating the Algorithm’: Automation, Artificial Intelligence and Labour Protection. Working Paper Series No. 246. Geneva: Employment Policy Department, International Labour Office.

            27. De Stefano, V. & A. Aloisi (2018) Fundamental Labour Rights, Platform Work and Human-Rights Protection of Non-Standard Workers, Bocconi Legal Studies Research Paper Series, Milan: Universita Bocconi.

            28. De Vroey, M. (1970) Management and Unions: The Theory and Reforms of Industrial Relations, London: Faber & Faber.

            29. De Vroey, M. (1975) ‘The separation of ownership and control in large corporations’, Review of Radical Political Economics, 7 (2):1–10.

            30. Dosen, I. & M. Graham (2018) Labour Rights in the Gig Economy, Melbourne: Department of Parliamentary Services, Parliament of Victoria.

            31. Dubal, V. (2017) ‘Wage slave or entrepreneur? Contesting the dualism of legal worker identities’, California Law Review, 105:101–159.

            32. Duggan, J., U. Sherman, R. Carbery & A. McDonnell (2019) ‘Algorithmic management and app-work in the gig economy: A research agenda for employment relations and HRM’, Human Resource Management Journal, 30:114–132.

            33. Elster. J. (1985) Making Sense of Marx. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

            34. Englert, S., J. Woodcock & C. Cant (2020) ‘Digital workerism: Technology, platforms, and the circulation of workers’ struggles', Triple C, 18 (1):132–145.

            35. Gall, G. (2020) ‘Emerging forms of worker collectivism among the precariat: When will capital's “gig” be up?‘, Capital and Class, 44 (4):485–492.

            36. Glantz, O. (1958) ‘Class consciousness and political solidarity’, American Sociological Review, 23 (4):375–383.

            37. Glaser, B.G. & Strauss, A.L. (1967) The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research, New York: Routledge.

            38. Goldthrope, J.H. & D. Lockwood (1963) ‘Affluence and the British class structure’, Sociological Review, 11 (2):133–163.

            39. Grabb, E.G. 1984. Social Inequality: Classical and Contemporary Theorists, Toronto: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

            40. Graham, M. (2020) ‘Regulate, replicate and resist: The conjunctural geographies of platform urbanism’, Urban Geography, 41 (3):453–457.

            41. Graham, M. & M.A. Anwar (2020) ‘The global gig economy: Toward a planetary labour market’ in A. Larsson & R. Teigland (eds), The Digital Transformation of Labor: Automation, the Gig Economy and Welfare, London and New York: Routledge.

            42. Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. and tr. Q. Hoare & G. Nowell. New York: International.

            43. Griesbach, K., A. Reich, L. Elliot-Negri & R. Milkman (2019) ‘Algorithmic control in platform food delivery work’, SOCIUS: Sociology Research for a Dynamic World, 5:1–15.

            44. Hawley, A.J. (2018) ‘Regulating labour platforms: The data deficit’, European Journal of Government and Economics, 7 (1):5–23.

            45. Heckscher, C. & J. McCarthy (2014) ‘Transient solidarities: Commitment and collective action in post-industrial societies’, British Journal of Industrial Relations, 52 (2):627–657.

            46. Howcroft, D. & B. Bergvall-Kareborn (2019) ‘A typology of crowdwork platforms’, Work, Employment and Society, 33 (1):21–38.

            47. Joyce, S. (2020) ‘Rediscovering the cash nexus, again: Subsumption and the labour–capital relation in platform work’, Capital and Class, 44 (4):541–552.

            48. Kaine, S. & E. Josserand (2019) ‘The organisation and experience of work in the gig economy’, Journal of Industrial Relations, 61 (4):478–501.

            49. Kalleberg, A.L. & M. Dunn (2016) ‘Good jobs, bad jobs in the gig economy’, Perspectives on Work, 20:10–15.

            50. Karatzogianni, A. & J. Matthews (2018) ‘Platform ideologies: Ideological production in digital intermediation platforms and structural effectivity in the “sharing economy”‘, Television and New Media, 21 (1):95–114.

            51. Kellogg, K.C., M.A. Valentine & A. Christin (2020) ‘Algorithms at work: The new contested terrain of control’, Academy of Management Annals, 14 (1):366–410.

            52. Kelly, J. (1998) Rethinking Industrial Relations, London: Routledge.

            53. Kolinko (2001) ‘Class composition’, Nadir. Available at: kolinko-class composition (nadir.org).

            54. Korczynski, M. (2003) ‘Communities of coping: Collective emotional labour in service work’, Organization, 10 (1):55–79.

            55. Koutsimpogiorgos, N., J.V. Slageren, A.M. Herrmann, and K. Frenken (2020) ‘Conceptualising the gig economy and its regulatory problems’, Policy and Internet, 12 (4):525–545.

            56. Kovacs, E. (2017) ‘Regulatory techniques for virtual workers’, Hungarian Labour Law E-Journal, 2:1–15.

            57. Lukacs, G. (1968) History and Class Consciousness, Boston: MIT Press.

            58. Maffie, M.D. (2020) ‘The role of digital communities in organising gig workers’, Industrial Relations, 59 (1):123–149.

            59. Mann, M. (1973) Consciousness and Action among the Western Working Class, Basingstoke: Macmillan.

            60. Marton, A. & H.R. Ekbia (2019) ‘The political gig-economy: Platformed work and labour’ in H. Kromar, J. Fedorowicz, W.F. Boh, J.M. Leimeister & S. Wattal (eds), Proceedings of the 40th International Conference in Information Systems (ICIS). Accessed 3 March 2021 from http://aisel.aisnet.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1633&context=icis2019.

            61. McGaughey, E. (2018) ‘Taylorooism: When network technology meets corporate power’, Industrial Relations Journal, 49:459–472.

            62. Mohandesi, S. (2013) ‘Class consciousness or class composition’, Science & Society, 77 (1):72–97.

            63. Morgan, G. & V. Pulignano (2020) ‘Solidarity at work: Concepts, levels and challenges’, Work, Employment and Society, 34 (1):18–34.

            64. Muntaner, C. (2018) ‘Digital platforms, gig economy, precarious employment, and the invisible hand of social class’, International Journal of Health Services, 48 (4):597–600.

            65. Ossowski, S. (1963) Class Structure in the Social Consciousness, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

            66. Pastuh, D. & M. Geppert (2020) ‘A “circuits of power” based perspective on algorithmic management and labour in the gig economy’, German Journal of Industrial Relations, 2:1–33.

            67. Patton, M.Q. (1990) Qualitative Evaluation and Research Methods. 2nd ed. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

            68. Patton, M.Q. (2002) Qualitative Research and Evaluation Methods. 3rd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

            69. Popitz, M., H.P. Bahrdt, E.A. Jueres & A. Kesting (1969) ‘The worker's image of society’, in T. Burns (ed.), Industrial Man. Harmondsworth: Penguin:281–324.

            70. Poulantzas, N. (1975) Classes in Contemporary Capitalism, London: NLB.

            71. Raval, N.A. (2020) ‘Platform-living: Theorising life, work and ethical living after the gig economy’, dissertation, University of California Irvine.

            72. Richardson, C. (2008) ‘Working alone: The erosion of solidarity in today's workplace’, New Labour Forum, 17 (3):69–78.

            73. Sargeant, M. (2017) ‘The gig economy and the future of work’, E-Journal of International and Comparative Labour Studies, 6(2).

            74. Saundry, R., S. Mark & A. Valarie (2012) ‘Social capital and union revitalization: A study of worker networks in the UK audio-visual industries’, British Journal of Industrial Relations, 50 (2):263–286.

            75. Savage, M., F. Devine, N. Cunningham, M. Taylor, Y. Li, J. Hjellbrekke, B.L. Roux, S. Friedman & A. Miles (2015) ‘A new model of social class: Findings from the BBC's Great British Class Survey Experiment’, Sociology, 47 (2):219–250.

            76. Shapiro, A. (2020) ‘Dynamic exploits: Calculative asymmetries in the on-demand economy’, New Technology, Work and Employment, 35:162–177.

            77. Sharma, P. (2020) ‘Digitalisation and precarious work practices in alternative economies: Work organisation and work relations in e-cab services’, Economic and Industrial Democracy. Accessed 30 November 2021 from: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0143831X20924461

            78. Smith, P. & G. Morton (1993) ‘Union exclusion and the decollectivization of industrial relations in contemporary Britain’, British Journal of Industrial Relations, 31 (1):97–114.

            79. Smith, P. & G. Morton (2001) ‘Conservative governments’ reform of employment law, 1979–97, The “stepping stones” and the “new right” agenda', Historical Studies in Industrial Relations, 39:119–138.

            80. So, A.Y. (1991) ‘Class struggle analysis: A critique of class structure analysis’, Sociological Perspectives, 34 (1):39–59.

            81. Stewart, A. & J. Stanford (2020) ‘Regulating work in the gig economy: What are the options?‘, Economic and Labour Relations Review, 28 (3):420–437.

            82. Surie, A. (2019) ‘Are Ola and Uber drivers entrepreneurs or exploited workers?‘, Economic and Political Weekly: Engage. Accessed 30 November 2021 from https://www.epw.in/engage/article/are-ola-and-uber-drivers-entrepreneurs-exploited-workers

            83. Surie, A. & J. Koduganti (2016) ‘The emerging nature of work in platform companies in Bengaluru, India: The case of Uber and Ola cab drivers’, E-Journal of International and Comparative Labour Studies, 5 (3).

            84. Tassinari, A. & V. Maccarrone (2020) ‘Riders on the storm: Workplace solidarity among gig economy couriers in Italy and the UK’, Work, Employment and Society, 34 (1):35–54.

            85. Teddlie, C. & F. Yu (2007) ‘Mixed methods sampling: A typology with examples’, Journal of Mixed Methods Research, 1 (1):77–100.

            86. Van Doorn, N. (2020a) ‘From wage to a wager: Dynamic pricing in the gig economy’, Platform Equality. Accessed 30 November 2021 from https://platformlabor.net/output/wage-to-wager-autonomy

            87. Van Doorn, N. (2020b) ‘At what price? Labour politics and calculative power struggles in on-demand food delivery’, Work Organisation, Labour and Globalisation, 14 (1):136–149.

            88. Veen, A., T. Barratt & C. Goods (2019) ‘Platform-capital's “app-etite” for control: A labour process analysis of food-delivery work in Australia’, Work, Employment and Society, 34 (3):388–406.

            89. Vicente, M. (2019) ‘Collective relations in the gig economy’, E-Journal of International and Comparative Labour Studies, 8 (1).

            90. Wright, E.O. (1979) Class Structure and Income Determination, New York: Academic Press.

            91. Wright, E.O. (1984) ‘A general framework for the analysis of class structure’, Politics and Society, 13 (4):383–423.

            92. Wright, E.O. (1985) Classes, London: Verso.

            93. Wright, E.O. (1997) Class Counts: Comparative Studies in Class Analysis, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

            94. Wright, E.O. (2005) Approaches to Class Analysis, New York: Cambridge University Press.

            Comments

            Comment on this article