Adam Smith Business School

Professor Benedetta Cappellini, University of Durham

"Subjects of Luck: Affective Politics of Precarity in Platform Work"
Tuesday, 21 November. 2 pm
Room 142, Adam Smith Business School

Abstract

This paper investigates the emerging subjectivities of 31 grassroots nano-influencers (NIs) working with digital platforms in the B Village, in Yiwu city, China. Findings from an ethnographic fieldwork show how narratives around the entrepreneurial self are framed around ‘understanding the mysterious algorithm’ ‘working hard’ and ‘taking a lucky chance’ which lock participants into a form of ‘cruel optimism’. In showing how the NIs’ self-making process is framed around the overlooked concept of fortune, this paper examines affective politics of production in ‘fortunational capitalism’. In doing so the paper provides a novel and theoretical perspective to the debate on the production of precarity in platform work, in which subjectivities are framed also around the pursuit of fortune.

Bio

Benedetta Cappellini, is a professor of Marketing at the University of Durham. She is interested in Food Studies, Consumer Culture, Critical Marketing and Sociology of Consumption. Topics she has recently studied include food cultures, meal practices, austerity, intensive mothering and domestic violence. Her approach to research is interdisciplinary and she has published in journals such as: Sociology, Sociology of Health and Illness, British Journal of Management, European Journal of Marketing, Consumption, Markets and Culture and the Journal of Consumer Culture.She has co- edited books on the practice of the meal and mothering and food consumption.

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First published: 15 November 2023