讲座题目：Leapfrog logistics: digital trucking platforms, infrastructure, and labor in Brazil and China

摘要：Critical political economy analyses have principally conceptualised platforms as unproductive economic forms skimming value off each intermediated transaction and/or illegitimately extracting and capitalizing user data. This scholarship has also focused heavily on extractive dimensions of global North platforms’ operations within the global South. However, a small but growing literature is examining the productive aspects of digital platforms, while important digital platforms are emerging in Southern economies. These trends draw attention to the prospect of platforms playing a role in leapfrog development. This article examines digital trucking platforms in two major economies of the global South: Brazil and China. We argue that trucking platforms are engendering dramatic transformations of these countries’ disorganised road transport logistics systems. Platforms are centralising investment and co-ordinating control. Utilising technologies which surpass those deployed in the global North, they rationalisedisorganised and inefficient transport systems by subjecting them to algorithmic rule and minimising bureaucratic inefficiencies. Through greater centralisation, co-ordination and rationalisation, trucking platforms drive down costs and eliminate barriers to the geographical circulation of capital. However, this produces negative impact on working conditions of trucking drivers as they are exposed to the vagaries of market discipline in new ways.

中文摘要：政治经济学分析主要将平台概念化为非生产性经济形式，平台从每笔中介交易中抽取价值或非法提取用户数据并将其资本化来实现收入。此类研究主要集中分析了全球北方平台在全球南方的运营情况。然而，最近的学术研究开始关注数字平台的生产性特点，尤其是伴随着全球南方经济体中涌现出一些重要的数字平台。这些趋势促使人们思考平台如何在跨越式发展中发挥作用。本文研究了全球南方的两个重要经济体——巴西与中国——的数字货运平台。本文认为，数字货运平台促使原本低组织化的道路运输系统产生了变革。平台实现了集中投资和协调控制；通过平台技术，原本无序和低效的物流系统受到算法规则的支配，并缓解了组织低效的问题。通过加强集中化、协调性和合理化，货运平台降低了成本并消除了资本地域流通的障碍。然而，平台也导致货运司机以新的方式被暴露在市场规则的不确定性中，从而对其工作条件产生了负面影响。

主讲人：魏薇

个人简介：英国莱斯特大学（University of Leicester）商学院讲师。博士毕业于英国约克大学，曾任英国牛津大学技术与管理发展中心博士后研究员，英国萨塞克斯大学数字工作未来研究中心访问研究员。研究方向包括国际比较劳动关系，平台劳动和数字化人力资源管理。其研究成果发表于Review of International Political Economy, Industrial Relations Journal, Journal of Industrial Relations等期刊。

讲座语言：中文

讲座时间：2023年12月13日（周三）下午15:00-16:30

参加方式：线上参会 腾讯会议507-775-737

主持人：张皓 中国人民大学劳动人事学院副教授

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