IHG-Lecture

Das Institut für Humangeographie (IHG) der Goethe-Universität Frankfurt ist als Ort kritischer Forschung und moderner Lehre national wie international etabliert. Geographische Stadtforschung, Wirtschaftsgeographie, Politische Geographie und Mobilitätsforschung bilden die traditionellen Schwerpunkte des Instituts. Mit der IHG-Lecture stellen wir “Digitale Geographien” als unseren jüngsten Forschungsschwerpunkt zur Diskussion.

Platform geographies: digital factory and flexible space

The platform is a focal point for understanding the impacts of digital technologies on labour and work. The study of such “platform labour” has thus far focused on the employment relation and the conditions of work, therefore this discussion will seek to address more explicitly the geographical dimensions of platform labour from two perspectives. The first perspective, put forward by Moritz Altenried, understands platforms as digital factories: digital technologies have moved forms of coordination and control of labour that have hitherto only been thinkable in the disciplinary space of the factory onto the streets and into the living rooms of spatially distributed platform workers. This perspective of the digital factory attempts to analyse the dynamics of platform work, and algorithmically managed labour more generally, from an explicitly spatial perspective. The second perspective, set out by Lizzie Richardson, considers platforms as workplace infrastructures: platforms indicate a partial but critical shift from the workplace as a site to the workplace as infrastructure. Place continues to structure platformised work but it is necessary to foreground its infrastructural qualities. As infrastructure, the spatial structure for platformised work is located less in fixed distinctions between inside and outside, and more in practices of arrangement and coordination creating flexible working space. The session will begin with an introduction by each speaker to their respective perspective on platforms before a discussion and exchange.

Moritz Altenried is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for European Ethnology and the Berlin Institute for Migration Research (BIM) at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. His research interests include labour, digital technology, migration and political economy. His latest book, The Digital Factory, was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2022.

Lizzie Richardson is professor of digital geography at Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Her research focuses on the geographies of work in the UK, with an emphasis on the implications of digital technologies.