ICS Seminar - Janet Roitman
Platform Economies: Beyond the North-South Divide
Presenter: Janet Roitman
Discussant: Adam Sargent
Chair: Heather Horst
Abstract
Platform economies are depicted as the foundation for a new era of economic production. This transpires through the incorporation of digital technologies and algorithmic operations into the heart of economic and financial practices. However, different assumptions are made about the effects of digital platforms depending on geographical location. While digital platforms are approached as inherent to processes of financialization globally, they are reduced to processes of financial inclusion when referencing the ‘Global South.’ Analyses of financialization as a one-way-vector – Global North to Global South – overlook variability and the limits to financialization. In contrast, a focus on the market devices illustrates the fault lines of value creation that are obscured by the GlobalNorth/Global South frame.
Biography
Janet Roitman is Professor at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. She is the founder-director of the Platform Economies Research Network (PERN) and an Associate Member of the Centre for Automated Decision-making and Society (ADM+S). Her research focuses on financial practices and the anthropology of value; her current work is on the role of digital technologies in emergent financial ecosystems. She is the author of Fiscal Disobedience: An Anthropology of Economic Regulation in Central Africa and Anti-Crisis. She sits on the editorial boards of The Journal of Cultural Economy and Cultural Anthropology and the advisory boards of Finance & Society and The Platform Cooperativism Consortium. Prior to joining RMIT, Janet was a University Professor at The New School, New York and an instructor at Sciences-po, Paris. Her research has received support from the Ford Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the American Council of LearnedSocieties, the Institute for Public Knowledge, and The National Science Foundation.
Event Details
Date & Time: 22 June 2023 | 11:30 am - 1:00 pm
Venue: Female Orphan School, EZ.G.23, Parramatta South Campus
