From Performativity to Performances: Reconsidering Platforms’ Production of the Future of Work, Organizing, and Society

• Main Authors: Kevin Woojin Lee, Elizabeth Anne Watkins
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: University of Bologna 2021-01-01
• Series: Sociologica
• Subjects: platform; performance; performativity; technology; work; determinism
• Online Access: https://sociologica.unibo.it/article/view/11673

This essay takes as its starting point Gernot Grabher and Jonas König's (2020) piece, "Disruption, Embedded. A Polanyian Framing of the Platform Economy," and suggests focusing on how digital platforms are realized on the ground. We propose that the people experiencing platformization have a strong influence over the futures that platforms can evoke. To illuminate this interplay between people and platforms, we offer a taxonomy of three ways that people intervene in how platforms produce the future: innovation, articulation, and opposition. In doing so, we build on Grabher and König’s essay to enrich the analytical and predictive power of their framework. Moreover, we provide the beginnings of a theoretical framework of our own - namely, a sociology of people’s performances and their role in future-making - which we believe can contribute to ongoing discussions on the future of work and organizing.