Very much looking forward to some stimulating discussion next week at the 6th Global Conference on Economic Geography (Dublin, 7-10 June 2022) with a great list of speakers, as we consider the conceptual opportunities, challenges and limitations of an increasingly platformised world for our understanding of economic organisation, processes, structures and markets.
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Panel Session #8 Conceptualising Production Networks and Digital Platforms
In Session Theme 8. Digital & Platform Geographies
Session organiser and chair:
- Karen Lai, Durham University
Panellists (in alphabetical order):
- Gernot Grabher, HafenCity University Hamburg
- Daniel Haberly, University of Sussex
- Paul Langley, Durham University
- Lizzie Richardson, Goethe University Frankfurt
- Chun Yang (Charlotte), Hong Kong Baptist University
While networks have played a prominent role in economic geographical research in recent decades – conceptualised as global commodity chains or global production networks (GPN) – recent industrial and societal shifts are highlighting the relevance of the platform as a new mode of digital capitalism (Langley and Leyshon, 2017; Srnicek, 2016). Recent research on FinTech is also underscoring the importance of digital intermediation and platform organisation in terms of how they are transforming the roles of ‘lead firms’, ‘subcontracting relationships’, and different modes of cultivating and capturing ‘value’ compared to current GPN analysis (Lai and Samers, 2020). Data expertise and digital infrastructures are enabling some manufacturing firms to develop new financial offerings while facilitating the crossover of some technology firms into retail and distribution markets, with growing power to reshape supplier relationships and broader production networks. These firms have common advantages and assets in data technologies and platform organisation, enabling them to extract value from user data and the intermediation process in order to generate new products and services. This has led to some speculation regarding a possible shift from production networks as the dominant form of capitalist organisation and accumulation towards platform economies, in which user-generated data, algorithmic framings of risks and markets, and digital intermediation become not only a key source of revenue but also significant modes of production and consumption.
Some scholars are beginning to debate the conceptual value of contemporary production networks and platform economies to consider their theoretical implications for issues of value, rent, work, modes of accumulation and governance (e.g. Coe and Yang, 2021; Fields, 2019; Grabher and van Tuijl, 2020; Haberly et al., 2019; Langley and Leyshon, 2021; Richardson, 2020). These debates are emerging from a mix of digital, economic, urban and financial geographies, although not necessarily speaking directly to one another.
The 6th GCEG presents an opportune moment to discuss some of these conceptual debates and bring together people working on platforms and production network perspectives. For the panel session, speakers will critically reflect on the conceptual challenges that an increasingly platformised world might post to our understanding of economic organisation, transactions, structures and markets. The objective is to generate an open discussion about whether we are witnessing a shift from ‘Nikefication’ to ‘Uberisation’ of the economy, whether there is room for recalibration of the GPN framework, and limitations of the platform concept.
References
Coe, Neil M. and Yang, Chun (2021) Mobile Gaming Production Networks, Platform Business Groups, and the Market Power of China’s Tencent, Annals of the American Association of Geographers, DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2021.1933887
Fields, Desiree (2019). Automated landlord: Digital technologies and post-crisis financial accumulation. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X19846514
Grabher, Gernot and van Tuijl, Erwin (2020). Uber-production: From global networks to digital platforms. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 52(5): 1005–1016.
Haberly, Daniel, MacDonald-Korth, Duncan, Urban, Michael, and Wójcik, Dariusz (2019) Asset management as a digital platform industry: A global financial network perspective, Geoforum, 106: 167–181.
Lai, Karen P.Y. and Samers, Michael (2021) ‘Towards an economic geography of FinTech‘, Progress in Human Geography, 45(4): 720-739.
Langley, Paul and Leyshon, Andrew (2017) Platform capitalism: The intermediation and capitalization of digital economic circulation. Finance and Society 3(1): 11–31.
Langley, Paul and Leyshon, Andrew (2021). The platform political economy of FinTech: Reintermediation, consolidation and capitalisation. New Political Economy 26(3): 376-388.
Richardson, Lizzie (2020) ‘Coordinating office space: digital technologies and the platformization of work.’ Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 39(2): 347–365.
Srnicek, Nick (2016) Platform Capitalism. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Karen P.Y. Lai 