Session chairs: Dr Maartje Roelofsen, Dr Lluís Garay and Dr Julie Wilson, NOUTUR Research Group, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Spain.
Notwithstanding their commercial success and growing infrastructural and political power, platforms in the realm of tourism and mobilities have generated substantial unrest and discontentment within societies. Residents struggle to cope with Airbnb-tourism in their neighbourhoods and related disruptions to housing markets; Uber and Lyft drivers grapple with how their work is unevenly allocated, measured, and rewarded by platform companies; meanwhile, governments, policy makers, planners and lawmakers still attempt (with limited success) to bring platforms within the scope of existing and new regulation.
Whilst remaining attentive to the disruptions that platforms have brought about, in this session we wish to focus on the practices of resistance that are already part and parcel of today's platforms and potentially formative of future platform economies. What different kinds of resistance push the boundaries of commonly established norms embedded in platform economies? What does resistance tell us about the kind of platform economies that people aspire to and are yet to be brought into being? Resistance, in this session, may be interpreted in its broadest sense and contributions to this session may include, but are not limited to, the following themes and related topics:
Practices and tactics of resistance in relation to the conduct and operation of platform economies in the context of tourism and mobilities:
- disobedience, strikes, boycotts, disruptions, protests etc. on part of, for example platform workers (individually or collectively organised) and other platform users
- resisting, challenging, altering algorithmic management, codes of conduct and other forms of control that are imposed on platform users
- protest and action against discriminatory practices on tourism and mobilities-related platforms (e.g., racism, classism, sexism, ageism, ableism)
- holding platform companies to account and demanding enforcement of regulations, for example by residents, housing rights organisations, housing cooperatives, tenant organisations, lobby groups, local authorities, advocacy groups.
Alternatives to mainstream platform ideologies and business practices:
- new technological solutions favouring fairness and social justice
- challenging platform monopolies through alternative platforms (Fairbnb, free tours, cooperative platform and non-corporate platforms)
Reshaping platform studies and the ‘sharing economy’ as a field of study and praxis:
- studies that incorporate or depart from analytical lenses such as ‘platform urbanism’, ‘platform capitalism’ and ‘digital colonialism’ to understand and view current changes in tourism and mobilities-related platforms
- studies addressing the environmental costs and harms of tourism and mobilities-related platforms
- scholarship on tourism and mobilities-related platforms that advance black, queer, feminist, and postcolonial critical theory
We invite scholars, practitioners, policy makers, designers, artists, and other folk involved in researching, conceptualising, regulating, resisting, and making platform economies to contribute. This session is co-sponsored by the EPTUR Project of the NOUTUR Research Group of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (web) and the International Geographical Union Commission on Tourism, Leisure and Global Change (web).
Please submit your abstract before February 20th, 2023 via the Abstract Submission button on the 8th IWSE website, mentioning your intention to participate in the session. The instructions for abstract submission can be found here:
https://boku.ac.at/wiso/mi/iwse2023-call-for-paper
