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  <title>EconStor Community:</title>
  <link rel="alternate" href="https://hdl.handle.net/10419/182404" />
  <subtitle />
  <id>https://hdl.handle.net/10419/182404</id>
  <updated>2026-04-30T10:30:44Z</updated>
  <dc:date>2026-04-30T10:30:44Z</dc:date>
  <entry>
    <title>Paradoxes of Digital Disengagement: In Search of the Opt-Out Button</title>
    <link rel="alternate" href="https://hdl.handle.net/10419/281369" />
    <author>
      <name>Kuntsman, Adi</name>
    </author>
    <author>
      <name>Miyake, Esperanza</name>
    </author>
    <id>https://hdl.handle.net/10419/281369</id>
    <updated>2024-01-26T02:18:04Z</updated>
    <published>2022-01-01T00:00:00Z</published>
    <summary type="text">Title: Paradoxes of Digital Disengagement: In Search of the Opt-Out Button
Authors: Kuntsman, Adi; Miyake, Esperanza
Abstract: Life is increasingly governed and mediated through digital and smart technologies, platforms, big data and algorithms. However, the reasons, practices and impact of how the digital is used by different institutions are often deeply linked to social oppression and injustice. Similarly, the ability to resist these digital impositions is based on inequality and privilege. Challenging the ways in which we are increasingly dependent on the digital, this book raises a set of provocative and urgent questions: in a world of compulsory digitality is there an opt out button? Where, when, how, why and to whom is it available? Answering these questions has become even more relevant since the COVID-19 pandemic. In response, the book puts forward the concept of 'digital disengagement' which is explored across six key areas of digitisation: health; citizenship; education; consumer culture; labour; and the environment. Part I examines the difficulty of opting out of compulsory digitality in a world where most things are digital by default. From health apps, algorithmic decision-making to learning analytics, opting out comes with a set of troubling consequences. Part II turns to several examples of disconnection and disengagement. The chapters reveal how phenomena like digital detoxes, time-management apps and online 'green' spaces are co-opted by the very digital systems one is trying to resist. The book critiques issues relating to digital surveillance, algorithmic discrimination and biased tech, corporatisation and monetisation of data, exploitative digital labour, digitalised self-discipline and destruction of the environment. As an interdisciplinary piece of work, the book will be useful to any scholar and activist in Digital, Internet and Social Media Studies; Digital Sociology and Social Policy; Digital Health; Media, Popular and Communication Studies; Consumer culture; and Environment Studies.</summary>
    <dc:date>2022-01-01T00:00:00Z</dc:date>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <title>Festivals and the City: The Contested Geographies of Urban Events</title>
    <link rel="alternate" href="https://hdl.handle.net/10419/281370" />
    <author>
      <name />
    </author>
    <id>https://hdl.handle.net/10419/281370</id>
    <updated>2024-01-26T02:18:58Z</updated>
    <published>2022-01-01T00:00:00Z</published>
    <summary type="text">Title: Festivals and the City: The Contested Geographies of Urban Events
Editors: Smith, Andrew; Osborn, Guy; Quinn, Bernadette
Abstract: This book explores how festivals and events affect urban places and public spaces, with a particular focus on their role in fostering inclusion. The 'festivalisation' of culture, politics and space in cities is often regarded as problematic, but this book examines the positive and negative ways that festivals affect cities by examining festive spaces as contested spaces. The book focuses on Western European cities, a particularly interesting context given the social and cultural pressures associated with high levels of in-migration and concerns over the commercialisation and privatisation of public spaces. The key themes of this book are the quest for more inclusive urban spaces and the contested geographies of festival spaces and places. Festivals are often used by municipal authorities to break down symbolic barriers that restrict who uses public spaces and what those spaces are used for. However, the rise of commercial festivals and ticketed events means that they are also responsible for imposing physical and financial obstacles that reduce the accessibility of city parks, streets and squares. Alongside addressing the contested effects of urban festivals on the character and inclusivity of public spaces, the book addresses more general themes including the role of festivals in culture-led regeneration. Several chapters analyse festivals and events as economic development tools, and the book also covers contested representations of festival cities and the ways related images and stories are used in place marketing. A range of cases from Western Europe are used to explore these issues, including chapters on some of the world's most significant and contested festival cities: Venice, Edinburgh, London and Barcelona. The book covers a wide range of festivals, including those dedicated to music and the arts, but also events celebrating particular histories, identities and pastimes. A series of fascinating cases are discussed - from the Venice Biennale and Dublin Festival of History, to Rotterdam's music festivals and craft beer festivals in Manchester. The diverse and innovative qualities of the book are also evident in the range of urban spaces covered: obvious examples of public spaces – such as parks, streets, squares and piazzas – are addressed, but the book includes chapters on enclosed public spaces (e.g., libraries) and urban blue spaces (waterways) too. This reflects the interpretation of public spaces as socio-material entities: they are produced informally through their use (including for festivals and events), as well as through their formal design and management.</summary>
    <dc:date>2022-01-01T00:00:00Z</dc:date>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <title>The Fight Against Platform Capitalism: An Inquiry into the Global Struggles of the Gig Economy</title>
    <link rel="alternate" href="https://hdl.handle.net/10419/273762" />
    <author>
      <name>Woodcock, Jamie</name>
    </author>
    <id>https://hdl.handle.net/10419/273762</id>
    <updated>2023-12-10T02:22:52Z</updated>
    <published>2021-01-01T00:00:00Z</published>
    <summary type="text">Title: The Fight Against Platform Capitalism: An Inquiry into the Global Struggles of the Gig Economy
Authors: Woodcock, Jamie
Abstract: So far, platform work has been an important laboratory for capital. Management techniques, like the use of algorithms, are being tested with a view to exporting across the global economy and it is argued that automation is undermining workers' agency. Although the contractual trick of self-employment has allowed platforms to grow quickly and keep their costs down, yet it has also been the case also that workers have also found they can strike without following the existing regulations. This book develops a critique of platforms and platform capitalism from the perspective of workers and contributes to the ongoing debates about the future of work and worker organising. It presents an alternative portrait returning to a focus on workers' experience, focusing on solidarity, drawing out a global picture of new forms of agency. In particular, the book focuses on three dynamics that are driving struggles in the platform economy: the increasing connections between workers who are no longer isolated; the lack of communication and negotiation from platforms, leading to escalating worker action around shared issues; and the internationalisation of platforms, which has laid the basis for new transnational solidarity. Focusing on transport and courier workers, online workers and freelancers author Jamie Woodcock concludes by considering how workers build power in different situations. Rather than undermining worker agency, platforms have instead provided the technical basis for the emergence of new global struggles against capitalism.</summary>
    <dc:date>2021-01-01T00:00:00Z</dc:date>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <title>Incorporating the Digital Commons: Corporate Involvement in Free and Open Source Software</title>
    <link rel="alternate" href="https://hdl.handle.net/10419/273760" />
    <author>
      <name>Birkinbine, Benjamin J.</name>
    </author>
    <id>https://hdl.handle.net/10419/273760</id>
    <updated>2023-11-27T02:56:45Z</updated>
    <published>2020-01-01T00:00:00Z</published>
    <summary type="text">Title: Incorporating the Digital Commons: Corporate Involvement in Free and Open Source Software
Authors: Birkinbine, Benjamin J.
Abstract: The concept of 'the commons' has been used as a framework to understand resources shared by a community rather than a private entity, and it has also inspired social movements working against the enclosure of public goods and resources. One such resource is free (libre) and open source software (FLOSS). FLOSS emerged as an alternative to proprietary software in the 1980s. However, both the products and production processes of FLOSS have become incorporated into capitalist production. For example, Red Hat, Inc. is a large publicly traded company whose business model relies entirely on free software, and IBM, Intel, Cisco, Samsung, Google are some of the largest contributors to Linux, the open-source operating system. This book explores the ways in which FLOSS has been incorporated into digital capitalism. Just as the commons have been used as a motivational frame for radical social movements, it has also served the interests of free-marketeers, corporate libertarians, and states to expand their reach by dragging the shared resources of social life onto digital platforms so they can be integrated into the global capitalist system. The book concludes by asserting the need for a critical political economic understanding of the commons that foregrounds (digital) labour, class struggle, and uneven power distribution within the digital commons as well as between FLOSS communities and their corporate sponsors.</summary>
    <dc:date>2020-01-01T00:00:00Z</dc:date>
  </entry>
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