This paper is a study of the racial, ethnic and class geographies that underlie solidarity-based ... more This paper is a study of the racial, ethnic and class geographies that underlie solidarity-based economic initiatives such as cooperatives and community gardens. These initiatives offer new options for socialeconomic integration of disadvantaged communities and new avenues for wealth creation under adverse economic conditions. Critics, however, see solidarity economy practices as occupying only small niches within the economy and as reinforcing racial and class divides—as a project for affluent white progressives. In this paper I use Geographic Information Systems (GIS) modeling techniques to analyze the spatial distribution of solidarity economy organizations in one particularly divided city: Philadelphia. Using census data and a spatial database of over 500 solidarity economy entities, I map the range and demographics of the solidarity economy’s geography. The study reveals that whereas many types of solidarity economy organization tend to cluster along major demographic divides, ...
This Project investigates the use of songs as a means to develop listening comprehension in Engli... more This Project investigates the use of songs as a means to develop listening comprehension in English classes. Currently, the development of this skill has little relevance in the foreign language classroom, becoming a problem for students when they study this language. Fact that was evidenced in ninth grade EGB students from the Rashid Torbay Fiscal College who presented difficulties in listening comprehension during their English classes. Lately, songs have become a necessary tool to develop this skill because, thanks to their appropriate treatment and proper application as strategies, they help to improve listening skills when acquiring a foreign language. To address this situation, different theoretical bases were studied to provide a referential framework about the relevance of music in language learning and the development of listening comprehension.
This paper stages an encounter between Relational Poverty Theory (RPT) and the solidarity economy... more This paper stages an encounter between Relational Poverty Theory (RPT) and the solidarity economy movement. RPT understands poverty as the dynamic product of economic exploitation, political exclusion and cultural marginalization. The solidarity economy movement can be seen as a transformative political response to these dynamics aiming to replace exploitation with cooperation, exclusion with participation and marginalisation with practices of inclusion. Globally, more than sixty solidarity economy movements are coordinating efforts, developing associative relations between cooperative economic institutions, social justice movements, and one another. While these developments are encouraging, many practitioners are concerned about the movement's future. Solidarity economy practitioners we encountered in our US-based research were concerned with the movement's vulnerability to co-optive exploitation or (un)witting perpetuation of the very dynamics of exclusion and marginalisation it seeks to transcend. We take this as evidence of the enduring power of poverty-dynamics and testament to the incisive, critical insights of RPT. However, what remains unanswered is how the solidarity economy might succeed in its own terms? We deploy Gibson-Graham's theorization of postcapitalist politics to answer this question, charting the movement's possibilities, specifically how it works by creating and sharing spaces and monetary and non-monetary resources in pursuit of its objectives. Two organizations we encountered in our research-Stone Soup a cooperative incubator in Worcester, Massachusetts and CERO commercial composting cooperative-illustrate what Gibson-Graham name a politics of commoning. Both of these organisations work by sharing spatial, financial, and political resources in ways that are cooperative, participatory and inclusionary.
This article examines how ride-hailing companies like Uber have disrupted not only the mainstream... more This article examines how ride-hailing companies like Uber have disrupted not only the mainstream taxi industry but also progressive efforts to remedy that industry's shortcomings. The article focuses on Alliance Taxi Cooperative (ATC), a failed taxi worker cooperative in Philadelphia. ATC was deeply committed to economic democracy, living wages, and outreach to underserved communities. Its ambitions were nevertheless thwarted by regulatory obstruction and market disruptions caused by Uber. Drawing on relational poverty theory and literature on solidarity economy and platform capitalism, I suggest that ATC's story offers more than a cautionary tale about the pitfalls facing small taxi start-ups. It also illuminates a great deal about the exploitative conditions and discriminatory geographies of the taxi and ride-hailing industry, the biases of regulatory agencies, and the complicated ways that platform capitalism is refiguring class dynamics. Resumen: Este art ıculo examina los efectos que tienen las compa~ n ıas de servicios de transporte privado de pasajeros como Uber en la industria de los taxis convencionales. Estas nuevas compa~ n ıas no s olo trastocan la industria, sino tambi en los intentos de mejorarla. El art ıculo se centra en Alliance Taxi Cooperative (ATC) en Fildelfia, una cooperativa de taxistas fallida. ATC estaba profundamente comprometida con la demo-cracia econ omica y los salarios dignos, as ı como con la provisi on del servicios a comuni-dades marginadas. Sin embargo, las obstrucciones regulatorias y a las disrupciones que Uber caus o en el mercado frustraron sus ambiciones. En este art ıculo recurro a la teor ıa relacional de la pobreza, la bibliograf ıa sobre econom ıa solidaria y la teor ıa del capita-lismo de plataforma para mostrar que el caso de ATC ofrece m as que una lecci on sobre los escollos que enfrentan las peque~ nas empresas de taxis. El caso tambi en revela las condiciones de explotaci on y las geograf ıas discriminatorias que existen en la industria de servicios privados de transporte, as ı como sobre los prejuicios de las agencias regula-doras y la formas complejas en las cuales el capitalismo de plataforma reconfigura la din amica de clases.
In debates over post-capitalist politics, growing attention has been paid to the solidarity econo... more In debates over post-capitalist politics, growing attention has been paid to the solidarity economy (SE), a framework that draws together diverse practices ranging from coops to community gardens. Despite proponents' commitment to inclusion, racial and class divides suffuse the SE movement. Using qualitative fieldwork and an original SE dataset, this article examines the geospatial composition of the SE within the segregated geography of Philadelphia. We find that though the SE as a whole is widely distributed across the city, it is, with the exception of community gardens, largely absent from poor neighborhoods of color. We also identify SE clusters in racially and economically diverse border areas rather than in predominantly affluent White neighborhoods. Such findings complicate claims about the SE's emancipatory potential and underscore the need for its realignment towards people of color and the poor. We conclude with examples of how the SE might more fully address racial injustice. Resumen: En los debates sobre la política post-capitalista se ha prestado cada vez mas atención a la economía solidaria (ES), marco teórico que reúne diversas prácticas que abarcan desde cooperativas hasta huertos comunitarios. A pesar del compromiso de los proponentes con la inclusión, las divisiones raciales y de clase permean el movimiento de la ES. Utilizando trabajo cualitativo de campo y un levantamiento de datos original, este artículo examina la composición geo-espacial de la ES en el contexto de la segregación espacial de Filadelfia. Observamos que aunque la ES como un todo está ampliamente distribuida por toda la ciudad, está ausente en los barrios pobres de color, con la excepción de los huertos comunitarios. También identificamos grupos de ES en zonas fronterizas, racial y económicamente diversas, más que en barrios predominantemente ricos y blancos. Estos hallazgos complican las afirmaciones acerca del potencial emancipatorio de la ES y subrayan la necesidad de su realineación hacia las personas de color y los pobres. Concluimos con ejemplos de cómo la SE podría abordar más plenamente la injusticia racial.
This article addresses the question of how political theory within the liberal arts differs from ... more This article addresses the question of how political theory within the liberal arts differs from political theory done elsewhere. It frames the discussion in terms of both the existential crisis of political theory within the political science discipline and the financial and identity crises of liberal arts education within the broader higher education environment. The article then identifies two major factors—the small size and the prevalence of liberal arts norms— that contribute to convergence in the way political theory is taught and researched in the liberal arts. These observations notwithstanding, this article’s central contention is that there is a great diversity of ways to “do” political theory in the liberal arts, and that variation among colleges and among political theorists tends to be far more definitive of the political theory experience than the commonalities derived from the liberal arts setting. The essay concludes by describing sources of divergence that complicate efforts to decipher a coherent and shared understanding of what political theory in the liberal arts means.
In spring 2014, an interdisciplinary media project titled “Troubled Waters: Tracing Waste in the ... more In spring 2014, an interdisciplinary media project titled “Troubled Waters: Tracing Waste in the Delaware River” was organized at Haverford College. This project brought together more than 50 students from four courses comprising introductory political science, chemistry, and documentary film students, as well as a community media artist and community partners. The aim was to explore the causes, impacts, and meanings of different types of waste that are polluting the Delaware River. Chemistry students collected samples to determine the presence of chemicals from various waste products, political science students traced the waste to globalized production processes, and documentary students explored diverse ways of representing the theme of waste on screen. This article describes the project and how it might serve as a pedagogical model for multicourse interdisciplinary collaboration and community engagement.
About 6,000 financial cooperatives, called credit unions, with more than 103 million members mana... more About 6,000 financial cooperatives, called credit unions, with more than 103 million members manage over $1 trillion in collective assets in the United States but are largely invisible and seen as inferior to private banks. In contrast to banks that generate profit for outside investors and do not give voice to customers, these not-for-profit institutions have a democratic governance structure and a mission to provide good services to their members. We use diverse economies and critical/feminist geographic information system (GIS) approaches to theorize them as noncapitalist alternatives to banks and possible sites of social transformation toward a solidarity economy. Using the case of cooperative finance in New York City, we analyze spatial patterns, characteristics, and placemaking practices of credit unions with different kinds of the common bond, a principle that unites a financial community, and in relation to urban geographies of class and race. We find that credit unions provide a historically proven mechanism for collective resistance to marginalization by racial capitalism and, depending on the common bond type, make place by (1) providing financial inclusion in poor and minority neighborhoods; (2) scaling up solidarity finance through participation of middle classes; and (3) diverting assets from capitalist investment into social reproduction and livelihoods. Credit unions express the racialized wealth of their communities, however, and create spatial exclusions that pose a challenge to postcapitalist movements such as solidarity economy. These findings are applicable to other places marked by segregation and call for further inquiry into possibilities and barriers to solidarity finance.
actually the reclassification of drivers as employees that jeopardizes the drivers' liberty and f... more actually the reclassification of drivers as employees that jeopardizes the drivers' liberty and flexibility. The controversy over AB5 is just one example of the ethical complications wrought by a rapidly changing labor market amidst the explosion of the gig economy. Over the past decade, we've seen the proliferation of platform-based businesses across diverse industries, ranging from accommodation (e.g., VRBO, Airbnb) and daily errands (e.g., Handy.com, Taskrabbit) to delivery services (e.g., DoorDash, Deliveroo, PostMates) and transportation (e.g., Lyft, Sidecar, Uber). These firms collectively constitute what I've described above as the "gig economy" and others have referred to as "platform capitalism" or "the sharing economy," among other neologisms. 3 What these firms have in common is their use of digital platforms as intermediaries to coordinate and connect consumers directly with independent service providers outside of traditional business structures. The contracts take place "peer-to-peer" with the platform companies skimming off fees in exchange for use of their platform. These businesses are rapidly transforming the nature of production and consumption in the industries they occupy, and they are affecting core ways we represent and comprehend the world around us. Our collective understanding of work, for example, must be altered to account for employment where pay rates and incentives are determined by algorithms, and where there is no proper workplace, no boss, no co-workers, and sometimes no visible customers. We must better understand these changes, their social and political entailments, and, indeed, their ethical implications. I open this article with an account of California's new law, not in order to set up a longer discussion of the law or to stake out a legal position on the case, but instead to draw attention to the centrality of incentives in contemporary political economic discourse and to how the gig 3
This article examines how ride-hailing companies like Uber have disrupted not only the mainstream... more This article examines how ride-hailing companies like Uber have disrupted not only the mainstream taxi industry but also progressive efforts to remedy that industry's shortcomings. The article focuses on Alliance Taxi Cooperative (ATC), a failed taxi worker cooperative in Philadelphia. ATC was deeply committed to economic democracy, living wages, and outreach to underserved communities. Its ambitions were nevertheless thwarted by regulatory obstruction and market disruptions caused by Uber. Drawing on relational poverty theory and literature on solidarity economy and platform capitalism, I suggest that ATC's story offers more than a cautionary tale about the pitfalls facing small taxi start-ups. It also illuminates a great deal about the exploitative conditions and discriminatory geographies of the taxi and ride-hailing industry, the biases of regulatory agencies, and the complicated ways that platform capitalism is refiguring class dynamics. Resumen: Este art ıculo examina los efectos que tienen las compa~ n ıas de servicios de transporte privado de pasajeros como Uber en la industria de los taxis convencionales. Estas nuevas compa~ n ıas no s olo trastocan la industria, sino tambi en los intentos de mejorarla. El art ıculo se centra en Alliance Taxi Cooperative (ATC) en Fildelfia, una cooperativa de taxistas fallida. ATC estaba profundamente comprometida con la demo-cracia econ omica y los salarios dignos, as ı como con la provisi on del servicios a comuni-dades marginadas. Sin embargo, las obstrucciones regulatorias y a las disrupciones que Uber caus o en el mercado frustraron sus ambiciones. En este art ıculo recurro a la teor ıa relacional de la pobreza, la bibliograf ıa sobre econom ıa solidaria y la teor ıa del capita-lismo de plataforma para mostrar que el caso de ATC ofrece m as que una lecci on sobre los escollos que enfrentan las peque~ nas empresas de taxis. El caso tambi en revela las condiciones de explotaci on y las geograf ıas discriminatorias que existen en la industria de servicios privados de transporte, as ı como sobre los prejuicios de las agencias regula-doras y la formas complejas en las cuales el capitalismo de plataforma reconfigura la din amica de clases.
A B S T R A C T This paper stages an encounter between Relational Poverty Theory (RPT) and the so... more A B S T R A C T This paper stages an encounter between Relational Poverty Theory (RPT) and the solidarity economy movement. RPT understands poverty as the dynamic product of economic exploitation, political exclusion and cultural marginalization. The solidarity economy movement can be seen as a transformative political response to these dynamics aiming to replace exploitation with cooperation, exclusion with participation and marginalisation with practices of inclusion. Globally, more than sixty solidarity economy movements are coordinating efforts, developing associative relations between cooperative economic institutions, social justice movements, and one another. While these developments are encouraging, many practitioners are concerned about the movement's future. Solidarity economy practitioners we encountered in our US-based research were concerned with the movement's vulnerability to co-optation and exploitation or (un)witting perpetuation of the very dynamics of exclusion and marginalisation it seeks to transcend. We take this as evidence of the enduring power of poverty-dynamics and testament to the incisive, critical insights of RPT. However, what remains unanswered is how the solidarity economy might succeed in its own terms? We deploy Gibson-Graham's theorization of postcapitalist politics to answer this question, charting the movement's possibilities, specifically how it works by creating and sharing spaces and monetary and non-monetary resources in pursuit of its objectives. Two organizations we encountered in our research—Stone Soup, a cooperative incubator in Worcester, Massachusetts and CERO, a commercial composting cooperative in Boston, — illustrate what Gibson-Graham name " a politics of com-moning. " Both of these organisations work by sharing spatial, financial, and political resources in ways that are cooperative, participatory and inclusionary.
This paper is a study of the racial, ethnic and class geographies that underlie solidarity-based ... more This paper is a study of the racial, ethnic and class geographies that underlie solidarity-based economic initiatives such as cooperatives and community gardens. These initiatives offer new options for socialeconomic integration of disadvantaged communities and new avenues for wealth creation under adverse economic conditions. Critics, however, see solidarity economy practices as occupying only small niches within the economy and as reinforcing racial and class divides—as a project for affluent white progressives. In this paper I use Geographic Information Systems (GIS) modeling techniques to analyze the spatial distribution of solidarity economy organizations in one particularly divided city: Philadelphia. Using census data and a spatial database of over 500 solidarity economy entities, I map the range and demographics of the solidarity economy’s geography. The study reveals that whereas many types of solidarity economy organization tend to cluster along major demographic divides, ...
This Project investigates the use of songs as a means to develop listening comprehension in Engli... more This Project investigates the use of songs as a means to develop listening comprehension in English classes. Currently, the development of this skill has little relevance in the foreign language classroom, becoming a problem for students when they study this language. Fact that was evidenced in ninth grade EGB students from the Rashid Torbay Fiscal College who presented difficulties in listening comprehension during their English classes. Lately, songs have become a necessary tool to develop this skill because, thanks to their appropriate treatment and proper application as strategies, they help to improve listening skills when acquiring a foreign language. To address this situation, different theoretical bases were studied to provide a referential framework about the relevance of music in language learning and the development of listening comprehension.
This paper stages an encounter between Relational Poverty Theory (RPT) and the solidarity economy... more This paper stages an encounter between Relational Poverty Theory (RPT) and the solidarity economy movement. RPT understands poverty as the dynamic product of economic exploitation, political exclusion and cultural marginalization. The solidarity economy movement can be seen as a transformative political response to these dynamics aiming to replace exploitation with cooperation, exclusion with participation and marginalisation with practices of inclusion. Globally, more than sixty solidarity economy movements are coordinating efforts, developing associative relations between cooperative economic institutions, social justice movements, and one another. While these developments are encouraging, many practitioners are concerned about the movement's future. Solidarity economy practitioners we encountered in our US-based research were concerned with the movement's vulnerability to co-optive exploitation or (un)witting perpetuation of the very dynamics of exclusion and marginalisation it seeks to transcend. We take this as evidence of the enduring power of poverty-dynamics and testament to the incisive, critical insights of RPT. However, what remains unanswered is how the solidarity economy might succeed in its own terms? We deploy Gibson-Graham's theorization of postcapitalist politics to answer this question, charting the movement's possibilities, specifically how it works by creating and sharing spaces and monetary and non-monetary resources in pursuit of its objectives. Two organizations we encountered in our research-Stone Soup a cooperative incubator in Worcester, Massachusetts and CERO commercial composting cooperative-illustrate what Gibson-Graham name a politics of commoning. Both of these organisations work by sharing spatial, financial, and political resources in ways that are cooperative, participatory and inclusionary.
This article examines how ride-hailing companies like Uber have disrupted not only the mainstream... more This article examines how ride-hailing companies like Uber have disrupted not only the mainstream taxi industry but also progressive efforts to remedy that industry's shortcomings. The article focuses on Alliance Taxi Cooperative (ATC), a failed taxi worker cooperative in Philadelphia. ATC was deeply committed to economic democracy, living wages, and outreach to underserved communities. Its ambitions were nevertheless thwarted by regulatory obstruction and market disruptions caused by Uber. Drawing on relational poverty theory and literature on solidarity economy and platform capitalism, I suggest that ATC's story offers more than a cautionary tale about the pitfalls facing small taxi start-ups. It also illuminates a great deal about the exploitative conditions and discriminatory geographies of the taxi and ride-hailing industry, the biases of regulatory agencies, and the complicated ways that platform capitalism is refiguring class dynamics. Resumen: Este art ıculo examina los efectos que tienen las compa~ n ıas de servicios de transporte privado de pasajeros como Uber en la industria de los taxis convencionales. Estas nuevas compa~ n ıas no s olo trastocan la industria, sino tambi en los intentos de mejorarla. El art ıculo se centra en Alliance Taxi Cooperative (ATC) en Fildelfia, una cooperativa de taxistas fallida. ATC estaba profundamente comprometida con la demo-cracia econ omica y los salarios dignos, as ı como con la provisi on del servicios a comuni-dades marginadas. Sin embargo, las obstrucciones regulatorias y a las disrupciones que Uber caus o en el mercado frustraron sus ambiciones. En este art ıculo recurro a la teor ıa relacional de la pobreza, la bibliograf ıa sobre econom ıa solidaria y la teor ıa del capita-lismo de plataforma para mostrar que el caso de ATC ofrece m as que una lecci on sobre los escollos que enfrentan las peque~ nas empresas de taxis. El caso tambi en revela las condiciones de explotaci on y las geograf ıas discriminatorias que existen en la industria de servicios privados de transporte, as ı como sobre los prejuicios de las agencias regula-doras y la formas complejas en las cuales el capitalismo de plataforma reconfigura la din amica de clases.
In debates over post-capitalist politics, growing attention has been paid to the solidarity econo... more In debates over post-capitalist politics, growing attention has been paid to the solidarity economy (SE), a framework that draws together diverse practices ranging from coops to community gardens. Despite proponents' commitment to inclusion, racial and class divides suffuse the SE movement. Using qualitative fieldwork and an original SE dataset, this article examines the geospatial composition of the SE within the segregated geography of Philadelphia. We find that though the SE as a whole is widely distributed across the city, it is, with the exception of community gardens, largely absent from poor neighborhoods of color. We also identify SE clusters in racially and economically diverse border areas rather than in predominantly affluent White neighborhoods. Such findings complicate claims about the SE's emancipatory potential and underscore the need for its realignment towards people of color and the poor. We conclude with examples of how the SE might more fully address racial injustice. Resumen: En los debates sobre la política post-capitalista se ha prestado cada vez mas atención a la economía solidaria (ES), marco teórico que reúne diversas prácticas que abarcan desde cooperativas hasta huertos comunitarios. A pesar del compromiso de los proponentes con la inclusión, las divisiones raciales y de clase permean el movimiento de la ES. Utilizando trabajo cualitativo de campo y un levantamiento de datos original, este artículo examina la composición geo-espacial de la ES en el contexto de la segregación espacial de Filadelfia. Observamos que aunque la ES como un todo está ampliamente distribuida por toda la ciudad, está ausente en los barrios pobres de color, con la excepción de los huertos comunitarios. También identificamos grupos de ES en zonas fronterizas, racial y económicamente diversas, más que en barrios predominantemente ricos y blancos. Estos hallazgos complican las afirmaciones acerca del potencial emancipatorio de la ES y subrayan la necesidad de su realineación hacia las personas de color y los pobres. Concluimos con ejemplos de cómo la SE podría abordar más plenamente la injusticia racial.
This article addresses the question of how political theory within the liberal arts differs from ... more This article addresses the question of how political theory within the liberal arts differs from political theory done elsewhere. It frames the discussion in terms of both the existential crisis of political theory within the political science discipline and the financial and identity crises of liberal arts education within the broader higher education environment. The article then identifies two major factors—the small size and the prevalence of liberal arts norms— that contribute to convergence in the way political theory is taught and researched in the liberal arts. These observations notwithstanding, this article’s central contention is that there is a great diversity of ways to “do” political theory in the liberal arts, and that variation among colleges and among political theorists tends to be far more definitive of the political theory experience than the commonalities derived from the liberal arts setting. The essay concludes by describing sources of divergence that complicate efforts to decipher a coherent and shared understanding of what political theory in the liberal arts means.
In spring 2014, an interdisciplinary media project titled “Troubled Waters: Tracing Waste in the ... more In spring 2014, an interdisciplinary media project titled “Troubled Waters: Tracing Waste in the Delaware River” was organized at Haverford College. This project brought together more than 50 students from four courses comprising introductory political science, chemistry, and documentary film students, as well as a community media artist and community partners. The aim was to explore the causes, impacts, and meanings of different types of waste that are polluting the Delaware River. Chemistry students collected samples to determine the presence of chemicals from various waste products, political science students traced the waste to globalized production processes, and documentary students explored diverse ways of representing the theme of waste on screen. This article describes the project and how it might serve as a pedagogical model for multicourse interdisciplinary collaboration and community engagement.
About 6,000 financial cooperatives, called credit unions, with more than 103 million members mana... more About 6,000 financial cooperatives, called credit unions, with more than 103 million members manage over $1 trillion in collective assets in the United States but are largely invisible and seen as inferior to private banks. In contrast to banks that generate profit for outside investors and do not give voice to customers, these not-for-profit institutions have a democratic governance structure and a mission to provide good services to their members. We use diverse economies and critical/feminist geographic information system (GIS) approaches to theorize them as noncapitalist alternatives to banks and possible sites of social transformation toward a solidarity economy. Using the case of cooperative finance in New York City, we analyze spatial patterns, characteristics, and placemaking practices of credit unions with different kinds of the common bond, a principle that unites a financial community, and in relation to urban geographies of class and race. We find that credit unions provide a historically proven mechanism for collective resistance to marginalization by racial capitalism and, depending on the common bond type, make place by (1) providing financial inclusion in poor and minority neighborhoods; (2) scaling up solidarity finance through participation of middle classes; and (3) diverting assets from capitalist investment into social reproduction and livelihoods. Credit unions express the racialized wealth of their communities, however, and create spatial exclusions that pose a challenge to postcapitalist movements such as solidarity economy. These findings are applicable to other places marked by segregation and call for further inquiry into possibilities and barriers to solidarity finance.
actually the reclassification of drivers as employees that jeopardizes the drivers' liberty and f... more actually the reclassification of drivers as employees that jeopardizes the drivers' liberty and flexibility. The controversy over AB5 is just one example of the ethical complications wrought by a rapidly changing labor market amidst the explosion of the gig economy. Over the past decade, we've seen the proliferation of platform-based businesses across diverse industries, ranging from accommodation (e.g., VRBO, Airbnb) and daily errands (e.g., Handy.com, Taskrabbit) to delivery services (e.g., DoorDash, Deliveroo, PostMates) and transportation (e.g., Lyft, Sidecar, Uber). These firms collectively constitute what I've described above as the "gig economy" and others have referred to as "platform capitalism" or "the sharing economy," among other neologisms. 3 What these firms have in common is their use of digital platforms as intermediaries to coordinate and connect consumers directly with independent service providers outside of traditional business structures. The contracts take place "peer-to-peer" with the platform companies skimming off fees in exchange for use of their platform. These businesses are rapidly transforming the nature of production and consumption in the industries they occupy, and they are affecting core ways we represent and comprehend the world around us. Our collective understanding of work, for example, must be altered to account for employment where pay rates and incentives are determined by algorithms, and where there is no proper workplace, no boss, no co-workers, and sometimes no visible customers. We must better understand these changes, their social and political entailments, and, indeed, their ethical implications. I open this article with an account of California's new law, not in order to set up a longer discussion of the law or to stake out a legal position on the case, but instead to draw attention to the centrality of incentives in contemporary political economic discourse and to how the gig 3
This article examines how ride-hailing companies like Uber have disrupted not only the mainstream... more This article examines how ride-hailing companies like Uber have disrupted not only the mainstream taxi industry but also progressive efforts to remedy that industry's shortcomings. The article focuses on Alliance Taxi Cooperative (ATC), a failed taxi worker cooperative in Philadelphia. ATC was deeply committed to economic democracy, living wages, and outreach to underserved communities. Its ambitions were nevertheless thwarted by regulatory obstruction and market disruptions caused by Uber. Drawing on relational poverty theory and literature on solidarity economy and platform capitalism, I suggest that ATC's story offers more than a cautionary tale about the pitfalls facing small taxi start-ups. It also illuminates a great deal about the exploitative conditions and discriminatory geographies of the taxi and ride-hailing industry, the biases of regulatory agencies, and the complicated ways that platform capitalism is refiguring class dynamics. Resumen: Este art ıculo examina los efectos que tienen las compa~ n ıas de servicios de transporte privado de pasajeros como Uber en la industria de los taxis convencionales. Estas nuevas compa~ n ıas no s olo trastocan la industria, sino tambi en los intentos de mejorarla. El art ıculo se centra en Alliance Taxi Cooperative (ATC) en Fildelfia, una cooperativa de taxistas fallida. ATC estaba profundamente comprometida con la demo-cracia econ omica y los salarios dignos, as ı como con la provisi on del servicios a comuni-dades marginadas. Sin embargo, las obstrucciones regulatorias y a las disrupciones que Uber caus o en el mercado frustraron sus ambiciones. En este art ıculo recurro a la teor ıa relacional de la pobreza, la bibliograf ıa sobre econom ıa solidaria y la teor ıa del capita-lismo de plataforma para mostrar que el caso de ATC ofrece m as que una lecci on sobre los escollos que enfrentan las peque~ nas empresas de taxis. El caso tambi en revela las condiciones de explotaci on y las geograf ıas discriminatorias que existen en la industria de servicios privados de transporte, as ı como sobre los prejuicios de las agencias regula-doras y la formas complejas en las cuales el capitalismo de plataforma reconfigura la din amica de clases.
A B S T R A C T This paper stages an encounter between Relational Poverty Theory (RPT) and the so... more A B S T R A C T This paper stages an encounter between Relational Poverty Theory (RPT) and the solidarity economy movement. RPT understands poverty as the dynamic product of economic exploitation, political exclusion and cultural marginalization. The solidarity economy movement can be seen as a transformative political response to these dynamics aiming to replace exploitation with cooperation, exclusion with participation and marginalisation with practices of inclusion. Globally, more than sixty solidarity economy movements are coordinating efforts, developing associative relations between cooperative economic institutions, social justice movements, and one another. While these developments are encouraging, many practitioners are concerned about the movement's future. Solidarity economy practitioners we encountered in our US-based research were concerned with the movement's vulnerability to co-optation and exploitation or (un)witting perpetuation of the very dynamics of exclusion and marginalisation it seeks to transcend. We take this as evidence of the enduring power of poverty-dynamics and testament to the incisive, critical insights of RPT. However, what remains unanswered is how the solidarity economy might succeed in its own terms? We deploy Gibson-Graham's theorization of postcapitalist politics to answer this question, charting the movement's possibilities, specifically how it works by creating and sharing spaces and monetary and non-monetary resources in pursuit of its objectives. Two organizations we encountered in our research—Stone Soup, a cooperative incubator in Worcester, Massachusetts and CERO, a commercial composting cooperative in Boston, — illustrate what Gibson-Graham name " a politics of com-moning. " Both of these organisations work by sharing spatial, financial, and political resources in ways that are cooperative, participatory and inclusionary.
On June 13, 2012, two hundred people participated in a one-day conference at Drexel University th... more On June 13, 2012, two hundred people participated in a one-day conference at Drexel University that explored what urban areas of Philadelphia and Madison, and rural areas in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, can learn from one another about building cooperatives and cooperative networks, and what cooperatives contribute to cities, regions, and states. The conference included sessions that examined specific cooperatives in detail. This publication is a compilation of 20 case studies of cooperatives presented at the conference.
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Papers by Craig Borowiak