Platform Capitalism in Latin America

VENTRICI, PATRICIA

Global Dialogue

Sage

Año: 2022 vol. 12 p. 12 - 14

2519-8688

The dizzying growth of technological corporations, exponentially increased by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, has amplified the development of platform capitalism in Latin America and deepened some debates and phenomena around capital, labor, and their mutations in the Global South.Several countries of the region – Argentina is a clear example of this – have seen a consolidation of the public discourse that supports the idea that the “economy of knowledge” provides a historic opportunity to achieve the longed-for “leap into development” and get a new place in the international framework. The capacity of certain countries in the region to generate digital corporations of global relevance (called Unicorns, they trade in over a thousand million dollars in the American stock market) is at the base of this narrative.However, the accelerated but still incipient development of this type of business in the region shows a fragmented and contrasting reality, that is, the interlocking between digitalization and precariousness as a material base for the development of the platform economy. This movement towards the deepening of social duality is evident, at other levels, in the reconfiguration that digital platforms have produced in the world of labor.