Mattia Frapporti
Università di Bologna, Dipartimento di Storia Culture Civiltà, Department Member
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This paper focusses on the impact that the development and spreading of digital platforms have at urban level. In particular, lean platforms are transforming cities more and more in sites of production and circulation, so to change also... more
This paper focusses on the impact that the development and spreading of digital platforms have at urban level. In particular, lean platforms are transforming cities more and more in sites of production and circulation, so to change also actors and roles engaged with urban planning and public policies. Despite we will propose an investigation on a particular service, neither the analysis of a general process shared by all platforms, in the article we will investigate the socio-historical background for platform economy development more in general, in order to propose a methodological approach we call a trans-urban approach. In the first part of the article, we rest on the historical background of our digital era. Analysing the relation between technological innovation and productive organization, we will highlight how platform economy emerges as particular articulation of a more general long-time transition deeply entangled with the so-called "Logistics Revolution". In the second part, we will consider more in depth the specificities of platform business model in relation with its urban dimension focusing on the platforms territorialization and on platforms conflicts. In the third and final part, we propose a trans-urban approach as an innovative perspective to study the globalized and variegated features of contemporary capitalism, in particular the urban impact of platform economy. The aim is to sketch few features of a new methodological approach towards the urban space as field of tension between several and different perspectives generated by the development of platform economy. This article summarizes some first outputs from Horizon2020 project PLUS (Platform. Labour in Urban Spaces) coordinated by University of Bologna.
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Con un\u2019intensit\ue0 crescente la logistica si sta imponendo come nuovo paradigma attraverso cui interpretare le mutazioni che contrassegnano il presente globale. Nel corso della modernit\ue0 la logistica \ue8 stata pensata come... more
Con un\u2019intensit\ue0 crescente la logistica si sta imponendo come nuovo paradigma attraverso cui interpretare le mutazioni che contrassegnano il presente globale. Nel corso della modernit\ue0 la logistica \ue8 stata pensata come l\u2019arte, la tecnica e la scienza della mobilit\ue0 di merci, eserciti e soggetti. Tuttavia, a partire da quella che spesso viene definita come \u201arivoluzione logistica\u201b \u2013 tra gli anni Sessanta e Settanta del XX secolo \u2013, la logistica si \ue8 progressivamente imposta come vettore per la riorganizzazione delle forme produttive e degli spazi politici, sino a divenire infrastruttura complessiva delle interconnessioni che caratterizzano la societ\ue0-mondo contemporanea. In altre parole, quanto comunemente si definisce come globalizzazione, pu\uf2 in effetti essere letto come la visione di un mondo in cui la dimensione spaziale si comprime fino ad annullarsi. L\u2019interesse degli studiosi accademici verso la logistica \ue8 cresciuto fortemente perlomeno a partire dall\u2019alba del nuovo millennio, fuoriuscendo dagli ambiti tecnici e manageriali in cui era rimasta fin l\uec confinata. Da allora si sono cos\uec sviluppati numerosi convegni, pubblicazioni e ricerche sul tema le quali si contraddistinguono per una intrinseca multidisciplinarit\ue0 che spazia dalla sociologia all\u2019antropologia, dalla filosofia politica alla storia e, ovviamente, la geografia. La logistica, detta in altri termini, si sta perfezionando come lente d\u2019interpretazione per le scosse e i moti che attraversano il presente globale, caratterizzato dal \u201acapitalismo a filiera\u201b (Tsing, 2009), e dalla progressiva e apparentemente irreversibile ascesa del platform capitalism \u2013 la cui incidenza sugli spazi (urbani, trans-statali o globali) \ue8 sempre pi\uf9 evidente
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Research Interests: Critical Theory, Political Economy, Political Theory, Genealogy, Political Ecology, and 15 morePolitical Science, Logistics, Politics, Capitalism, Marxist theory, Karl Marx, Operaismo, Class Struggle, Automation, Industry, Industrial Revolution, Sergio Bologna, Digitalization, Anticapitalism, and Marxist Theory
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The goal of the article is to investigate some aspects of the logistic European integration at its origins by looking at the contribution of Jean Monnet. Focusing on the fifty years before the Schuman declaration, the text traces the... more
The goal of the article is to investigate some aspects of the logistic European integration at its origins by looking at the contribution of Jean Monnet. Focusing on the fifty years before the Schuman declaration, the text traces the formation of the “logistics rationality” of the Frenchman, centering on two crucial aspects of his action: the commitment to build transnational infrastructures and the creation of “logistic communities” of States. Following this route, the birth of the ECSC will emerge as the final step of a long path, to which Monnet contributed by theorizing the construction of the “European logistic space”.
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Uno sguardo sull'opera di Jean Monnet, sull'importanza delle infrastrutture e sulla governance logistica per costruire una storia dell'integrazione europea che scardini la fissità dei paletti cronologici e... more
Uno sguardo sull'opera di Jean Monnet, sull'importanza delle infrastrutture e sulla governance logistica per costruire una storia dell'integrazione europea che scardini la fissità dei paletti cronologici e metodologici che racchiudono quel processo entro gli ultimi settant'anni di storia.
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This collection of essays seeks to intervene in the lively discussions about logistical capitalism within and beyond academia, by unearthing the multiple ways in which gender underwrites global circulation. The essays gathered here build... more
This collection of essays seeks to intervene in the lively discussions about logistical capitalism within and beyond academia, by unearthing the multiple ways in which gender underwrites global circulation. The essays gathered here build on a wide array of feminist and post-colonial works from a range of disciplines, adding to the already existing wealth of analyses that discuss the complex imbrications of processes of gendering and racialization within projects of accumulation on a global scale and across different temporalities. Crucially, we contend that addressing these issues through an explicitly logistical gaze does not amount merely to a reformulation of the insights of these important bodies of work, but rather it is the result of the political urgency to name and counteract the specific mechanisms through which contemporary capitalism shapes our lives and extracts from them. This e-book thus provides a range of interventions which, however diverse, all place gender at the ...
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La logistica si e recentemente imposta come una prospettiva privilegiata per la comprensione del mondo contemporaneo a partire dall’interazione tra mobilita multiple – di persone, merci, capitali, informazioni. Tuttavia, questa... more
La logistica si e recentemente imposta come una prospettiva privilegiata per la comprensione del mondo contemporaneo a partire dall’interazione tra mobilita multiple – di persone, merci, capitali, informazioni. Tuttavia, questa prospettiva rischia di risolvere nel presente dinamiche che sono ricorse storicamente in modali-ta diverse, non lineari e reversibili. I contributi di questo volume si pongono l’obiettivo di mettere in evidenza le specificita storiche e geografiche dei processi logistici. Essi contribuiscono alla definizione di una “logistica delle migrazioni” a partire da casi di studio specifici, proponendo al tempo stesso alcuni elementi utili a problematizzare continuita e rotture storiche all’interno di un confronto tra scien-ze storiche e scienze politico-sociali.
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Platforms are transforming society, economy, and politics and becoming essential infrastructures of our lives. In this way, digital spaces overlap with other spatialities, urban areas in particular. This process is not peaceful but... more
Platforms are transforming society, economy, and politics and becoming essential infrastructures of our lives. In this way, digital spaces overlap with other spatialities, urban areas in particular. This process is not peaceful but generates bottlenecks, resistances, and oppositions. In this article, we propose to combine platform studies with infrastructure studies to frame the capacity of such enterprises to build new urban postindustrial environments. We focus on the potential conflicts emerging in the face of the growing platformization and sketch the outlines of a counter-platform politics.
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Questo volume raccoglie una serie di riflessioni sviluppatesi all’interno di un seminario internazionale organizzato da Into the Black Box e tenutosi online fra aprile e maggio 2020 per provare a pensare collettivamente la pandemia in... more
Questo volume raccoglie una serie di riflessioni sviluppatesi all’interno di un seminario internazionale organizzato da Into the Black Box e tenutosi online fra aprile e maggio 2020 per provare a pensare collettivamente la pandemia in corso sottraendosi tanto alle narrazioni dell’eccezionalita e del catastrofismo quanto a quelle del negazionismo e del complotto. Dall’arrivo del Covid-19 in Europa sono passati oramai diversi mesi in cui abbiamo visto il dibattito pubblico evolversi rapidamente – la riflessione sulle epidemie nella storia moderna o la critica delle misure di distanziamento sociale hanno lasciato spazio al tema della crisi economica e delle trasformazioni urbane, per citarne alcuni – mentre gli Stati si attrezzavano a gestire la convivenza col virus cosi come a fare i conti con il crollo globale della produzione. Ci sembra, tuttavia, che la situazione sia ben lungi da essersi risolta. Il volume, infatti, viene pubblicato alle porte di un autunno che pare consegnarci un...
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With this report, PLUS consortium wants to contribute to a large debate on the role of platform economy and on how to deal with labour transformations after Covid-19 outbreak. Considering the ongoing very unpredictable situation, the... more
With this report, PLUS consortium wants to contribute to a large debate on the role of platform economy and on how to deal with labour transformations after Covid-19 outbreak. Considering the ongoing very unpredictable situation, the observations contained in the report should be considered as explorative to further investigations. In any case, we would suggest to avoid framing Covid-19 outbreak in 2020 as outstanding event clearly dividing what occurred before from what will occur shortly after. Rather, one of the purposes of this report is to test if some of the hypothesis we produced during the first year and half of the project are still persuasive even after virus appearance. At first sight it seems that Covid-19 pandemic highlights and, if anything, emphasizes very well some platforms characteristics we had already identified: the lack of social protections for platform workers, the becoming essential infrastructures of platforms, the digitalization of services, the changing n...
La presente ricerca ha l'obiettivo di indagare una linea genealogica diversa del percorso di integrazione europea. Attraversando la biografia politico-intellettuale di Monnet cercheremo di dilatare temporalmente quel processo... more
La presente ricerca ha l'obiettivo di indagare una linea genealogica diversa del percorso di integrazione europea. Attraversando la biografia politico-intellettuale di Monnet cercheremo di dilatare temporalmente quel processo valorizzando uno strumento analitico raramente mobilitato in questo ambito: quello della logistica. Esattamente come la vita di Monnet, il racconto dell'integrazione europea si da generalmente dal 1950 in avanti, a partire cioe da quando il 9 maggio Robert Schuman lesse la dichiarazione (scritta da Monnet stesso) che avrebbe condotto alla nascita della Comunita Europea del Carbone e dell'Acciaio (CECA). Ma tanto quanto la storia di Monnet, anche quella dell'integrazione continentale andrebbe indagata piu in profondita. La storiografia e la manualistica tendono spesso a rilevare in quell'occasione un momento di rottura radicale: un “nuovo inizio” nella storia d'Europa. Questa ricerca vuole in qualche modo ridiscutere questa interpretazion...
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In this paper we investigate the impact of corruption on economic growth in Portugal over the period 1980-2018. The empirical approach makes use of a VAR model inspired by the standard Cobb-Douglas aggregate production function. The VAR... more
In this paper we investigate the impact of corruption on economic growth in Portugal over the period 1980-2018. The empirical approach makes use of a VAR model inspired by the standard Cobb-Douglas aggregate production function. The VAR model includes the capital stock, hours worked, total factor productivity and the corruption perceptions index (CPI) of Transparency International. The CPI combines several sources of information on the level of corruption in each country. The scale of this index goes from 0, the highest level of corruption, to 10, the lowest level. The magnitude of the estimated effect of corruption on economic growth in the unrestricted VAR model is large (and positive), but statistically not significantly different from zero. However, the results from the estimation of a structural VAR model with economically plausible long-run restrictions indicate modest gains from reducing corruption.
The goal of the article is to investigate some aspects of the logistic European integration at its origins by looking at the contribution of Jean Monnet. Focusing on the fifty years before the Schuman declaration, the text traces the... more
The goal of the article is to investigate some aspects of the logistic European integration at its origins by looking at the contribution of Jean Monnet. Focusing on the fifty years before the Schuman declaration, the text traces the formation of the “logistics rationality” of the Frenchman, centering on two crucial aspects of his action: the commitment to build transnational infrastructures and the creation of “logistic communities” of States. Following this route, the birth of the ECSC will emerge as the final step of a long path, to which Monnet contributed by theorizing the construction of the “European logistic space”.
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This article and the related interview aim at exploring the intellectual legacy of Dipesh Chakrabarty’s book Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Though and Historical Difference (2000). The long-lasting process of “provincialization” of... more
This article and the related interview aim at exploring the intellectual legacy of Dipesh Chakrabarty’s book Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Though and Historical Difference (2000). The long-lasting process of “provincialization” of both Europe and the Western world is analysed in the light of today’s most pressing global challenges. A particular attention is dedicated to the process of European integration, the ‘colonial origins’ of the European Economic Community and the reconfiguration of labour subjectivities within contemporary society in Europe and beyond. In this respect, our aim is to introduce a fruitful postcolonial perspective into such an intriguing topic, that is the transnational history and politics of European integration. This article is conceived 1. Reception date: 16th March 2020; acceptance date: 26th April 2020. The essay is the issue of a research carried out within the Horizon2020 PLUS project and the Department of Political Science, Law, and Internationa...
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Questo volume e il frutto di un lavoro di approfondimento collettivo attorno al ruolo produttivo della logistica in America Latina. Detto altrimenti, il subcontinente sudamericano e assunto come un laboratorio analitico per lo studio... more
Questo volume e il frutto di un lavoro di approfondimento collettivo attorno al ruolo produttivo della logistica in America Latina. Detto altrimenti, il subcontinente sudamericano e assunto come un laboratorio analitico per lo studio della capacita della logistica di generare processi di valorizzazione, territori e soggettivita. Come Into the Black Box, infatti, stiamo lavorando da alcuni anni alla definizione di uno sguardo logistico in grado di cogliere il carattere adattivo, resiliente, multi-scalare e mobile assunto dalle cosiddette operazioni del capitale contemporaneo. La logistica si presenta allo stesso tempo come oggetto di studio – una delle operazioni del capitale – e come metodo di studio. Fin dall’inizio dell’anno scorso abbiamo deciso di aprire un nuovo spazio di discussione all’interno del nostro progetto di ricerca collettiva, centrato sull’America Latina e sul contributo di giovani ricercatori che con i loro studi stanno esplorando i mille volti della logistica nel ...
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Introducing this issue, this paper reflects on the role of peer-reviewed research in documenting and analysing the restructuring of labour under rapidly changing global conditions. It summarises the contents of the issue, placing it in... more
Introducing this issue, this paper reflects on the role of peer-reviewed research in documenting and analysing the restructuring of labour under rapidly changing global conditions. It summarises the contents of the issue, placing it in the context not only of the 2020-2021 global COVID-19 pandemic, but also in relation to past theoretical debates in the pages of this journal about the dynamics of platform capitalism.
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This article introduces this special issue of Work Organisation, Labour and Globalisation on logistics. First of all, it furnishes a brief genealogy of logistics in the modern era. Then, it frames some of the main issues in current... more
This article introduces this special issue of Work Organisation, Labour and Globalisation on logistics. First of all, it furnishes a brief genealogy of logistics in the modern era. Then, it frames some of the main issues in current critical debates on logistics. Finally, it presents the contents of the special issue in detail, connecting them with more general attempts to develop a ‘logistical gaze’ as a methodological perspective on the different and multiple transformations of contemporary capitalism.
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This article investigates the logistics of contemporary global capitalism from two primary vantage points: the grounded perspective of recent struggles in the logistics sector of northern Italy and a more general interpretation of... more
This article investigates the logistics of contemporary global capitalism from two primary vantage points: the grounded perspective of recent struggles in the logistics sector of northern Italy and a more general interpretation of contemporary spatial transformations. Starting with a few genealogical and theoretical vignettes, we argue that logistics plays a decisive role in contemporary processes of both the establishment of new and mobile forms of territoriality and the production of subjectivity. We hypothesize that these two productive aspects of logistics must be understood as crisscrossed and mutually interacting. The article further takes up the geographical question of scale and attempts to advance the development of analytical tools capable of grasping at once global flows and local peculiarities. With a view to northern Italy and beyond, we conclude by proposing a few conceptualizations: the terraqueous territory; the Po Valley as a form of regionalization; the cooperative...
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The article tackles the question of platform capitalism within the framework of a general understanding of the specificity of modern and contemporary capitalism. Digital platforms, which are emerging among the winners from the current... more
The article tackles the question of platform capitalism within the framework of a general understanding of the specificity of modern and contemporary capitalism. Digital platforms, which are emerging among the winners from the current pandemic crisis, facilitate processes of capital accumulation, blur the boundaries between politics and economics, and embody a new type of firm. An emphasis is placed on the infrastructural roles performed by platforms, as well as on their ability to reshape existing spaces and produce new ones. In the last section, the authors describe emerging figures of “algorithmic subjectivities” and contend that an effective critique of platform capitalism, whose operations are predicated upon those figures, should take their movements and struggles as its point of departure.
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È ormai diffusa la letteratura che mostra il carattere infrastrutturale delle piattaforme digitali. Brevemente sondata, ma sostanzialmente assunta questa dimensione, in questo articolo l’obiettivo è indagare le implicazioni politiche di... more
È ormai diffusa la letteratura che mostra il carattere infrastrutturale delle piattaforme digitali. Brevemente sondata, ma sostanzialmente assunta questa dimensione, in questo articolo l’obiettivo è indagare le implicazioni politiche di tale categorizzazione. Nello specifico, risulterà particolarmente centrato analizzare il carattere tecnico, estetico ed egemonico del potere delle piattaforme, le declinazioni in termini governamentali, e le sfide che esse pongono all’attore statale.
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L’obiettivo dell’articolo è quello di analizzare alcuni aspetti dell’integrazione logistica europea delle origini attraverso il contributo di Jean Monnet. Focalizzandoci sul mezzo secolo che precede la dichiarazione Schuman, nel testo si... more
L’obiettivo dell’articolo è quello di analizzare alcuni aspetti dell’integrazione logistica europea delle origini attraverso il contributo di Jean Monnet. Focalizzandoci sul mezzo secolo che precede la dichiarazione Schuman, nel testo si ripercorre la formazione della “razionalità logistica” del francese, soffermandoci su due aspetti cruciali della sua azione: l’impegno nella creazione di infrastrutture transnazionali e la realizzazione di “comunità logistiche” di Stati. Seguendo questo percorso la nascita della CECA emergerà come il punto finale di un lungo percorso a cui Monnet ha contribuito teorizzando la costruzione dello “spazio logistico europeo”.
The goal of the article is to investigate some aspects of the logistic European integration at its origins by looking at the contribution of Jean Monnet. Focusing on the fifty years before the Schuman declaration, the text traces the formation of the “logistics rationality” of the Frenchman, centering on two crucial aspects of his action: the commitment to build transnational infrastructures and the creation of “logistic communities” of States. Following this route, the birth of the ECSC will emerge as the final step of a long path, to which Monnet contributed by theorizing the construction of the “European logistic space”.
The goal of the article is to investigate some aspects of the logistic European integration at its origins by looking at the contribution of Jean Monnet. Focusing on the fifty years before the Schuman declaration, the text traces the formation of the “logistics rationality” of the Frenchman, centering on two crucial aspects of his action: the commitment to build transnational infrastructures and the creation of “logistic communities” of States. Following this route, the birth of the ECSC will emerge as the final step of a long path, to which Monnet contributed by theorizing the construction of the “European logistic space”.
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Uno sguardo sull'opera di Jean Monnet, sull'importanza delle infrastrutture e sulla governance logistica per costruire una storia dell'integrazione europea che scardini la fissità dei paletti cronologici e metodologici che racchiudono... more
Uno sguardo sull'opera di Jean Monnet, sull'importanza delle infrastrutture e sulla governance logistica per costruire una storia dell'integrazione europea che scardini la fissità dei paletti cronologici e metodologici che racchiudono quel processo entro gli ultimi settant'anni di storia.
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L'analisi propone un'indagine genealogica sull'origine infrastrutturale dell'Unione Europea, affiancando questa prospettiva allo sviluppo (originariamente geografico) dello stesso concetto di Europa. Intrecciando a questa disamina alcuni... more
L'analisi propone un'indagine genealogica sull'origine infrastrutturale dell'Unione Europea, affiancando questa prospettiva allo sviluppo (originariamente geografico) dello stesso concetto di Europa. Intrecciando a questa disamina alcuni tratti della biografia di Jean Monnet, emerge la “razionalità logistica” che ha condotto all'integrazione continentale. La nascita della “prima Europa” (la CECA), che di lì in avanti sarà sempre più sovrapposta alla stessa “Europa geografica” viene così situata entro un più ampio percorso di standardizzazione tecnica e legislativa, che ha infine prodotto lo spazio logistico extrastatale su cui s'è inscritto il progetto di Europa comunitaria.