Juliet B. Schor's research while affiliated with Boston College and other places
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Publications (71)
This paper explores a neglected aspect of platform work: how the spatial mobility that app-based couriers must perform requires them to violate taken-for-granted assumptions that define who belongs where. By assigning tasks during atypical hours and requiring gig workers to use their personal clothing, tools and vehicles, platforms strip delivery w...
Wealthy countries can create prosperity while using less materials and energy if they abandon economic growth as an objective. Wealthy countries can create prosperity while using less materials and energy if they abandon economic growth as an objective.
Sharing food surplus via the digital sharing economy is often discussed as a promising strategy to reduce food waste and mitigate food insecurity at the same time. Yet if and how the global pandemic has affected digital food sharing are not yet well understood. Leveraging a comprehensive dataset covering over 1.8 million food exchanges facilitated...
Transition scholars devote surprisingly little attention to the sustainability of digitalization. We call for more work on digitalization in transition studies. We offer a number of perspectives to study the roles of digitalization in sustainability transitions.
Based on three case studies of community sharing in different sectors of society, we address how and under what conditions community sharing can contribute to sustainability transformation. Considering modes of exchange an leverage points, we analyze how community sharing can add to transformation when sharing systems are designed to intervene at b...
Since the 1970s, welfare cuts and market deregulation have made jobs increasingly precarious and workers have been made responsible for their own safety. In this context, technological developments have recently paved the way for the gig economy, in which tasks and services are distributed on digital platforms. Drawing on interviews with 32 Uber an...
![Figure 2: Platforms as a triangle of relationships]](profile/Elke-Schuessler/publication/353995237/figure/fig2/AS:1059958946820109@1629725314592/Platforms-as-a-triangle-of-relationships_Q320.jpg)
![Figure 3 Platforms as a contested social structure]](profile/Elke-Schuessler/publication/353995237/figure/fig3/AS:1059958946803722@1629725314622/Platforms-as-a-contested-social-structure_Q320.jpg)
This Special Issue advances a new understanding of digital platforms as dynamic and relational. An archetypal transaction platform, we argue, is comprised of three canonical social relationships which exist in tension with each other. The first is mutuality—the practices of sharing and reciprocity which animated the early days of the ‘sharing econo...
The sharing economy is transforming economies around the world, entering markets for lodging, ride hailing, home services, and other sectors that previously lacked robust person-to-person alternatives. Its expansion has been contentious and its meanings polysemic. It launched with a utopian discourse promising economic, social, and environmental be...
![Figure 2: Platforms as a triangle of relationships]](profile/Elke-Schuessler/publication/352940197/figure/fig2/AS:1041504281821186@1625325379109/Platforms-as-a-triangle-of-relationships_Q320.jpg)
![Figure 3 Platforms as a contested social structure]](profile/Elke-Schuessler/publication/352940197/figure/fig3/AS:1041504281849856@1625325379135/Platforms-as-a-contested-social-structure_Q320.jpg)
This Special Issue advances a new understanding of digital platforms as dynamic and relational. Through a set of nine empirical studies of different transaction platforms, it brings together four perspectives: a market perspective that zooms into the market structures and relationships created and mediated by platforms; an organizational perspectiv...
The growth of the platform economy has generated a massive outpouring of research on digitally mediated economic transactions, a strategically vital sector that answers to many names. Among the most common are platform capitalism or the gig, on-demand, and sharing economy. This conceptual slippage hints at one of the many limitations in the literat...
The rapid growth of Uber and analogous platform companies has led to considerable scholarly interest in the phenomenon of platform labor. Scholars have taken two main approaches to explaining outcomes for platform work—precarity, which focuses on employment classification and insecure labor, and technological control via algorithms. Both predict th...
This study contributes to interdisciplinary research on the social and environmental determinants of population health, with a focus on the interaction between working hours and fine particulate matter (PM2.5) concentration. The authors estimate longitudinal models of the relationship between US state-level average life expectancy and both average...
The rapid growth of the platform economy has provoked scholarly discussion of its consequences for the nature of work and employment. We identify four major themes in the literature on platform work and the underlying metaphors associated with each. Platforms are seen as entrepreneurial incubators, digital cages, accelerants of precarity, and chame...
The ‘sharing economy’ is a contested realm, with critics arguing it represents a further development of neoliberalism, as platforms such as Airbnb and TaskRabbit, monetize previously uncommodified realms of life via renting of bedrooms, possessions, space and labor time. To date, this debate has largely ignored participants’ views. Using data from...
The platform economy has entered its second decade, and researchers are developing new theorizations of it as an economic form. One important feature is a heterogeneous labor force with respect to hours of work. In this paper, we identify another type of heterogeneity, which is the diversity of economic orientation of earners. Using in-depth interv...
The climate crisis requires nations to achieve human well-being with low national levels of carbon emissions. Countries vary from one another dramatically in how effectively they convert resources into well-being, and some nations with low levels of emissions have relatively high objective and subjective well-being. We identify urgent research and...
The planet is on a path to catastrophic warming which calls for structural changes in the operation of Global North economies, not merely a transformation of energy sources, the core of “green growth” approaches. Our research on inequality and working time shows that these are powerful drivers of carbon emissions that can be the center of a progres...
A rich literature on commensuration and standards of evaluation has yielded important findings on how items are valued. Over the course of a two-year ethnography, we witnessed one effort to create a new economic practice—a monthly swap of “homemade food”—start promisingly but ultimately fail as participants were unable to reach consensus on valuati...
This article provides a review of recent anthropological, archeological, geographical, and sociological research on anthropogenic drivers of climate change, with a particular focus on drivers of carbon emissions, mitigation and adaptation. The four disciplines emphasize cultural, economic, geographic, historical, political, and social‐structural fa...
Understanding the Platform Economy: Socio-Economic Dynamics in new Digital Markets
Special Issue of Socio-Economic Review.
Timeline
Papers can be submitted immediately, but no later than 15 March, 2019.
The targeted publication of the special issue is the July 2020 issue of Socio-Economic Review.
This article provides a review of recent anthropological, archaeological, geographical, and sociological research on anthropogenic drivers of climate change, with a particular focus on drivers of carbon emissions, mitigation and adaptation. The four disciplines emphasize cultural, economic, geographic, historical, political, and social-structural f...
This paper assesses research from cultural anthropology, archaeology, geography, and sociology to define social science concepts relevant to climate change drivers and the factors that influence the effectiveness of mitigation and adaptation strategies. The paper presents significant ways in which these four social science disciplines—often underre...
The well-established association between economic output and carbon emissions has led researchers in sociology and related disciplines to study new approaches to climate change mitigation, including policies that stabilize or reduce GDP growth. Within this degrowth approach, working time reduction is a key policy lever to reduce emissions as well a...
We assess the relationship between national-level income inequality and carbon dioxide emissions for a sample of eleven post-Soviet nations during the 1992 to 2009 period. Our findings suggest that both total and per capita emissions are positively associated with income inequality, measured as a Gini coefficient. These results are consistent with...
We assess the relationship between national-level income inequality and carbon dioxide emissions for a sample of eleven post-Soviet nations during the 1992 to 2009 period. Our findings suggest that both total and per capita emissions are positively associated with income inequality, measured as a Gini coefficient. These results are consistent with...
For social analysts, what has come to be called the “sharing economy” raises important questions. After a discussion of history and definitions, we focus on 3 areas of research in the for-profit segment, also called the platform economy: social connection, conditions for laborers, and inequalities. Although we find that some parts of the platform e...
This study contributes to the emerging literature on connections between climate change and economic inequality by investigating the relationship between domestic wealth inequality and consumption-based carbon emissions for 26 high-income countries from 2000 to 2010. Results of the two-way fixed effects longitudinal models indicate that the effect...
A central theme of the literature on alternative food and drink markets is whether these efforts maintain their alterity as they grow, or whether they conventionalise. We argue that conventionalisation is not inevitable. Furthermore, analysts of the consumer version of this process, co-optation theory, often fail to recognise that alternative entra...
We develop a conceptual framework that allows us to define the sharing economy and its close cousins and we understand its sudden rise from an economic-historic perspective. We then assess the sharing economy platforms in terms of the economic, social and environmental impacts. We end with reflections on current regulations and future alternatives,...
Drawing from multiple bodies of literature, the authors investigate the relationship between consumption-based carbon emissions and domestic income inequality for 67 nations from 1991 to 2008. Results of two-way fixed effects longitudinal models indicate that the relationship between national-level emissions and inequality changes through time and...
The authors investigate the relationship between U.S. state-level residential carbon emissions and income inequality for the 1990–2012 period. Results of the analysis indicate a positive association between emissions and income inequality—measured as the Theil index—and these findings hold across a variety of model estimation techniques and net of...
This paper studies four sites from the sharing economy to analyze how class and other forms of inequality operate within this type of economic arrangement. On the basis of interviews and participant observation at a time bank, a food swap, a makerspace and an open-access education site we find considerable evidence of distinguishing practices and t...
Humans are on the precipice of dangerous climate change. In this lecture, I discuss the importance of inequality in climate solutions and the ways in which the framing of climate change has impeded action to mitigate emissions. I critique the standard formulation of a tradeoff between well-being and environmental protection. I argue for the need to...
Bourdieu’s concept of habitus describes a set of tastes and dispositions operating according to a class homology – for example, a working-class preference for utility, or a bourgeois orientation toward luxury. In the United States, Holt found that high cultural capital consumers were characterized by their cosmopolitanism, idealism, connoisseurship...
An important question in the literature on climate change and sustainability is the relation between economic growth and greenhouse gas emissions. While the "green growth" paradigm dominates in the policy arena, a growing number of scholars in wealthy countries are questioning the feasibility of achieving required emissions reductions with continue...
Global progress on climate change has been stalled since the 2008 financial collapse. I consider the case of the United States and how the crash and subsequent stagnation have reduced prospects for climate solutions at the national level. I focus on discourse and the economic and cultural framing of climate protection and the environment as a luxur...
The current mainstream model of the global economy is based on a number of assumptions about the way the world works, what the economy is, and what the economy is for. (See Table 11-1.) These assumptions arose in an earlier period, when the world was relatively empty of humans and their artifacts. Built capital was the limiting factor, while natura...
Many scholars and activists are now advocating a program of economic degrowth for developed countries in order to mitigate demands on the global environment. An increasingly prominent idea is that developed countries could achieve slower or zero economic growth in a socially sustainable way by reducing working hours. Research suggests that reduced...
In this chapter we describe what an ?ecological economy? could look like and how we could get there. We believe that this future can provide full employment and a high quality of life for everyone into the indefinite future while staying within the safe environmental operating space for humanity on earth. Developed countries have a special responsi...
Les principes qui fondent l'économie mondiale doivent changer, et vite ! Nos modes de vie s'accompagnent de prélèvements qui détruisent les ressources limitées de la planète et menacent les bases mêmes de la vie. Pire, la poursuite de la croissance a cessé d'améliorer le bien-être dans les pays riches tandis que pauvreté et sous-alimentation perdur...
The year 2011 was ecologically ominous. Record temperatures, extreme drought, virulent hurricanes and rapidly escalating food prices provided vivid evidence that climate change is upon us, that resource scarcities are intensifying and that humans have gone beyond safe planetary boundaries in our efforts to produce and consume. The science of ecolog...
The world has changed dramatically. We no longer live in a world relatively empty of humans and their artifacts. We now live in the “Anthropocene,” era in a full world where humans are dramatically altering our ecological life-support system. Our traditional economic concepts and models were developed in an empty world. If we are to create sustaina...
As the prevalence of “conscious” consumption has grown, questions have arisen about its relationship to political action. An influential argument holds that political consumption individualizes responsibility for environmental degradation and “crowds out” genuine forms of activism. While European and Canadian empirical research contradicts this per...
We introduce the concept of an underdog brand biography to describe an emerging trend in branding in which firms author a historical account of their humble origins, lack of resources, and determined struggle against the odds. We identify two essential dimensions of an underdog biography: external disadvantage, and passion and determination. We dem...
Purpose – We introduce the concept of a brand biography to describe an emerging trend in branding in which firms author a dynamic, historical account of the events that have shaped the brand over time. Using a particular type of brand biography, “the underdog,” we empirically show how managers can strategically use brand biographies in brand positi...
This study assesses the hypothesis that hours of work have risen in the United States in recent decades. Using the Current Population Surveys and the University of Michigan Time-Use Studies, we estimate changes in market and nonmarket hours worked between 1969 and 1989, finding evidence of a “time-squeeze.” This trend is particularly pronounced amo...
In the past twenty-five years, the literature on consumption has gained analytic power by positioning itself against the consumer critics of the twentieth century (Veblen, Adorno and Horkheimer, Galbraith, Baudrillard), arguing that these accounts were totalizing, theorized consumers as too passive, and simplified motives. The literature moved to m...
Children's exposure to food marketing has exploded in recent years, along with rates of obesity and overweight. Children of color and low-income children are disproportionately at risk for both marketing exposure and becoming overweight. Comprehensive reviews of the literature show that advertising is effective in changing children's food preferenc...
The optimistic predictions of social scientists about the coming of a leisured future are increasingly being discredited (Gershuny, 2000; Robinson, 1986; Robinson and Godbey, 1999; Juster and Stafford, 1985, 1991). As early as the 1960s, the optimists expected that by the twenty-first century, citizens of the advanced industrialized nations would b...
The ecological unsustainability of current consumption patterns is now well documented. One aspect of this problem which has not been sufficiently addressed is the growth of “excess consumption” driven by falling goods prices. The index of department store prices have fallen substantially since the early 1990s, in large part because global capital...
The paper focuses on satisfaction with income and proposes a utility model built on two value systems, the `Ego' system - described as one own income assessment relatively to one own past and future income - and the `Alter' system - described as one own income assessment relatively to a reference group. We show how the union of these two value syst...
The Joyless Economy seeks to explain the paradox of rising consumption and pervasive dissatifaction, and is thus often cited as a critique of consumer society. Yet it is rather ambivalent as critique. A less ambivalent critique would be predicated on the existence of biases toward private consumption as against public consumption, savings, free tim...
Nearly all applied work in consumer demand assumes that the preference functions of individuals are independent, thereby ruling out status consumption and other inter-personal comparison motivations. Surprisingly, the validity of the “independence” assumption has not been tested. However, it is feasible to conduct tests which differentiate between...
Citations
... Perhead staff costs, such as capped tax contributions and health insurance, make it more expensive for employers to increase staff numbers. Personal debt might encourage employees to work longer hours, although recent trials showed no evidence of this 7,8 . ...
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... Throughout history, universities have been fertile ground for major social movements, such as the anti-nuclear weapons movement, the anti-war and civil rights movements in the US, and environmental protection movements (Dahlum, 2019;Russell et al., 1955;Brown and Silber, 1979;Racimo et al., 2022). Today, academic activists worldwide make crucial contributions to movements in domains including the climate crisis, health, LGBTQ+ and reproductive rights, social justice, economic inequality, and the hegemony of economic growth, amongst many others (Capstick et al., 2022;Racimo et al., 2022;Dreifus, 2019;Barres, 2006;Tannam, 2018;George, 2020;Holmes, 2021;Hickel et al., 2022). ...
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... First, the growth of the digital economy has facilitated the application of digital technology, providing a broad foundation for technical innovation in the energy sector. With the popularization of the Internet, for instance, many businesses have begun to employ digital technologies to monitor and analyze energy consumption in real-time, thereby enhancing their capacity to minimize pollution and carbon emissions (Makov et al., 2023). The rise of the digital economy has also facilitated the emergence of various new technologies, which are frequently more concerned with energy efficiency and environmental consciousness. ...
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... This suggests that prescriptive elements of work descend not only from an organisational dimension, but also depend on the conditions of social agents themselves -e.g. on their bodily capital (Wacquant, 2002). Therefore, shedding light on the heterogeneity of the riders' daily experience opens new ways to exploring the social stratification internal to this occupational community and platform workers overall -as labour scholars argued (Cansoy et al., 2020). ...
... Recent reviews of app-based experimental interventions in the low-carbon domain have confirmed their promising behaviour change potential (Anagnostopoulou et al., 2018;Andersson et al., 2018;Chatzigeorgiou and Andreou, 2021;Douglas and Brauer, 2021;Hedin et al., 2019;Suruliraj et al., 2020). However, some scholars criticize the extent to which digitalisation improves the overall sustainability impact and carbon footprint of individuals (Andersen et al., 2021;Sareen and Haarstad, 2021). The ubiquitous use of apps may be seen as the first phase of a hype cycle, where promises and expectations create phases of societal attention and technological uptake (Van Lente et al., 2013). ...
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... Vietnamese garment factories and American shoe factories that implement performance-based pay have had poor physical conditions and emotional health (55). The present study corroborates the UK findings for US workers, with poorer health outcomes reported for piece-rate workers than for salaried workers (56). Giggers often earn below minimum wage without any entitlements to social benefits (57)(58)(59)(60)(61)(62), and prices are being raised or decreased by an algorithm depending on demand (63). ...
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... One specific feature of platform companies, regularly highlighted in the literature, is that they have outsourced essential means of production (fixed assets) and constitutive work services from their corporate contexts, at times in radical ways, and that they pursue an asset-light business model. 'Platforms leverage physical assets, R&D, workforce, salesforce, market research, and the creative energies of customers not by making or buying but by the strategy of co-opting' (Stark and Pais 2020, 53; see also Grabher 2020;Schüßler, Kirchner, and Schor 2021). However, this characterization does not apply at all to the leading internet corporations Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Apple. ...
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... Therefore, the recommendation is to develop national economies that are embedded in society, which is itself embedded in natural systems . Nevertheless, as pointed out in different studies (Kibria et al., 2022;Fioramonti et al., 2022;Costanza et al., 2013;, knowledge of the interactions between dimensions is still conceptual, while the need of understanding each interaction between the economy, society, and nature is a certitude. Answering the aforementioned requirement, Figure 3 presents the main results obtained in previous studies, using the SSI framework and analyzing the relationship between environmental, human, and economic wellbeing, while placing the environment at the center of the discussion, with the main aim of observing the influence of other dimensions. ...
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... Digital ecosystems provide a mechanism to bring players together, and their emergence can be observed in numerous domains. Since the term digital ecosystem, combined with the notion of a platform, is used in manifold ways [10], we dedicate this section to defining the terms as a foundation of the reference architecture for enabling interoperability and data sovereignty in the ADS. ...
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... Social connection and affiliation-as well as personal hedonistic reasons, such as experiences and enjoyment-appear to be just as important as societal and ecological values or problem awareness. Such diverging motives and expectations between the people involved may, however, challenge the success of initiatives (Dubois et al., 2014;Seyfang and Longhurst, 2016) or even provoke their failure (Fitzmaurice and Schor, 2018). ...
