AUTONOMY UNDER SURVEILLANCE: A FAILED EXPERIENCE ON PLATFORM COOPERATIVISM IN BRAZIL

Abstract

This research seeks to comprehend power relations in a platform cooperativism experience in Araraquara, São Paulo, Brazil, in 2022. The project was initiated by a workers' cooperative that acquired the franchise of the Bibi Mob platform with the support of the city's municipality through its solidarity economy incubator. The experience failed eight months after its inception. This article applies a neo-materialist perspective, mapping the datafication process in the app to analyse how the global power relations of infrastructural global platforms - mainly Google and Amazon - were crucial to the end of the experience. The dependence on a global platform ecosystem and the franchised platform limited the workers' ability to act. Drawing from a Southern Global experience, the research challenges platform cooperativism, colonialism and data sovereignty. The article argues that the modus operandi of platform power is exercised through a disciplinary power that produces "autonomy under surveillance". Analysing a failed partnership allows one to discuss platform cooperativism and examine the manifestations of power in the Global South.