The Rise of Ridehailing: Digital Capitalism and the Future of the Global Economy

Book manuscript in progress

We are living in an emerging age of digital capitalism. This mode of capital accumulation and societal governance is ostensibly the outcome of the rapid pace of digital innovation and technological change. This is an illusion.  Digital capitalism is not simply an outcome of developments in computational technologies. It is fundamentally driven by shifting forms of corporate power, deepening processes of financialization, and the evolving relationship between business, society and the state. This book uses the case of platform  firms in urban mobility markets like Uber to highlight the social, political, and economic tensions that platform firms have come to exemplify. It challenges conventional accounts of digital capitalism through comparative analysis across select cities in Africa, Asia, and the Americas, offering a new approach to make sense of contemporary economic change.

Jason Jackson