A single narrative will not do: Capitalism in the digital age

Abstract

In recent years, scholars working across a range of disciplines have become increasingly interested in exploring the contours and machinations of digital capitalism. Celebrants extoll the way digital technologies are enhancing processes of capital accumulation, rendering employment more flexible, democractizing innovation, and making new forms of economic co-operation possible. By contrast, skeptics warn that digital technologies are being used to exacerbate inequality, further capitalist domination and extraction, and automate human beings into a future where there is no escape from the ubiquitous surveillance technologies that are used to forward the interests of a powerful techno-elite. The four books I review in this essay all offer critical perspectives on capitalism in the digital age. However, when read collectively, these books also demonstrate that if we are going to enhance our understanding of digital capitalism, then a single narrative will not do. By exploring the different ways digital capitalism is produced, lived, and even resisted by those who are differentially positioned within its ambit, these books make a powerful case for the role anthropology can play in illuminating the complexities, and the transformative possibilities, of our current economic moment.