Rachel O'Dwyer, "Tokens: The Future of Money in the Age of the Platform" (Verso, 2023)

Rachel O'Dwyer, "Tokens: The Future of Money in the Age of the Platform" (Verso, 2023)

Platform capitalism is coming for the money in your pocket. Wherever you look, money is being re-placed by tokens. Digital platforms are issuing new kinds of money-like things: phone credit, shares, gift vouchers, game tokens, customer data--the list goes on. But what does it mean when online platforms become the new banks? What new types of control and discrimination emerge when money is tied to specific apps or actions, politics or identities? Tokens opens up this new and expanding world. Exploring the history of extra-monetary economies, Rachel O'Dwyer shows that private and grassroots tokens have always haunted the real economy. But as the large tech platforms issue new money-like instruments, tokens are suddenly everywhere. Amazon's Turk workers are getting paid in gift cards. Online streamers trade in wishlists. Foreign remittances are sent via phone credit. Bitcoin, gift cards, NFTs, customer data, and game tokens are the new money in an evolving economy. It is a development challenging the balance of power between online empires and the state. Tokens may offer a flexible even subversive route to compensation. But for the platforms themselves they can be a means of amassing frightening new powers. An essential read for anyone concerned with digital money, inequality, and the future of the economy. Long-listed by the Financial Times' Best Business Books of 2023 even before publication, Rochel O'Dower's Tokens: The Future of Money in the Age of the Platform (Verso, 2023) tackles the proliferation of alternatives to central bank-issued money through an enagaging and easy-to-access narrative. Bernardo Batiz-Lazo is currently straddling between Newcastle and Mexico City. You can find him on twitter on issues related to business history of banking, fintech, payments and other musings. Not always in that order. @BatizLazo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

Episoder(2159)

Di Wu et. al, eds., "China As Context: Anthropology, Post-globalisation and the Neglect of China" (Manchester UP, 2025)

Di Wu et. al, eds., "China As Context: Anthropology, Post-globalisation and the Neglect of China" (Manchester UP, 2025)

A provocative collaborative project, China as Context challenges the marginalization of Chinese-grounded ideas in academia, arguing that neglecting China distorts our understanding of global complexit...

16 Jan 1h 19min

Helen Graham, "Deconstituting Museums: Participation’s Affective Work" (UCL Press, 2024)

Helen Graham, "Deconstituting Museums: Participation’s Affective Work" (UCL Press, 2024)

What is the future of museums? In Deconstituting Museums: Participation’s Affective Work Helen Graham, an Associate Professor in School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies at the Universi...

16 Jan 45min

Kerry Gottlich, "From Frontiers to Borders: How Colonial Technicians Created Modern Territoriality" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

Kerry Gottlich, "From Frontiers to Borders: How Colonial Technicians Created Modern Territoriality" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

How did modern territoriality emerge and what are its consequences? From Frontiers to Borders: How Colonial Technicians Created Modern Territoriality (Cambridge UP, 2025) examines these key questions ...

14 Jan 1h 14min

Angie Hobbs, "Why Plato Matters Now" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

Angie Hobbs, "Why Plato Matters Now" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

Does Plato matter? An ancient philosopher whose work has inspired and informed countless thinkers and poets across the centuries, his ideas are no longer taught as widely as they once were. But, as An...

14 Jan 1h 18min

Mercedes Valmisa, "All Things Act" (Oxford UP, 2025)

Mercedes Valmisa, "All Things Act" (Oxford UP, 2025)

All Things Act explores the collective character of action to expand the ways we think about agency. First, it resists viewing agency as a capacity, much less one exclusive to humans. Instead, it defi...

13 Jan 56min

Dagmar Herzog, "The New Fascist Body" (Wirklichkeit Books, 2025)

Dagmar Herzog, "The New Fascist Body" (Wirklichkeit Books, 2025)

The success of new far-right movements cannot be explained by fear or rage alone – the pleasures of aggression and violence are just as essential. As such, racism is particularly intense when it is er...

13 Jan 1h 4min

Matthijs Lok, "Europe Against Revolution: Conservatism, Enlightenment, and the Making of the Past" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

Matthijs Lok, "Europe Against Revolution: Conservatism, Enlightenment, and the Making of the Past" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

Contemporary Europe seems to be divided between progressive cosmopolitans sympathetic to the European Union and the ideals of the Enlightenment, and counter-enlightened conservative nationalists extol...

12 Jan 56min

J. Logan Smilges, "Crip Negativity" (U of Minnesota Press, 2023)

J. Logan Smilges, "Crip Negativity" (U of Minnesota Press, 2023)

In the thirty years since the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law, the lives of disabled people have not improved nearly as much as activists and politicians had hoped. In Crip Negativ...

10 Jan 57min

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