Research topic
"The real world is messy: Uber, knowledge infrastructures and the production of territories"
Abel is interested in studying the social, political,and epistemological implications of "platformisation" in the Global South. As digital platforms expand their reach across the globe, they encounter variable conditions and unexpected local singularities. Abel’s research focuses on Uber as an infrastructural actor. Drawing from Science and Technology Studies (STS), infrastructure studies, and decolonial perspectives, he intends to investigate Uber as part of a spatial knowledge infrastructure, as the platform invests in a production of predominantly data-oriented totalizing ways of knowing and intervening in heterogeneous territories. His interest lies in how different human and non-human actors relate to each other as they are networked into this spatial knowledge infrastructure and in the processes of knowledge production and validation in which they are involved. Whereas most studies about Uber accentuate its role in the precarisation and digitalization of labour, this research situates labour on a broader arrangement of knowledge production. Departing from the dominant studies of platforms within the social sciences this study foregrounds a Southern perspective on platformisation, by examining how these endeavours are specified in São Paulo, Brazil.
Supervisors
Dr Wendy Willems and Professor Nick Couldry
Biography
Abel holds a Master’s degree in Media and Communication from Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais Brazil (PPGCOM/UFMG), where his research was supported by the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq). In his master’s thesis, entitled “Infrastructures, narratives, and algorithmic imaginaries: technographing Uber’s surge pricing”, Abel investigated the algorithmic agencies of Uber’s surge pricing in three analytical dimensions: rhetorical/narrative, material/infrastructural, and affective/imaginary. Abel holds a BA in Social Communication (FAFICH/UFMG) where he acted as an undergraduate research assistant for two different projects, both funded by CNPq, and wrote their undergraduate research thesis on Uber and the platformisation of labor. He is currently a member of the research group R-EST: Estudos Redes Sociotécnicas (UFMG). His doctoral project is supported by a London Arts and Humanities Partnership Studentship.