Lorenzo Cini
Biographic Data
| ID | 258096 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Lorenzo Cini |
| GIVEN NAMES | Lorenzo |
| FAMILY NAME | Cini |
| SIGNATURE | CINI L |
| AFFILIATIONS | Scuola Normale Superiore |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5381-4361 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 104 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
‘Misbehaving for Deliveroo. How couriers’ digital manipulation boosts the platform’s business’
Workplace misbehaviour has always been troublesome for employers. Workers have often exhibited conducts, such as absenteeism, pilferage, soldiering, sabotage and vandalism, that are foreign to companies’ norms and detrimental to their profits. Hence, various managerial theories have been developed over time with the aim of eliminating them. However, misbehaviour is still observed in the contemporary workplace. This study shows that, in platform w…
Mobilising operaismo in the digital age
This article examines whether the recent surge in labour mobilisations within the gig economy represents genuinely novel forms of worker resistance, or whether it is a reconfiguration of established patterns of collective action. To achieve this, the article analyses the relationship between workers’ struggles and changes to the labour process, comparing contemporary gig workers’ mobilisations with those of the ‘mass worker’ in Western Europe in …
(Re)mobilizing labour. A lesson from recent labour struggles in Italy
Social movement studies and labour scholarship have been developed as separate research fields, the former exploring the mobilizations of the so-called 'new' social movements, the latter the 'old' labour movements. However, such a sharp disciplinary distinction does not do justice to the interwoven character that social mobilizations may often take on in their formation processes and outcomes. This distinction seems especially untenable today giv…
Resisting algorithmic control
Algorithms are seen as effective for managing workers. Literature focuses mainly on the functioning and impact of algorithmic control on workers' experiences and conditions. The ways in which platform workers have organised collectively to regain control have received far less scholarly attention. This paper addresses this gap by making sense of the mobilisation dynamics of two platform‐work categories: crowdwork ( Amazon Mechanical Turk ) and wo…
How algorithms are reshaping the exploitation of labour-power
Marx conceives of capitalism as a production mode based on the exploitation of labour-power, whose productive consumption in the labour process is considered as the main source of value creation. Capitalists seek to obscure and secure workers' contribution to the production process, whereas workers strive to have their contribution fully recognized. The struggle between capitalists and workers over labour-time is thus central to capital's valoriz…
Labour Conflicts in the Digital Age
Mobilizing against the odds. Solidarity in action in the platform economy
The relationship between working conditions and the development of collective solidarity has been much debated in sociology over the past century. The article contributes to this debate by exploring two recent cases of worker mobilization in the context of the Italian platform economy, concerning Amazon delivery drivers and food delivery couriers. Both groups developed specific identity frames in the course of their mobilizations in four Italian …
Mobilizing precarious workers in Italy
Following increased flexibilization of labour market and related decline of traditional labour unionism over the last few decades, studying mobilization processes of precarious workers has become particularly timely. While localized forms of organization and unionization are gradually emerging, little is known about why workers intend to join these coordinated forms of collective action. Integrating social movement studies with social psychologic…
Student Movements in Late Neoliberalism
Student Movements in Late Neoliberalism
The Worker Capabilities Approach
Following years of declining labour activism, militant forms of worker mobilization have recently emerged in the Italian platform economy and logistics sector, exhibiting novel forms of organization and action repertoires. This article investigates two cases which have been ongoing since 2011, namely mobilizations by logistics porters and food delivery couriers. Both cases seem puzzling since workers have mobilized under circumstances normally as…
Rethinking the Link Between Structure and Collective Action. Capitalism, Politics, and the Theory of Social Movements
Social movement scholars have rarely paid attention to the transformations of capitalism as factors of social movement formation processes. This paper makes two different but complementary contributions. First, we provide a macro-social theory that connects the emergence of social movements to the capital circuit in order to embed social movement formation processes into the structural dynamics of capitalism. Exploring such dynamics is helpful to…
Disrupting the neoliberal university in South Africa
This article analyses the 2015 student mobilizations in South Africa (SA), which arose in opposition to a 10% hike in tuition fees planned for 2016 at the University of Witwatersrand (WITS) and spurred a massive student reaction across all the universities of the country. After only 10 days of mobilization, the protest, also known as #FeesMustFall by virtue of the most popular Twitter hashtag associated with it, succeeded in halting the hike. How…
The Contentious Politics of Higher Education
Drawing on neo-institutionalist and social movement approaches, this book analyses the impact that recent student mobilizations have brought about within Italian and English universities in terms of student services, curriculum organization, and governance structures. Arguing that the university context is central to explaining the variety and diversity of this impact, the author examines the effects of the type of governance on the strategies an…
Participatory deliberative democracy
Defining what democracy means nowadays seems increasingly problematic as several alternative democratic visions are being developed and contrasted in normative theory and political practice. On the one hand, there are traditional accounts of democracy that are highly formal and minimalistic. Citizens are endowed with political rights, which they use to advance their interests, particularly through regular elections, which delegate power to govern…
Student movements in the age of austerity. The cases of Chile and England
Several recent episodes of massive student protests in countries in Europe, Latin America, and Africa, raise the question of whether we are witnessing to a new surge of student protests. This profile offers an interpretation of the socio-economic and political processes that have caused contentious reactions among students, paying special attention to changes in the major characteristics of the higher education sector. In last decades, government…
Successful student activism in contemporary Italian universities
This article assesses the strategies that the Italian student activists adopted in order to influence the revision process of the governance structure of their universities in 2011. Which kind of strategy has enabled these activists to influence more successfully this process? I argue that the joint pressure of insiders and outsiders allows student activists to get their voice more effectively heard from the university leaders than when one of th…
Towards a Critical Theory of Social Movements
First published online: 22 December 2017
Società civile e democrazia radicale
This work asks questions on the relationship between innovative collective actors, such as the 'new social movements' and the political institutions of representative democracy starting from an underlying hypothesis: the idea that civil society is the main source of political legitimation of liberal democracy. More precisely, what this monograph reflects on is the capacity of the social movements to concretely test alternative forms of democracy.…
Student movements in the age of austerity. The cases of Chile and England
Several recent episodes of massive student protests in countries in Europe, Latin America, and Africa, raise the question of whether we are witnessing to a new surge of student protests. This profile offers an interpretation of the socio-economic and political processes that have caused contentious reactions among students, paying special attention to changes in the major characteristics of the higher education sector. In last decades, government…
The Worker Capabilities Approach
Following years of declining labour activism, militant forms of worker mobilization have recently emerged in the Italian platform economy and logistics sector, exhibiting novel forms of organization and action repertoires. This article investigates two cases which have been ongoing since 2011, namely mobilizations by logistics porters and food delivery couriers. Both cases seem puzzling since workers have mobilized under circumstances normally as…
Resisting algorithmic control
Algorithms are seen as effective for managing workers. Literature focuses mainly on the functioning and impact of algorithmic control on workers' experiences and conditions. The ways in which platform workers have organised collectively to regain control have received far less scholarly attention. This paper addresses this gap by making sense of the mobilisation dynamics of two platform‐work categories: crowdwork ( Amazon Mechanical Turk ) and wo…
Towards a Critical Theory of Social Movements
First published online: 22 December 2017
Rethinking the Link Between Structure and Collective Action. Capitalism, Politics, and the Theory of Social Movements
Social movement scholars have rarely paid attention to the transformations of capitalism as factors of social movement formation processes. This paper makes two different but complementary contributions. First, we provide a macro-social theory that connects the emergence of social movements to the capital circuit in order to embed social movement formation processes into the structural dynamics of capitalism. Exploring such dynamics is helpful to…
Disrupting the neoliberal university in South Africa
This article analyses the 2015 student mobilizations in South Africa (SA), which arose in opposition to a 10% hike in tuition fees planned for 2016 at the University of Witwatersrand (WITS) and spurred a massive student reaction across all the universities of the country. After only 10 days of mobilization, the protest, also known as #FeesMustFall by virtue of the most popular Twitter hashtag associated with it, succeeded in halting the hike. How…
How algorithms are reshaping the exploitation of labour-power
Marx conceives of capitalism as a production mode based on the exploitation of labour-power, whose productive consumption in the labour process is considered as the main source of value creation. Capitalists seek to obscure and secure workers' contribution to the production process, whereas workers strive to have their contribution fully recognized. The struggle between capitalists and workers over labour-time is thus central to capital's valoriz…
Mobilizing against the odds. Solidarity in action in the platform economy
The relationship between working conditions and the development of collective solidarity has been much debated in sociology over the past century. The article contributes to this debate by exploring two recent cases of worker mobilization in the context of the Italian platform economy, concerning Amazon delivery drivers and food delivery couriers. Both groups developed specific identity frames in the course of their mobilizations in four Italian …
Mobilizing precarious workers in Italy
Following increased flexibilization of labour market and related decline of traditional labour unionism over the last few decades, studying mobilization processes of precarious workers has become particularly timely. While localized forms of organization and unionization are gradually emerging, little is known about why workers intend to join these coordinated forms of collective action. Integrating social movement studies with social psychologic…
Participatory deliberative democracy
Defining what democracy means nowadays seems increasingly problematic as several alternative democratic visions are being developed and contrasted in normative theory and political practice. On the one hand, there are traditional accounts of democracy that are highly formal and minimalistic. Citizens are endowed with political rights, which they use to advance their interests, particularly through regular elections, which delegate power to govern…
Successful student activism in contemporary Italian universities
This article assesses the strategies that the Italian student activists adopted in order to influence the revision process of the governance structure of their universities in 2011. Which kind of strategy has enabled these activists to influence more successfully this process? I argue that the joint pressure of insiders and outsiders allows student activists to get their voice more effectively heard from the university leaders than when one of th…
Società civile e democrazia radicale
This work asks questions on the relationship between innovative collective actors, such as the 'new social movements' and the political institutions of representative democracy starting from an underlying hypothesis: the idea that civil society is the main source of political legitimation of liberal democracy. More precisely, what this monograph reflects on is the capacity of the social movements to concretely test alternative forms of democracy.…
Student movements in the age of austerity. The cases of Chile and England
Several recent episodes of massive student protests in countries in Europe, Latin America, and Africa, raise the question of whether we are witnessing to a new surge of student protests. This profile offers an interpretation of the socio-economic and political processes that have caused contentious reactions among students, paying special attention to changes in the major characteristics of the higher education sector. In last decades, government…
Successful student activism in contemporary Italian universities
This article assesses the strategies that the Italian student activists adopted in order to influence the revision process of the governance structure of their universities in 2011. Which kind of strategy has enabled these activists to influence more successfully this process? I argue that the joint pressure of insiders and outsiders allows student activists to get their voice more effectively heard from the university leaders than when one of th…
Towards a Critical Theory of Social Movements
First published online: 22 December 2017
The Contentious Politics of Higher Education
Drawing on neo-institutionalist and social movement approaches, this book analyses the impact that recent student mobilizations have brought about within Italian and English universities in terms of student services, curriculum organization, and governance structures. Arguing that the university context is central to explaining the variety and diversity of this impact, the author examines the effects of the type of governance on the strategies an…
Participatory deliberative democracy
Defining what democracy means nowadays seems increasingly problematic as several alternative democratic visions are being developed and contrasted in normative theory and political practice. On the one hand, there are traditional accounts of democracy that are highly formal and minimalistic. Citizens are endowed with political rights, which they use to advance their interests, particularly through regular elections, which delegate power to govern…
Disrupting the neoliberal university in South Africa
This article analyses the 2015 student mobilizations in South Africa (SA), which arose in opposition to a 10% hike in tuition fees planned for 2016 at the University of Witwatersrand (WITS) and spurred a massive student reaction across all the universities of the country. After only 10 days of mobilization, the protest, also known as #FeesMustFall by virtue of the most popular Twitter hashtag associated with it, succeeded in halting the hike. How…
Rethinking the Link Between Structure and Collective Action. Capitalism, Politics, and the Theory of Social Movements
Social movement scholars have rarely paid attention to the transformations of capitalism as factors of social movement formation processes. This paper makes two different but complementary contributions. First, we provide a macro-social theory that connects the emergence of social movements to the capital circuit in order to embed social movement formation processes into the structural dynamics of capitalism. Exploring such dynamics is helpful to…
Student Movements in Late Neoliberalism
Student Movements in Late Neoliberalism
The Worker Capabilities Approach
Following years of declining labour activism, militant forms of worker mobilization have recently emerged in the Italian platform economy and logistics sector, exhibiting novel forms of organization and action repertoires. This article investigates two cases which have been ongoing since 2011, namely mobilizations by logistics porters and food delivery couriers. Both cases seem puzzling since workers have mobilized under circumstances normally as…
Labour Conflicts in the Digital Age
Mobilizing against the odds. Solidarity in action in the platform economy
The relationship between working conditions and the development of collective solidarity has been much debated in sociology over the past century. The article contributes to this debate by exploring two recent cases of worker mobilization in the context of the Italian platform economy, concerning Amazon delivery drivers and food delivery couriers. Both groups developed specific identity frames in the course of their mobilizations in four Italian …
Mobilizing precarious workers in Italy
Following increased flexibilization of labour market and related decline of traditional labour unionism over the last few decades, studying mobilization processes of precarious workers has become particularly timely. While localized forms of organization and unionization are gradually emerging, little is known about why workers intend to join these coordinated forms of collective action. Integrating social movement studies with social psychologic…
(Re)mobilizing labour. A lesson from recent labour struggles in Italy
Social movement studies and labour scholarship have been developed as separate research fields, the former exploring the mobilizations of the so-called 'new' social movements, the latter the 'old' labour movements. However, such a sharp disciplinary distinction does not do justice to the interwoven character that social mobilizations may often take on in their formation processes and outcomes. This distinction seems especially untenable today giv…
Resisting algorithmic control
Algorithms are seen as effective for managing workers. Literature focuses mainly on the functioning and impact of algorithmic control on workers' experiences and conditions. The ways in which platform workers have organised collectively to regain control have received far less scholarly attention. This paper addresses this gap by making sense of the mobilisation dynamics of two platform‐work categories: crowdwork ( Amazon Mechanical Turk ) and wo…
How algorithms are reshaping the exploitation of labour-power
Marx conceives of capitalism as a production mode based on the exploitation of labour-power, whose productive consumption in the labour process is considered as the main source of value creation. Capitalists seek to obscure and secure workers' contribution to the production process, whereas workers strive to have their contribution fully recognized. The struggle between capitalists and workers over labour-time is thus central to capital's valoriz…
Mobilising operaismo in the digital age
This article examines whether the recent surge in labour mobilisations within the gig economy represents genuinely novel forms of worker resistance, or whether it is a reconfiguration of established patterns of collective action. To achieve this, the article analyses the relationship between workers’ struggles and changes to the labour process, comparing contemporary gig workers’ mobilisations with those of the ‘mass worker’ in Western Europe in …
‘Misbehaving for Deliveroo. How couriers’ digital manipulation boosts the platform’s business’
Workplace misbehaviour has always been troublesome for employers. Workers have often exhibited conducts, such as absenteeism, pilferage, soldiering, sabotage and vandalism, that are foreign to companies’ norms and detrimental to their profits. Hence, various managerial theories have been developed over time with the aim of eliminating them. However, misbehaviour is still observed in the contemporary workplace. This study shows that, in platform w…
Political science (17 works) · Politics (14 works) · Sociology (14 works) · Law (12 works) · Digital Economy and Work Transformation (9 works) · Political economy (9 works) · Social movement (9 works) · Collective action (7 works) · Labor Movements and Unions (6 works) · Economics (5 works)