Notes Toward a World Systems Theory of Platforms

Made in China and India on Amazon.com

Bibliographic Data

ID2414973
AuthorsMoira Weigel (0000-0002-8229-3171, Harvard University Press, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume11
Issue2
Publication date2025-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocial Media + Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2056-3051 • E-ISSN: 2056-3051
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/20563051251340863
OpenAlexW4411092639
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited48

This article examines the key role that Chinese and Indian entrepreneurs have played in the growth of Amazon and the varied ways in which they interact with its marketplace platform. Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, I highlight differences in how Amazon addresses such entrepreneurs, in how they produce for Amazon, and how they brand their goods for global markets. These differences do not simply reflect distinct national cultures. Rather, they emerge from how Amazon crosses national borders, bringing actors from different political and regulatory contexts, with different levels of development and symbolic resources, into direct contact and competition with one another. I propose that to make sense of these configurations, we must conceptualize global platform capitalism not only as a collection of national cases but as a world system-a differentiated unity that reproduces inequality at the same time it drives innovation

Amazon rainforest · Archaeology · Biology · China · Data science · Geography · Media studies · Sociology · China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance · Computer Science · Digital Economy and Work Transformation · Innovation and Socioeconomic Development

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