Platypus

Latest

Transnational Translations: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue on Platforms and Labor

 Malcolm Katrak  February 18, 2026

This article is the third in a series about gig and platform worker unions in India written by members of the Labor Tech Research Network. Read the introduction to the series here, and the second post in the series here. As the landscape of technology-mediated work has evolved rapidly over the years, spanning across diverse geographical contexts, a wide range of academic disciplines, knowledges, and expertise have become relevant for engaging with the technopolitics surrounding it. The multidimensional and dynamic expansion of digital platforms into yet newer industries and sectors, through the use of novel technological and institutional forms, has made interdisciplinary approaches for the critical study of technology and society indispensable for grounding technological innovation in contextual realities. Moreover, intricately entangled global supply chains in the age of hyper-financialized technocapitalism restage labor politics as industry and work are restructured. (read more...)

Recent

(Seed) Cycling Toward a Crossroads: Menstrual Positivity and Hormone Practices Under Right-Wing Regimes

 Anna Wood  February 4, 2026

 Listen to a reading of this post.

Over the past several years, menstrual and hormonal cycles have gained significant public attention across the US and Europe, concurrent with growing skepticism towards biomedicine and an idealization of the natural. From widespread rejection of hormonal contraceptives in favor cycle-based fertility tracking, to satirical social media trends around hormonal cycles, discourses around menstruation reflect a broader zeitgeist around naturopathic wellness. A constellation of women’s health advocates, right-wing influencers, and lay experts have helped to proliferate negative information around hormonal contraceptives, including testimonials about side effects and doubts about their safety. This has unfolded alongside a renewed embrace of non-pharmaceutically suppressed menstruation. (read more...)

Writing About/With Platform Unions: The Role of Culture, Politics, and History

 Ambika Tandon, Debopriya Shome, Kaveri Medappa  January 28, 2026

 Listen to a reading of this post.

This article is the second in a series about gig and platform worker unions in India written by members of the Labor Tech Research Network. Read the introduction to the series here. This post offers a worm’s-eye view of the tensions and opportunities shaping platform labour organising in contemporary India. Platform work has exposed larger numbers of workers, especially younger workers with little memory or experience of organizing, to mobilize against capital and to do so using innovative means and campaigns (Wadikar, 2025). Building upon literature on platform workers’ mobilization in India (Ray and John, 2025), we highlight how efforts to organize emerge within regionally specific terrains of culture, politics and histories of labour mobilization. Through three vignettes, we bring the everyday together with the cultural, political histories and contexts of three metropolitan Indian cities – Bengaluru, Delhi and Kolkata, cities in which we have lived and engaged in research and activism with platform workers. Spanning between 2019 and 2025, these vignettes reflect the political landscape in India. They shed light on the capital–state nexus that limits the power of workers, unionization efforts built on foundations of loyalty and often exclusionary hypermasculine politics. What are the tensions and contradictions that we confronted while doing research with ‘gig’ worker unions? How do we navigate making certain aspects of unionizing visible while muting others? How can we be less extractive and more useful to the workers we write about? (read more...)

Platypus in 2026

 Kim Fernandes  January 21, 2026

Welcome to Platypus in 2026! Last year, we published over 65 posts, almost a quarter of which were also in a second language, and maintained a readership from 175 different countries. A full summary of CASTAC’s activities in 2025 can be found at our 2025 Year in Review. As we look ahead to another engaging year of publishing a wide range of work from the social sciences on science and technology, we are thankful for the labor that our editorial team and our authors continue to put in. We are also very grateful to you, our readers – thank you for being here every week! (read more...)

2025 in Review

 Kim Fernandes  December 23, 2025

Welcome to our annual wrap-up, where we share some highlights for CASTAC’s 2025 activities! We are grateful to for your generous engagement with our content this year, and we look forward to sharing more pieces on the anthropology of science and technology in 2026. (read more...)

The Lung Tumor We Know Exists Yet That We Cannot See

 Chen Shen  December 19, 2025

 Listen to a reading of this post.

Since my father’s diagnosis of lung cancer, my life has been haunted by something I cannot see. When the biopsy reported “airway dissemination positive,” I became consumed by questions: What is the shape and reach of this spread? Was the surgical margin sufficient? Has the cancer already advanced beyond what was removed, lurking undetected, growing with each breath, shifting with every cough? (read more...)

What Not To Do If You Are Accused Of Harassment: The Case Of Boaventura de Souza Santos

 Daniela Manica, Fabiene Gama  December 17, 2025

Este contenido también está disponible en español.

Este conteúdo também está disponível em português

 Listen to a reading of this post.

In this text, we intend to revisit the well-known case of the Portuguese sociologist Boaventura de Souza Santos, following its unfolding since the accusations that surfaced after the publication of this book “Sexual Misconduct in Academia” in 2023. We summarize the main events since then, focusing on developing a counter-manual that didactically organizes the regrettable way in which the intellectual responded to the accusations and systematically retaliated against the victims. We hope that this will contribute to ensuring that future reactions to such situations are guided by genuine desires for reparation and feminist transformation. (read more...)

From the ‘Grid’ to the ‘Field’: Visualizing the Chipscene

 Marilou Polymeropoulou  December 16, 2025

 Listen to a reading of this post.

“The Grid. A digital frontier. I tried to picture clusters of information as they moved through the computer. What did they look like? Ships? Motorcycles? Were the circuits like freeways? I kept dreaming of a world I thought I’d never see. And then, one day I got in…” Kevin Flynn, Tron Legacy In Autumn 2008, while studying in Athens, I happened to attend an event called Error Code. The event’s poster lured me in as it depicted a Nintendo Game Boy connected to another electronic device and a keyboard. During the event, the three performers played their chiptunes – compositions which they had created live on Game Boy. Although the overall umbrella term for chiptunes would be electronic music, they all had very distinct styles, ranging from noise to electropop. (read more...)