Research | Platypus

Series Introduction: The Politics of Writing About Platform Workers’ Organizing

 Isha Bhallamudi, Anushree Gupta  November 4, 2025

We are a group of scholars and researchers who work with gig and platform worker unions in India in various capacities. We form the India chapter of the Labor Tech Research Network collective, and have been meeting regularly from across the globe to share cross-sectoral organizing strategies, track the political landscape around gig & platform unions, and discuss research and reflections from our place-based engagements. Our work sits at the critical intersection of scholarship and activism. It involves amplifying workers’ voices, supporting unionisation efforts, and supporting workers in their struggles to lead more dignified and just working lives. Our discussions have inspired us to put together this blog series on the politics of writing about platform workers’ organizing. (read more...)

The Ones Who Walk Away from the Internet

 Martina Di Tullio  October 31, 2025

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In the Andean cosmovision, constellations are not formed by connecting the dots of stars, but rather from the spaces of darkness in the night sky. The most important one is the Yakana, shaped like a llama —the most essential animal for life in the Andes (Zuidema & Urton, 1976). What might be seen as void, then, can reveal as much as, or even more than, the brightest star. (read more...)

Necrovitality and Porous Exclusions: On Dying amidst Chemical Vitalities

 Misria Shaik Ali  October 9, 2025

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Note: This post contains images of skin wounds. If you are dermatophobic, read/view at your own discretion. You may instead listen to the post. An entry into the world through the pore urges us to see the chemical and material world as vital, volatile, viscous, transcorporeal–some of the topics addressed in the Platypus series, “Witnessing the porous world.” Jane Bennett, in describing and diving into the “life of metal,” begins by asking, “can nonorganic bodies also have a life? Can materiality itself be vital?” (2009, 53). Life, for Bennett as they converse with philosophers Deleuze and Nietzsche is, “a-subjective” and “impersonal” (54). Bennett’s effort to “avoid anthropocentrism and biocentrism”, leads them to “material” and “metallic vitality” that is imminent from “vacancies,” “holes,” and “cracks” that render material “porous” (59-61). (read more...)

Collaborating Bodies: Community Gardens and Food Forests in Central Texas

 Nadia Luis  September 11, 2025

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Almost every aspect of life on earth interacts with soil. Soils are old. Soils take time to develop from their parent material. Soils embody life itself. Yet, the concept of soil varies depending on the epistemic culture applied to define what soil is. Often soils exist in states of naturalness or unnaturalness. For example, Minami (2009) describes the Chinese compound character for agricultural soil 土壤 (tǔ rǎng), the first character (tǔ) represents soil in its natural state, and the second character (rǎng) represents soil once it has been broken up for agricultural purposes. Here, an interesting dichotomy presents itself: soil as it is and soil as it is once altered by human intervention. This dichotomous classificatory system describes changes that result from soil processes interacting; however, curiously, soil in only one category is the product of perceived human interaction. (read more...)

Can We Make Space for Technique?: Politics and Play in Digital Coaching

 Martin Jesper Larsson  September 4, 2025

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In Sweden, youth soccer is expected to be fun –but in a specific way. Rooted in the 19th-century idealization of amateurism over professionalism, fun in Swedish youth soccer has come to emphasize spontaneity, inclusion, and teamwork (Bachner, 2023). Over time, these amateur ideals have been woven into a broader political agenda in which youth sport is understood as a vehicle for public health, social integration and the cultivation of social capital (Doherty et al., 2013; Ekholm, 2018). (read more...)

Hawa-laat: Polluted Air in Delhi, India

 Vasundhara Bhojvaid  August 7, 2025

 यह पोस्ट हिंदी में भी उपलब्ध है ।

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In 2015, I was back in India’s capital city, Delhi after two years of fieldwork in villages in rural parts of the country. On my return, the city had changed. There was something different in the atmosphere, which was leading to far-reaching, unexpected effects. For instance, during my morning commutes as I turned on the radio to one of Delhi’s most popular radio stations the radio jockey blared every hour or so, ‘Hawa-laat’! The Hindi word Hawalaat translates as a prison. If the word is broken into two parts, Hawa and Laat, it signifies a kick by the wind, as Hawa means wind or air and Laat means a kick. The radio jockey called out the word in a long and stretched manner to get the listener’s attention, slowly elongating the word ‘Hawaaaaaaaaa’ and then abruptly ending with a forceful ‘Laat!!!’, bringing out the potency of the wind (air) kick we were all getting. Following this, air pollution levels were detailed, and listeners encouraged to indulge in carpools and get their vehicular pollution levels checked. (read more...)

“It’s like… ‘You’re welcome. Love, science’”: On Doing Critical Anthropology when the Enterprise is Under Attack

 Aaron Neiman  May 1, 2025

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Next month marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the first ever working draft of our species’ entire genetic code. It was a major milestone in the Human Genome Project (HGP), the ambitious international effort which began in 1990 and which remains one of the largest collaborative biology projects in history. The announcement was the subject of much fanfare, making the front page of the New York Times and the cover of TIME (headline: “Cracking the Code!”). In an offical ceremony marking the occasion, President Bill Clinton was joined in the East Room of the White House by NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins, the ambassadors of France, Germany, and Japan, and, via satellite, British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The President proudly summarized its top-line finding: race was indeed skin-deep, a trivial outer difference belying a profound biological sameness. (read more...)

Laughter and Dreaming of Wins in Recovery

 Hannah Ali  April 29, 2025

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“Hannah, roll a six!,” Mahad, Alliance Wellness recovery program resident, pleaded as the game of Ludo intensified. Ludo, a strategic and competitive board game, was popular among Somali American men, such as Mahad, who were in the process of renegotiating their dependency on substance use. These men also held vivid memories of playing Ludo in Somalia and neighboring countries that they moved through as they sought asylum from Somalia’s civil war. I first heard about Ludo when I began fieldwork at Alliance Wellness, a recovery program for an East African communities that was developed out of community need in Bloomington, Minnesota. With increasing rates of opioid related addiction and deaths among Somali Americans, Yussuf Shafie recognized a need for culturally appropriate therapy and recovery programs for Somali Americans in Minnesota (Feshir 2019). (read more...)