Series | Platypus

Series: Theorizing Stuckness in Science and Technology

 Michelle Venetucci, Shoko Yamada  March 3, 2026

What might we learn by studying science and technology through the lens of stuckness? Stuckness is a ubiquitous experience in the everyday work of science and technology. Scientists are constantly frustrated with unexpected obstacles to their research plans (Messeri & Vertesi, 2015). Technologists who aspire to change the world often end up reproducing current structures of power (Rider, 2022). In popular discourse, scientific and technological practice has been associated with progress as steady betterment. As Leo Marx (2010) notes in tracing the emergence of the word “technology” in English, scientific and mechanical innovations became synonymous with social progress in the 19th century. And yet, getting stuck is a quotidian experience among experts in these fields, from experiments that fail to grant applications that are rejected. (read more...)

Transnational Translations: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue on Platforms and Labor

 Malcolm Katrak, Anushree Gupta, Debopriya Shome  February 18, 2026

 Listen to a reading of this post.

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...)

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...)

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...)

Doing Research Between Adolescence and Cyborgs

 Irene do Planalto Chemin, Geovana Luna dos Santos, Kauan Alves da Silveira Aristides, Raylane Souza de Moura, Samara Lopes de Oliveira, Veronica Martins Da Silva  November 26, 2025

Este contenido también está disponible en español.

Este conteúdo também está disponível em português

 Listen to a reading of this post.

“What do you imagine when you hear the word “cyborg”?” This was the question posed by a teenager named Kauan to introduce a presentation on Donna Haraway’s The Cyborg Manifesto (2009) for the research group of the High School Scientific Initiation Program at Unicamp. An online presentation, with slides, given by an undergraduate researcher, Kauan, to four classmates and a counselor. Immediately, the imagination of a robot comes to mind for some of us. Others are open to new references. We can travel through films, dystopias, machines, high-tech and even fashion can be a cyborg reference for teenagers. Apparently, cyborgs and adolescence have historically coexisted and have a love-hate relationship. Daily connected, their bodies inhabiting poorly demarcated boundaries between online and the offline. Humor and irony can simulate both the image of adolescence and the cyborg. We don’t have a problem with conflicting feelings, and we’re internalizing the contradiction of being cyborgs in the 21st century. We, who wrote this text, are five teenagers and one young adult, who still has the capacity to imagine “what they want to be when they grow up.” (read more...)

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

 Isha Bhallamudi, Anushree Gupta  November 4, 2025

 Listen to a reading of this post.

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...)

Uterus Transplantation: A Scientific Advance or the Reflection of Gender Stereotypes?

 Juliana Vieira  October 27, 2025

Este conteúdo também está disponível em português

Este contenido también está disponible en español.

 Listen to a reading of this post.

Uterus transplantation has been touted as one of the most innovative reproductive technologies in recent years (Brännström 2018). The procedure allows women without a uterus to become pregnant and give birth using a donated organ, which is removed after the baby is born in most cases (Brännström 2024). But behind this advancement, there is also a debate about the values and beliefs that drive the development of this technology. After all, to what extent do highly innovative medical technologies, such as uterus transplantation, cease to express a progressive vision of the future and instead reinforce morally conservative values related to motherhood, gender, and gestation? Could this really be a solution to a medical problem, or is it a response to a social construct that prioritizes biological motherhood over other forms of parenthood? (Luna 2004; Luna 2007). (read more...)

Necrovitality and Porous Exclusions: On Dying amidst Chemical Vitalities

 Misria Shaik Ali  October 9, 2025

 Listen to a reading of this post.

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...)