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Digital platforms are becoming an indispensable part of our lives. We order food and groceries through DoorDash and Instacart, request rides from Uber and Lyft, and browse content created by Instagram and TikTok influencers. How do these platforms emerge and become so deeply intertwined with our daily lives? Who is investing in and working for these platforms, and why? How do platforms operate, and what are the consequences? How do gig platform worker feel about their work and life? What are the changes and continuity of gig work compared to other low-wage work in different times and spaces? Are there any alternatives to how platforms can be organized and operated in today’s world? This undergraduate seminar will introduce and discuss the main concepts and practices of the global platform economy with a particular focus on gig labor. We will critically examine: 1) how external political, economic, and social conditions shape platforms; 2) how platforms shape workers’ labor conditions and activism, and how workers’ actions in turn impact these platforms; and 3) how today’s gig work relates to other precarious work across different time and space, and what can be done to improve gig labor’s working conditions. Following an overview in the first week, the course will tackle different topics analytically, including the emergence and evolution of the gig economy, the social formation and working conditions of gig labor, gig labor’s collective actions, state interventions in gig labor, platform work in a comparative and historical perspective, and platform cooperativism as an alternative to today’s gig economy. The course is reading and writing intensive and will be conducted as a discussion seminar.