Platformization in the southern city: Entrepreneurial volunteering and the suturing of collective life in Hyderabad

Abstract

This article focuses on the online networked spaces that emerged in response to the COVID-19 crisis in Hyderabad, India. It brings perspectives from platform urbanism and southern urbanism in conversation to examine the entanglements between platformization and urban collective life that underwrote these responses. Conceptualizing these new forms of emplacement as platform collectives, we outline the overlaps between southern urban placemaking practices and the platform logics that constitute and sustain these collective spaces. We argue that as urban residents in the southern city become platform users, everyday affective and immaterial labors become important for suturing collective life. To this end, the article draws on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Hyderabad (India) during the peak pandemic years. The research findings point to the communicative and emotional labor undertaken by volunteers in the city as critical for coordinating the relief efforts, for volunteers to remain hopeful, and for the city to cope with the crisis. In analyzing these acts of labor, this article provides insights into the localization of platforms and the gender dynamics that underwrite their evolution in southern urban contexts.