Smartphones and ‘doing community’ in Bangkok’s platform economy: A Weberian analysis

Abstract

This article examines emergent communities of platform-based delivery workers in Bangkok by applying Max Weber’s concept of Vergemeinschaftung or ‘doing community’. Using offline and online ethnographic methods, the authors demonstrate how delivery workers do community on the streets of Bangkok and leverage smartphones and social media to extend their communities to the online realm. These community practices are culturally constituted and share characteristics with pre-existing communities in the transportation sector in Thailand. However, while these older communities are under pressure from rationalisation, or in Weber’s terms, Vergesellschaftung, rider communities emerge from the rational conditions of delivery platforms. Through this analysis, the article demonstrates how Weber’s theory effectively captures the dialectical dynamics of doing community and rationalisation in digital economies, suggesting that scholarship on digital platforms and media could benefit from adopting a Weberian analysis of social change.