Smartphones and ‘doing community’ in Bangkok’s platform economy: A Weberian analysis
Issued Date
2025-01-01
Resource Type
ISSN
14614448
eISSN
14617315
Scopus ID
2-s2.0-85218689901
Journal Title
New Media and Society
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SCOPUS
Bibliographic Citation
New Media and Society (2025)
Suggested Citation
McFarlane D., Mieruch Y., Waters T. Smartphones and ‘doing community’ in Bangkok’s platform economy: A Weberian analysis. New Media and Society (2025). doi:10.1177/14614448241312653 Retrieved from: https://repository.li.mahidol.ac.th/handle/20.500.14594/105508
Title
Smartphones and ‘doing community’ in Bangkok’s platform economy: A Weberian analysis
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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.