Writing a book proposal is so much more interesting when you’ve already written the book, particularly when you’ve been working on it in one form or another since 2008:
This book argues that the rise of digital platforms represents a significant shift in the architecture of society, requiring new conceptual tools to adequately analyse contemporary social dynamics. It makes the case for recognising platforms as a distinct socio-technical structure with properties and powers that cannot be reduced to existing categories like institutions or organisations. While affirming Margaret Archer’s realist explanatory framework distinguishing between structure, culture and agency as analytically separable domains, the book contends these relatively autonomous spheres are increasingly linked and mediated by platforms in conceptually meaningful and causally impactful ways. It calls for incorporating the platform into social ontology as a novel form of structural elaboration.
Tracing the emergence of platforms across multiple domains, from social media to the gig economy, the book explores how platforms shape the parameters of agency and selfhood. It examines distracted selves, fragile social movements, and the manipulation of individuals through opaque computational politics. However, it resists technological determinism, instead revealing the subtle but profound ways platforms inflect processes of reflexivity, identity and collective mobilisation. Conceptually and empirically, the book aims to provide micro-foundations for grasping the epochal shift towards a platform society. Avoiding grand pronouncements, it offers a nuanced analysis of how emergent platform structures intersect with established institutions and enduring aspects of human agency. The intention is to develop an agent-oriented ontology suited to making sense of daily life in an age of ubiquitous mediation.
Mark Carrigan 