Simmelian Contributions to a Relational Sociology of Senses and Emotions: the Case of “Platforms of Delivery Workers”

Abstract

I In The View of Life, the last Simmel criticizes the Kantian approach to Ethics, because it considers the individual exclusively from his rational dimension, leaving aside his sensitivity; that is, "temptation and seduction by the senses." At the same time, he warns about the dangers for modern life of the technical expansion of the sensitive world, such as when “a being who has the structure of a giant telescope” or legs, “half-kilometer stilts” is conceived. Beings conceived in these way are today the delivery workers. Riding around the city very fast their bikes or motorcycles, receiving orders from their cellular phones, they administrate their bodies and senses –especially the view- at the service of their self-entrepreneurship. The article examines for the case of Buenos Aires, this emerging phenomenon of contemporary capitalism, such as the constitution of precarious working relationships between distributors of the current platform companies of delivery

Keywords

• platform capitalism
• alienation
• freedom
• Georg Simmel