TY - CHAP

T1 - Collectivizing Convenience?

T2 - From Delivery to Logisticality

AU - Beverungen, Armin

PY - 2024/12

Y1 - 2024/12

N2 - By characterizing Amazon’s convenience as logistical, as convenience delivered, the contribution points to the entanglement between logistics, planning and convenience at Amazon. Where critical commentary has established the costs of convenience in terms of labor exploitation and consumer surveillance, the contribution contends that Amazon’s convenience furthermore implies a logistification of life, which largely evacuates collectivity. The contribution subsequently challenges celebrations of Amazon’s logistical convenience, and suggests that a potential collectivization of convenience demands a more specific reckoning with convenience delivered. If Amazon’s convenience is logistics in disguise, and if the techniques and operations of Amazon’s logistics are fundamentally counter-collective, then Amazon’s convenience cannot simply be collectivized. Instead, it must be confronted with logisticality, that is, the collective capacity to organize life without logistical planning. Logisticality defies logistical convenience, and may bring forth a different kind of convenience.

AB - By characterizing Amazon’s convenience as logistical, as convenience delivered, the contribution points to the entanglement between logistics, planning and convenience at Amazon. Where critical commentary has established the costs of convenience in terms of labor exploitation and consumer surveillance, the contribution contends that Amazon’s convenience furthermore implies a logistification of life, which largely evacuates collectivity. The contribution subsequently challenges celebrations of Amazon’s logistical convenience, and suggests that a potential collectivization of convenience demands a more specific reckoning with convenience delivered. If Amazon’s convenience is logistics in disguise, and if the techniques and operations of Amazon’s logistics are fundamentally counter-collective, then Amazon’s convenience cannot simply be collectivized. Instead, it must be confronted with logisticality, that is, the collective capacity to organize life without logistical planning. Logisticality defies logistical convenience, and may bring forth a different kind of convenience.

KW - Digital media

KW - logistical media

KW - convenience

KW - Sociology

KW - Logistik

KW - Convenience

KW - Wirtschaftsplanung

M3 - Chapter

SN - 978-90-834125-5-9

SP - 66

EP - 81

BT - In/Convenience

PB - Institute of Network Cultures

CY - Amsterdam

ER -