Intro

We’re back with a new season on anything culture and inequality! From clickbait culture and influencer marketing to content farms and algorithm-driven platforms, we kick off the 2025 season by unpacking the mechanics behind our increasingly digital economic lives. How has the digital realm evolved into a powerful economic force that's reshaping the way we live, work, and consume? We examine the spread of digital payments, the influence of tokens, and the growing power of algorithms in decision-making. Along the way, we'll consider broader shifts like platform labor, surveillance capitalism, and the emergence of a new digital feudalism. We’re joined by Ashley Mears, Professor and Chair of Cultural Sociology and New Media at the University of Amsterdam. She’s the author of Pricing Beauty: The Making of a Fashion Model and Very Important People: Status and Beauty in the Global Party Circuit, and is widely recognized as an expert on the culture and economics of aesthetics and digital labour. Also with us is Rachel O’Dwyer, a media scholar, writer, and lecturer at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin. A leading authority on digital payments, blockchain, and the rise of tokens, Rachel brings a sharp critical lens to the infrastructures that shape our digital transactions and value systems. She’s is the author of Tokens: The Future of Money in the Age of the Platform. This episode's host is Kobe De Keere, an Associate Professor of cultural sociology at the University of Amsterdam. He explores the moral and cultural dimensions of economic life, focusing on topics such as valuation, the labour market, and cryptocurrencies. Further reading for this episode - O'Dwyer, R. (2023). Tokens: The Future of Money in the Age of the Platform. Verso Books. - Mears, A. (2023). Bringing Bourdieu to a content farm: Social media production fields and the cultural economy of attention. Social Media+ Society, 9(3), 20563051231193027. - Schüll, Natasha Dow. Addiction by design: Machine gambling in Las Vegas. Princeton university press, 2012. - Bailey, P. (1990). Parasexuality and glamour: The Victorian barmaid as cultural prototype. Gender & History, 2(2), 148-172 - Swartz, L. (2020). New money. Yale University Press. Podcast editors of this season: Luuc Brans, Kobe De Keere, Sanne Pieters & Geert Veuskens This podcast is co-financed from the BINQ project, funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, Grant No. 101052649. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them. This podcast is also kindly supported by the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research (AISSR) at the University of Amsterdam.