Adrian Athique, Akshaya Kumar
In the introduction to this special section, we interrogate the question of capital in platform capitalism. We argue that the present paradigm for exploring platform capitalism emphasizes procedures and infrastructures of datafication, but tends to neglect the strategic intent of capital. We therefore revisit notions of ‘data capital’ and ‘platform capital’ that rest upon the broad hegemony of ‘Big Tech’ and an assumed equivalence between data and capital. We offer the provocation that data has not supplanted financial capital as the target of accumulation, and we offer an alternative positioning of platform capital as a set of intra-capital interests targeting the surplus value of labour, capturing state spending, pooling the money in our digital wallets, assetizing social economies, and boosting energy markets. Contrary to accounts of platform capitalism centred upon Silicon Valley, our special section offers a second provocation: that Asia has operated as a cradle of innovation for platform capitalism, and that the sources and logics of capital involved are particular to the region. In this introduction, we therefore provide an overview of the diversity, genealogy, charters and logics of platform capital in Asia. This provides the broader context within which papers in this special section exemplify instances of Asian platform capital at work.