Performing Other Worlds in the Platform Economy. Comparative Investigations of Platform Cooperativism across the European South

This dissertation examines platform cooperativism as another world within the platform economy. It explores how cooperatives that employ digital platforms articulate alternative practices and imaginaries of technological use, labour organisation, and collective ownership in urban contexts. Building on feminist economic geography and the framework of diverse and community economies, the research investigates how these initiatives reconfigure relations between technology, labour, and value creation, offering grounded insights into how digital economies might be organised differently. The dissertation brings together three stand-alone but interrelated papers, each addressing a distinct facet of platform cooperativism while collectively contributing to a broader argument. The first introduces the concept of technological self-determination, analysing COTABO, a long-standing taxi cooperative in Bologna, and its trajectory of technological innovation. It argues that technological autonomy can emerge through collective experimentation rather than corporate state control. The second paper develops the notion of logistical interstices through the case of Mensakas, a cycle logistics cooperative in Barcelona. It examines how cooperatives navigate and inhabit the interstitial spaces produced by platform urbanism and municipal regulation. The third paper expands the comparative perspective and reads these cooperatives as community economies acting in digitally mediated cities. Drawing on feminist digital geographies, it interprets their practices as attempts to take back technology through ethics of care and equity. Methodologically, the research combines comparative ethnography, interviews, participant observation, archival research, digital and autoethnographic approaches, reflecting on the entanglements between physical and digital fieldwork. Situated in the cooperative traditions of Southern Europe, this dissertation contributes to debates on platform urbanism, postcapitalist economic practices, and feminist methodologies. Ultimately, it shows how platform cooperativism performs alternative technological and economic futures already unfolding in everyday urban life.