Transcending “flexible time”: Platform labor in the Chinese food delivery industry and its temporal politics

Abstract

“Flexible time” as a myth in platform labor has been destructed by critical media scholars. However, while previous studies have answered the question of what platform time “isn’t,” most failed to go further in analyzing what “it is.” Based on the 6-month fieldwork, this study aims to re-construct the temporal politics of platform labor in the online food delivery industry in China. Specifically, we employ an inherently relational perspective to analyze three differential temporal themes constructed by heterogeneous actors, namely the “daily time” by third-party subcontractor, “event time” by platform, and “poaching time” by rider. In the investigation of multiple temporalities, this article also uncovers the asymmetrical “relational balancing” among heterogeneous actors in platform labor.