Post‐Legitimate Society

Abstract

We explore the role of moral, cognitive, and pragmatic legitimacy in reproducing the organization of two on‐demand labor platforms for couriers. Labor platforms are ideal cases to explore questions of legitimacy and institutional reproduction because they aspire towards automaticity. Since the 1970s, with the emergence of new production technologies and organizational forms, labor and work scholars have predicted a shift from the use of direct, coercive controls as a method to coordinate activity to more indirect, hegemonic, and normative methods of control. However, we find that in the case of the gig economy, platform firms are refuting the predictions of Post‐Fordist labor scholars, relying upon new forms of direct technological control as well as coercive, indirect market control, as opposed to shared norms and obligations, as methods for coordinating activity. We explore the implications of ‘post‐legitimate’ institutions, as well as the latent moral economy of gig workers as revealed through their critiques of the platform economy.