Capitalism fundamentally operates through and requires not only the exploitation only of paid productive labor, but also the endless degradation of the life-support capacities of the ecosystems it occupies and also the care capacities of the predominantly unpaid reproductive labor that sustains its paid workforce. The papers in this session explore these multiple forms of harm to people and the planet. Paper 1 how food delivery apps not only contribute to the exploitation of workers but also to ecological destruction through increased CO2 emissions, packaging waste, food waste, and other impacts. Paper 2 critiques how the reproductive labor necessary to create the “cultural harmony” that tourism in Bali promotes as “paradise” is made invisible and denies the people who do this labor agency about their lives and the life of their island.
The analysis of digital capitalism has explored how capitalist apps and platforms exploit gig workers, including through poor working conditions, low pay, continuous surveillance, and the lack of benefits. However, the ecological impact is yet to be explored. This paper explores how food delivery apps not only contribute to the exploitation of workers but also to ecological destruction through increased CO2 emissions, packaging waste, food waste, and other impacts. The paper argues that the exploitation of digital labor and ecological destruction are interconnected as platform owners profit massively. Therefore, deep solidarity is necessary to advocate for a just economy. The first part of the paper explores the interconnected impacts of food delivery apps from labor and ecological perspectives. The second part demonstrates how deep solidarity among delivery drivers, restaurants, and consumers can be imagined as they comprise the majority of people living in the Capitalocene of platform capitalism.
Tourism in Bali has become a destructive force that disturbs living harmony in the local context, in terms of Balinese people, culture, and nature, for capital accumulation. In contrast to this, Bali has the concept of "Tri Hita Karana," which views all beings as subjects for mutual respect. However, the state has been treating Bali’s cultural harmony as reproductive labor that exists behind them, naturalizing it as “domestic labor”. I want to highlight these tourism aspects and tendencies to create an ontological resistance that shapes Bali tourism's existence as an essential subject with complete agency. I argue that the concealment of domestic labor creates the atmosphere that produces and sustains the assumption of a global commodity, ‘paradise’. The recognition of living culture as economic value, in which culture exists as a primary source, is substantial in determining the value of socio-ecological religious existence in tourism.