Critical Zones of Technopower and Global Political Ecology : Platforms, Pathologies, and Plunder

This book delivers a sharp, wide-angle look at how technology and the global tech industry shape social, health, economic, and environmental realities across the world. Peter C. Little shows that the power of electronics and Big Tech — from booming digital platforms to ever-growing streams of electronic waste — constitutes a political-ecological force that reshapes communities in both the Global North and South. Tracing everything from extractive mining and industrial pollution to rising inequalities, data-driven surveillance, platform-economy intrusions, and the expanding reach of Silicon Valley corporations, Little demonstrates why the political ecology of technology demands urgent attention. Drawing on tech criticism, ethnographic case studies, and conceptual tools such as technocapital and technoprecarious political ecology, the book exposes the deep toxicity, precarity, and planetary politics embedded in global tech systems. Critical Zones of Technopower and Global Political Ecology also highlights justice movements pushing back against technopower, including emerging “just tech” initiatives that underscore the need for a global political ecology of technocapitalism in the digital age. Having a global political ecology of technocapitalism in the digital age is no longer optional: it is mandatory, and Little demonstrates how it might be done.