Production, consumers' convenience, and cynical economies: The case of Uber in Buenos Aires

Based on twelve months of fieldwork into Uber's conflict in Buenos Aires, Argentina, this article examines convenience's role the emergence what I call cynical economies: a method and logic production expressly organized awareness distance very rhetoric convenience exacerbates. For city's middle class, defined democratizing, empowering arena private relations away from hierarchies exclusions proper to sphere. As ratings translated consumers' experiences political economy for trade, drivers ride knowing that whatever exceeded immediate intelligibility experience could not matter economy. In process, economies delegitimize complex inherently social categories like risk, responsibility, liability, as well sphere frames them, without offering an alternative order return.