Global Platforms Weaving into the Craft Industry: Lessons from Localisation Strategies in India

Résumé En

This chapter discusses the deployment and localisation of global digital platforms in India through a case study of the craft industry, a largely informal and precarious sector, and the socio-economic transformation to which they contribute for local players. It aims to take part in recent critical research on the strategies of transnationalisation processes by global communication and technology players in the Global South and their consequences for local industries in terms of work dynamics and power relations. Based on exploratory research that has been initiated in the states of Assam and Tamil Nadu, where several global players in the digital economy, especially Amazon and Flipkart, have launched their digital programme and partnered up with public institutions, the chapter will analyse these corporations’ localisation strategies, the difficulties they have encountered, as well as the way in which they participate in a certain number of reconfigurations in organising local artisanal production and creative work. This research relies on qualitative methodology associated with an ethnographic approach, the study of a documentary corpus and content analysis of digital platforms.