HONNETHOVE “DEFORMACIJE PRIZNANJA” U PLATFORMSKOJ EKONOMIJI DOSTAVNIH USLUGA: ALGORITAMSKA REIFIKACIJA I STRUKTURNO ONEMOGUĆAVANJE TRIJU SFERA PRIZNANJA
HONNETH'S “DEFORMATIONS OF RECOGNITION” IN THE PLATFORM ECONOMY OF DELIVERY SERVICES: ALGORITHMIC REIFICATION AND THE STRUCTURAL DISABLEMENT OF THE THREE SPHERES OF RECOGNITION

Summary/Abstract: The article undertakes a critical-theoretical examination of the working conditions of couriers in platform delivery services (Glovo, Wolt, Deliveroo, UberEats, Foodpanda, Bolt) through the analytic apparatus of Axel Honneth's recognition theory, reading the empirical record of platform work since 2015 against Honneth's tripartite typology of recognition (love, rights, solidarity) developed in The Struggle for Recognition and supplemented by his later reformulation of reification as a forgetting of antecedent recognition. The original contribution of the article is the development of the concept of algorithmic reification — a contemporary form of reification specific to platform-mediated labour in which the social relations of work are systematically converted into measurable parameters (ratings, completion times, acceptance rates, GPS coordinates) that displace the recognition relations Honneth identifies as constitutive of the development of practical self-relation. Drawing on the recent peer-reviewed literature on the normative reconstruction of platform work, recognition struggles in the remote gig economy, algorithmic domination, the breakdown of solidarity, platform-worker mobilisation, ethnographies of Deliveroo couriers, and human rights analyses of platform labour, the article argues that algorithmic reification deforms each of Honneth's three spheres in a distinct and systematic way: the sphere of love/care is fragmented by atomised work patterns and the absence of relational continuity with colleagues and recipients; the sphere of rights is derogated by the misclassification of couriers as self-employed contractors that denies them the deontic standing of full legal subjects; the sphere of solidarity is atomised by algorithmic individualisation that converts collective interests into a population of competing micro-actors. A fourth structural feature, the platform rating system, operates as what I term counterfeit recognition — a pseudo-recognition that mimics the form of social esteem while functioning operationally as a control device. The article closes with implications for Honneth's framework, for European Union platform work regulation, and for collective-action strategies among delivery couriers.

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