Tech Elite Power in Germany: A Case of Provisional Non-Disruption

• In Event: Economic Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Roundtable 11: Socioeconomic Inequality

Abstract

Digital capitalism is globally championed by American companies operating consumer-oriented service platforms, such as Google/Alphabet, Amazon, Meta/Facebook, Apple, or Microsoft. Currently, the operations of these companies—and with them, the disruptive winner-take-all logic of digital capitalism—are expanding into the value chains of indus-trial production, where cloud computing, automotive software, and AI applications in general are becoming increasingly important. Analytically, this offers a unique chance to study the interplay of change in the economic structure and the social structure: What happens to incumbent elites when digital capitalism hits an economy that is largely ori-ented towards industrial production, such as the German one?

Author

• Lion Hubrich, Humboldt University of Berlin