Delivery riders in Indian cities sometimes run two or more platform applications at once, taking orders from whichever offers the better fare at that moment. This practice, known as multi-apping, is usually read either as rational diversification or as low-level reworking of unpaid waiting time. This theoretical article asks a different question: what happens to the person who must be several workers at once, and how do institutions count him? It develops the concept of fractional personhood, a condition in which an individual is registered as more than one worker by the institutions that count him and recognised as less than one worker by those that might protect him. Three mechanisms are specified. A stylised diversification model with stated parameters shows how a concave stability gain set against a convex coordination cost yields an optimum at a small number of platforms. Role theory suggests that plurality without differentiation between roles may impose strain without the buffering associated with self-complexity. And India’s Social Security (Central) Rules, 2026 count engagement days per aggregator, so that a worker who earns from three aggregators on one day is credited with three days of engagement. The article offers a typology of plural work, states six falsifiable propositions, sets out its limitations, and argues for entitlement anchored to the person rather than the engagement.
This article examines the interaction of welfarism with economías propias—locally embedded economic practices of rural Andean communities. We define welfarism as a power mechanism, both governmental and non-governmental, based on external support for populations considered marginalized; it encompasses aid that mitigates poverty as well as programs implementing public policies, such as state-led rural investment schemes. We conceptualize economías propias within the framework of contemporary Transformation Initiatives (TIs) because they challenge dominant economic narratives that reduce the economy to the capitalist sphere. From an anthropological perspective, the article explores the cultural dispositions of rural communities for social change, focusing on how welfarist policies shape everyday life, requiring negotiation to adapt them to local contexts while maintaining autonomy and agency. Based on ethnographic research conducted in Peru, Colombia, and Bolivia (2018–2023), our findings show that welfarist dynamics have been internalized in most identified initiatives. Through a lateral comparison of three case studies from southern Peru, we demonstrate that TIs are not an ideal rupture with the status quo, but rather a combination of existing and prefigured elements resulting in creative potential and internal tension. This hybrid character of TIs is precisely what lateral comparison between cases illuminates. These conclusions help deromanticize Latin American TIs and offer a more complex understanding of the mutual inspiration of transformative movements worldwide.
