Micro and small enterprises in electronic commerce: a theoretical and methodological approach in North American Geography

• Grant number: 23/08057-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: December 01, 2023
• End date: March 31, 2024
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Geography - Human Geography
• Principal Investigator: María Mónica Arroyo
• Grantee: Maria Fernanda Amorim Fossaluza
• Supervisor: Matthew Zook
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: University of Kentucky (UK), United States
• Associated to the scholarship: 21/13193-8 - The new geography of commerce and consume in digital platforms: the case of Meta Platforms Inc. and associated applications., BP.IC

Abstract

The development of commercial activities through the Internet is a consolidated phenomenon worldwide. Conducted from the association of technical information systems, finance, and logistics, e-commerce is an activity that merges the concrete and virtual spheres of geographic space, changing the rationalities and contingencies that organize trade spatially. As of the last decade, the massification of access to information and communication technologies necessary for this activity has been observed. This process takes place in a context of intense concentration of the software market in a regulatory environment still in dispute. Thus, an understanding of the social impact of these technologies as mediators of commerce, especially local commerce, is required - a stranger to the corporative and datified rationality that organizes the Internet and electronic commerce. In this sense, research in Geography is intensifying on the digital theme, although there are still gaps in the production of knowledge about the participation of non-hegemonic agents in e-commerce. Thus, we propose in this research project to carry out a supervised internship abroad at the University of Kentucky (Lexington, KU). We propose to conduct an investigation of the theoretical and methodological approaches to the presence of micro and small enterprises in electronic commerce in the United States, in particular the observation of this phenomenon in the central-southeastern United States.