[Air-L] CfP: Hyperscaler Geographies | Digital Geographies Conference 2025

[Ulysses]

Apologies for cross-posting.



Dear All,



We invite you to participate in our special session on Hyperscaler
Geographies at the 4th Digital Geographies Conference 2025 – Artificial
Geographies: Opening the Black Box for a New Wave of Critical Thinking at
the University of Lisbon on November 3-4, 2025.



Hyperscaler infrastructure has emerged as a critical site in debates over
digital sovereignty, planetary infrastructure, and global political
economy. Our panel seeks to examine how hyperscaler infrastructure
reconfigures territorial arrangements, state sovereignty, and market
dependencies between sectors and across regions.





*Full Description: *

Advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) are increasingly driven by
scaling laws—the principle that greater accumulation of data, computational
power, and infrastructure generates exponential improvements in
performance. Hyperscalers—dominant cloud service providers such as Amazon,
Microsoft, Google, Tencent, Huawei, and Alibaba—supply the computational
infrastructure that powers AI and other data-intensive industries. This
dominance extends beyond technical infrastructure, reshaping the political
economy of global capitalism by reinforcing dependencies among firms,
states, and markets and prompting pressing questions regarding sovereignty,
governance, and territorial control, especially in the context of growing
geopolitical tension and the unfolding polycrisis.



Drawing on Benjamin Bratton’s concept of the stack, this panel explores how
hyperscaler infrastructure reorganizes political and economic power across
scales. The stack is not only a technical model of computational
architecture but also a political and geoeconomic structure that shapes the
circulation of goods, information, and capital. Geographers’ long-standing
engagement with scale—as both an analytic lens and an empirical
problem—offers valuable tools for theorizing this relationship. From
relational and multi-scalar methodologies to theories of scalar fixes,
geography can address how the political and economic power embedded in
hyperscaler infrastructure reorganizes the territorial and political
arrangements between states, markets, and firms.



*We invite papers that examine: *

- How hyperscalers are reshaping state sovereignty and geopolitical
alignments.

- How dependency on hyperscalers reinforces or disrupts territorial and
economic arrangements between states, firms, or networks.

- The uneven geographies of hyperscaler infrastructure—who controls it, who
depends on it, and who benefits from it.

- How the architecture or technical structure of hyperscaler infrastructure
reflects and reinforces geopolitical competition, contestation, or
collaboration.

- Comparative perspectives on the effects of hyperscalers across states,
sectors, or scales.



We encourage theoretical and empirical contributions from political
economy, infrastructure studies, platform economies, and digital
geographies. We particularly welcome papers that address the political and
territorial implications of hyperscaler infrastructure, and its role in
shaping sovereignty and global economic asymmetries, the uneven geographies
of hyperscaler control and dependency, and the technical and geopolitical
contestations surrounding cloud infrastructure. We encourage contributions
that explore how different sectors and regions intersect with the political
economy of hyperscalers.



*Submission Information: *

Submit abstracts (max 250 words) by *April 30, 2025* here, selecting the
Special Session on Hyperscale Geographies (Special Session #10):

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfA3KwwzulWPBEubfIyP3ZAsmeGN8KXebDhAoWborY-eulusQ/viewform



*For more information regarding the conference:*

https://ceg.igot.ulisboa.pt/digitalgeographies/


We will notify you by 15 May 2025.



*Session Organizers: *

Ulysses Pascal, Vrije Universiteit Brussel

David Bassens, Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Cheng Fang, Vrije Universiteit Brussel



*References: *

Amoore, L. (2018). Cloud geographies: Computing, data, sovereignty.
Progress in Human Geography, 42(1), 4-24.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132516662147


Bassens, D., & Hendrikse, R. (2022). Asserting Europe's technological
sovereignty amid American platform finance: Countering financial sector
dependence on Big Tech? *Political Geography*, 97, 102648.


Bassens, D., Pažitka, V., & Hendrikse, R. (2024). Banking in the cloud:
mapping big tech’s global digital technology networks. *Regional Studies*.
https://doi.org/10.1080/00343404.2024.2391483


Bratton, B. (2015). *The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty*. MIT Press.

Cai, Q. (2025). The Cultural Politics of Artificial Intelligence in
China. *Theory,
Culture & Society*. https://doi.org/10.1177/02632764241304718


De Goede, M., & Westermeier, C. (2022). Infrastructural geopolitics.
*International
Studies Quarterly*, 66(3), sqac033.


Hardaker, S. (2025). From Bytes to Bricks: Advocating for a Turn Toward
Platform-led Infrastructuralization in Economic Geography. *Progress in
Economic Geography*, 3(1), 100038. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.peg.2025.100038


James, S., & Quaglia, L. (2024). Emergent regime complexity and epistemic
barriers in ‘bigtech’ finance. *New Political Economy*, 29(6), 872–885.


Langley, P., & Leyshon, A. (2021). The platform political economy of
FinTech: Reintermediation, consolidation and capitalisation. *New Political
Economy*, 26(3), 376–388.


Narayan, D. (2022). Platform capitalism and cloud infrastructure:
Theorizing a hyper-scalable computing regime. *Environment and Planning A:
Economy and Space*, 54(5), 911–929.


Rolf, S., & Schindler, S. (2023). The US–China rivalry and the emergence of
state platform capitalism. *Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space*,
55(5), 1255–1280.