Appthropology: Apps as a Lens for the Global Political Economy

Apps are among the most public wirings of the global economy. This paper introduces Appthropology, a framework for studying apps as both archives and engines of political economy. As archives, apps inscribe economic relations, political forces, and social ties directly into their code, leaving measurable residues—imprints of business ties, sanctions, and economic and regulatory constraints. As engines, apps operationalize these inscriptions to transform markets, governance, and culture. In this dual role, they act as mirrors of the world and levers acting upon it. We argue that apps provide a class of high-frequency, granular geopolitical and economic signals, updating at the pace of app releases rather than quarterly reports. Their telemetry, dependencies, and design are pragmatic rather than performative, which makes them unusually transparent political-economic artifacts. These signals span multiple domains: economic (market concentration), political (sanctions, bans, divestments), sovereignty (hybrid “Frankenstein” jurisdictions stitched from multiple legal and technical domains), and developmental (leapfrogging infrastructures such as QR-based payments). Viewing apps through the lens of complex adaptive systems, we highlight patterns of mutual adaptation, path dependence, cascades, and tipping points. Sanctions can force divestments; divestments may spawn new infrastructures. Restrictions provoke circumvention, sometimes accelerating the very ecosystems they target. This position paper sets out Elkenson's initiative to develop interdisciplinary methodologies and tools for analyzing the appified world, treating apps as living archives and engines of the global political economy.