How does convenience operate not just as a highly coveted consumer good that stands to mitigate the demands of life in a fast-paced society but also as an ideology that is integral to new forms of capital accumulation, domination, and extraction? Taking Shoshana Zuboff's work on surveillance capitalism as a departure point, in this article I explore this question by focusing on one of Amazon's newest business initiatives, Amazon Go. Launched in 2018, the initiative has involved opening twenty-six stores intended to enhance customer convenience by weaving “machine learning, computer vision, and AI into the very fabric of the store,” so customers “never have to wait in line.” Drawing on a range of data, including promotional videos, marketing reports, interviews with the designers of the initiative, and customer comments, I show how convenience operates not just as a coveted consumer product but also as an ideology that is central to Amazon's abilities to exploit the behavioral surplus of its customers and legitimate new forms of capital accumulation and extraction. By interrogating how convenience functions in this capacity, this article seeks further understandings of the convenience economy while also returning to a long-standing question within economic anthropology: What role do ideologies play in sustaining and perpetuating exploitative economic systems?

中文翻译：

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Amazon Go、监视资本主义和便利的意识形态

便利如何不仅作为一种令人垂涎的消费品来减轻快节奏社会的生活需求，而且作为一种意识形态，它是新形式的资本积累、支配和榨取不可或缺的一部分？以 Shoshana Zuboff 在监视资本主义方面的工作为出发点，在本文中，我通过关注亚马逊最新的业务计划之一 Amazon Go 来探讨这个问题。该计划于 2018 年推出，涉及开设 26 家商店，旨在通过将“机器学习、计算机视觉和人工智能融入商店的结构”来提高顾客的便利性，让顾客“不必排队等候”。利用一系列数据，包括宣传视频、营销报告、对计划设计者的采访以及客户评论，我展示了便利如何不仅作为一种令人垂涎的消费品，而且作为一种意识形态运作，这种意识形态对于亚马逊利用其客户的行为盈余和合法的新资本积累和提取形式的能力至关重要。通过探究便利在这种能力下如何发挥作用，本文寻求对便利经济的进一步理解，同时也回归经济人类学中一个长期存在的问题：意识形态在维持和延续剥削性经济体系方面发挥了什么作用？