Keith Hart on Sun, 30 Sep 2007 15:15:04 +0200 (CEST) |
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Re: <nettime> ICT&S Researchers: Towards Critical Internet Theory |
>Fuchs in this context coined the notion of the Internet gift commodity economy< I agree that this looks like a typical piece of lame-brained academic opportunism and that sociologists will generally be way behind those who are active in 'the movement'. But the latter have contributed to the sterile contrast between gift and commodity and are just as often dupes of a bourgeois ideology they have internalized without knowing it. I have heard internet activists in Berlin claim that any hint of exchange is giving in to 'capitalism' and the the divisions within the FLOSS movement epitomized by Stallman vs Torvalds routinely draw on the idea that making a money payment is decisive in distinguishing one set of transactions from the other. When Chris Gregory wrote 'Chris Gregory wrote 'Gifts and Commodities' in 1982, his intention was to account for the efflorescence of gift-exchange (such as the kula ring made famous by Malinowski) in a colonial capitalist economy that became Papua New Guinea. The last third of the book is about creative combinations of gifts and commodities, but most anthropologists preferred to run with the notion that 'Melanesian cultures' own a distinctive brand 'gift economy' to be contrasted with the 'commodity economy' of western capitalism. It's enough to make on weep and Gregory did try to set the record straight later in 'Savage Money' (1997), but to no avail. Of course, Marcel Mauss is the avatar for all this and 'The Gift' (1925) must be one of the most cited books of all time. But people don't read it or they would notice that the purpose of his essay was to demolish the bourgeois opposition between gift and market, the idea that commerce is just an expression of individual self-interest and that Christmas and wedding presents embody the spirit of free community. There are two prerequisites for being human: we must each learn to be self-reliant to a high degree and to belong to others, merging our identities in a bewildering variety of social relationships. Much of modern ideology emphasizes how problematic it is to be both self-interested and mutual. Yet the two sides are often inseparable in practice and some societies, by encouraging private and public interests to coincide, have managed to integrate them more effectively than ours. Mauss held that the attempt to create a free market for private contracts is utopian and just as unrealizable as its antithesis, a collective based solely on altruism. Human institutions everywhere are founded on the unity of individual and society, freedom and obligation, self-interest and concern for others. The pure types of selfish and generous economic action obscure the complex interplay between our individuality and belonging in subtle ways to others. Mauss was highly critical of the Bolsheviks? resort to violence and especially of their destruction of the market economy along with the confidence and good will that sustained it. He held that markets and money are necessary for the extension of human society, but their contemporary form is unsustainable. Even so capitalist institutions combine self-interest and the gift; and sociologists should make this more visible. He advocated an ?economic movement from below?, in the form of syndicalism, co-operation and mutual insurance. His greatest hopes were for a consumer democracy driven by the co-operative movement. This was for him a secular version of the archaic phenomena described in 'The Gift'. They are ?total social facts?, in that they bring into play the whole of society and all its institutions ? legal, economic, religious and aesthetic. I think, if he were alive today, he would agree with you and Brian that 'the movement' is a more reliable source for all this than academic sociology. But don't get carried away. Keith # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@kein.org and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org