[P2P-F] sharing, essence of things, technological determinism, economic determinism, and neoliberalism

Sat Jan 8 07:08:57 CET 2011

Dear Andreas,

Thanks for your very useful and cogent contributions.

I have a question on social determinism.

My own take on this is 'integrative', i.e. to take into account all aspects
of a studied phenomenom,  (inter)subjective, (inter)objective, and see how
these aspects interact with each other; this basically puts the issue of
determinisms 'between brackets', or, if you like, is agnostic about the
ultimate determinations; nevertheless of course, in this four quadrants,
various determinisms do exist, for example, certain technologies do act as
enabling affordances, protocollary designs do allow/disallow certain
actions,

in the intersubjective field, I follow Allan Page Fiske's lead that the new
digital sharing platforms re-introduce 'communal shareholding',i.e. a social
logic where, as Stefan Meretz said elsewhere, giving and taking are
disconnected, or as I would say, you may exchange with the whole as an
option, if you want.

But obviously, this communal shareholding exists with the larger
'materiality' (as martin would insist) of an existing class society.

My position has always been that emancipatory forces can  use and leverage
the existing communal shareholding, as a way to change/transform the
existing larger class society within which it exists.

So if you  like, it's like pitting two different social determinisms against
each other,

Michel

On Fri, Jan 7, 2011 at 6:03 PM, Andreas Wittel <andreas.wittel at gmail.com>wrote:

> Hello Martin,
>
> On Fri, Jan 7, 2011 at 1:09 AM, j.martin.pedersen <
> m.pedersen at lancaster.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>>
>> I agree to most of what you say, on some levels, but the point here is
>> about what some lawyers and philosophers call starting point: It is
>> typical of neoliberal economics to start with the "thing" as opposed to
>> the social.
>>
>
> I don't know which philosophers you are referring to. However I would
> reject this approach as an unnecessary expansion of what neoliberalism
> stands for. Accordiong to this logic a claim such as 'Digital technologies
> will ultimately lead to communism' would have the thing as starting point
> and as such be neoliberal. Isn't this sort of absurd? One might well argue
> that this statement is false, even silly - fair enough, it probably is. But
> it is not neoliberal.
> Another example: 'Digital technologies have brought about new social
> practices which in turn have created havoc in the creative industries.' This
> statement starts with the thing, moves on to the social in a determining
> way, and concludes with an economic situation. In my view it would be very
> difficult to argue against this claim. It seems to me that this is a correct
> statement. How can it be neoliberal?
>
> I suppose I am reacting to strongly to this because I find myself
> struggling with issues regarding determinism. I have - like you and like
> most sociologists and anthropologists - always made a case for the primacy
> of the social (should we call this social determinism?), but with the rise
> of the information age/ the network society/the digital economy this very
> familiar position started to erode a litte bit. It is an interesting
> question why *social* sciences insist so stongly on the primacy of the *
> social*, or on *social* determinism. It is like a natural reflex. I wonder
> if this has something to do with a protection of disciplines. Obviously, if
> people concede that the social can sometimes and in some situations be
> determined by the thing, disciplines such as sociology and anthropology lose
> ground and relevance
>
> Helpful to avoid economic determinism is Marx and his notion of mode of
> production, which combines technology (productive forces) and social
> relations (property relations, power relations etc.). Talking about a
> digital mode of production then refers to technologies and to the social
> struggles over competing economic alternatives, which are fought for between
> various political groups at the moment.
>
>
>> So, yes, you can and should distinguish between technological and
>> economic determinism, and in this case both are at play: firstly the
>> economic determinism, where the thing is foregrounded, then the
>> technological determinism where the essence of the thing determines how
>> it should be organised. Both of which background the social.
>>
>> My point is merely that social aspects come first: you can easily share
>> a car if you don't see it as an extension of your penis or fundamentally
>> constitutive of your identity (both of which are promoted through
>> advertising), I just throw you my keys. If I am not a very selfish and
>> ego-centric person there is likely no problems sharing it all.
>>
>> And access does matter, as far as I am concerned, as does the labour and
>> resources and energy that is required for cyberspace to exist: these are
>> enormous social actions and systems that have to continually be
>> sustained. Access also costs the world. So from the perspective of the
>> displaced peasant (where minerals are mined or a river dammed), sharing
>> a poem digitally is really a bummer - cyberspace is huge enterprise,
>> where the materiality is somewhat hidden. The same goes for the
>> electricity system: there is no apparent change when I flick the switch
>> in my house - your house still has light - so why should I not have the
>> light on all the time, in all rooms? Install another lamp or two? Also,
>> if I download your poem from your website a thousand times a second,
>> then noone else can share it. The similarities are striking, I think,
>> but not very surprising once we understand cyberspace as a huge
>> industrial machine and not merely some immaterial appearence.
>>
>> I completely agree with this. But as you say, the materiality behind the
> digital world is somewhat hidden. That is why it is so hard to get an idea
> about the external costs (monetary costs, environmental costs, etc.) of
> this. How can we start to calculate and evaluate these costs?
>
> In solidarity with labour and with an ecological consciousness, the poem
>> is hard work to share digitally.
>>
>> Sorry I cannot engage further with this. My partner has had a little
>> child and I am drowning in stuff and responsbilities as well joy and
>> wonder.
>>
>
> Congratulations. Enjoy the moment!
>
> andreas
>
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