This is part four of an eight part series. The report was written by Henry Jenkins, Xiaochang Li, Ana Domb Krauskopf With Joshua Green. Our research was funded by the members of the Convergence Culture Consortium, including GSDM Advertising, MTV Networks, and Turner Broadcasting.
Lewis Hyde's The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property (1983) represents perhaps the best guide on the ways that gift economies operate within the modern world. For that reason, we want to walk through some of his basic claims about the relations between commodity culture and the gift economy.
In a commodity culture, goods are traded as wages for labor or are
purchased directly. Neither transaction shapes the circulation of
materials within a gift economy:
"A gift is a thing we do not get by our own efforts. We cannot buy it;
we cannot acquire it through an act of will. It is bestowed upon us."
(p.xvi). Gifts depend on altruistic motivations; they circulate through
acts of generosity and reciprocity. Their exchange is governed by
social norms rather than contractual relations.
The circulation of gifts is socially rather than economically motivated:
"Unlike the sale of a commodity, the giving of a gift tends to
establish a relationship between the parties involved." Furthermore
"when gifts circulate within a group, their commerce leaves a series of
interconnected relationships in its wake, and a kind of decentralized
cohesiveness emerges." (p.xx) The circulation of goods is not simply
symbolic of the social relations between participants; it helps to
constitute them. Hyde identifies three core obligations which are
shared among those who participate in a gift economy: "the obligation
to give, the obligation to accept, and the obligation to reciprocate."
(p.xxi) Each of these acts help to break down boundaries between
participants, reflecting a commitment to good relations and mutual
welfare.
Gift economies are relatively dynamic in terms of the fluid
circulation of goods while commodity cultures are relatively dynamic in
terms of the fluid social relations between participants. As
Hyde explains, a "clean" trade within a commodity culture "leaves
people unconnected," (p.29) since it involves no future obligation
between the buyer and seller. Under such conditions, "wealth will lose
its motions and gather in isolated pools....Property is plagued by
entropy and wealth can become scarce even as it increases." (p.29) The
commodity, he suggests, moves towards wherever there is a profit to be
made, while a gift moves "towards an empty space," towards resolving
conflicts or expanding the social network. (p.29) By contrast, he
writes, "To convert an idea into a commodity means, broadly speaking,
to establish a boundary of some sort so that the idea cannot move from
person to person without a toll or fee. Its benefit or usefulness must
then be reckoned and paid for before it is allowed to cross the
boundary." (p.105) In so far as the new media ecology depends on
spreadability, it needs to embrace the fluidity of exchange which
enables a gift economy rather than the stasis that emerges from
commodity culture.
In a gift economy, 'status', 'prestige' or 'esteem' take the place of
cash renumeration' as the primary drivers of cultural production and
social transaction.
Of course, even within a commodity culture, the production of cultural
goods is rarely motivated entirely by profit. Artists also seek
recognition for what they create; they seek to influence the culture;
they seek to build reputations; they seek to express personal meanings.
Only a complex set of negotiations within creative industries allow
artist to serve both sets of goals at the same time. As Mark Deuze
(2006) notes, anxieties about the free circulation of their output
within a participatory culture are motivated both by a sense of losing
artistic control and by the perceived economic threat to their
livelihood.
Conversely, we seem to be seeing a series of misrecognitions between Web 2.0 companies and consumers as the companies misunderstand what motivates participation. On the one hand, consumers increasingly resent the ways that companies transform their labors of love into commodities which can be bought and sold for revenue. There is a growing recognition that profiting on freely given creative labor poses ethical challenges which are in the long run socially damaging to both the companies and the communities involved. On the other hand, many participants are frustrated when companies offer them financial compensations which are at odds with their understanding of the social transactions which are facilitated through the exchange of gifts. Fan communities, for example, have long-standing social taboos against "exploiting" other fans for personal gain, wanting to share their creative goods outside of commodity relations, rather than seeking rewards for what they produce. C3 research affiliate Abigail Derecho argues that the gift economy has gendered implications, with women traditionally associated with crafts in a gift economy and men associated with art within a commodity culture. Hyde would support this argument, suggesting that salaries tend to be lower within those professions which have historically been associated with the gift economy, not simply because they attract more women but also because they provide other kinds of social compensation.
Hyde sees commodity culture and the gift economy as alternative systems for measuring the merits of a transaction. He writes, "A commodity has value... A gift has worth." (p.78) By value, here, Hyde primarily means "exchange value," that is, the rate at which goods and services can be exchanged for money. Such exchanges are "measurable" and "quantifiable" because there are agreed upon measurements of value. By "worth," he means those qualities we associate with things that "you can't put a price on." Sometimes, we refer to what he is calling "worth" as sentimental value. It is not an estimate of what the thing costs but rather what it means to us. Worth is thus variable even among those who participate within the same community, even among those in the same family, hence the complex negotiations which occur around possessions when a beloved member of a family passes away. Worth can not be measured, though it can be negotiated, but in doing so, we have to take claims about worth at face value, since they have to do with internal emotional states.
Read More: Henry Jenkins
Credit Photo: Corbis
Posted by: Craig Syms
Posted on: Contagious Ideas
