[p2p-research] Economic Options for Organizing Networks in Be ijing

[Beth.Noble at artscouncil.org.uk]

Please can you remove me from your email list - I have an interest in P2P in
terms of Creative Industries (specifically music) and attended the first
session of your recent seminar. But it is a small part of a much wider remit
that I have to support music development in the region. 
 
Many thanks
Beth
 

Beth Noble 
Officer, Performing Arts 
Arts Council England, East Midlands 
Direct Line 0115 989 7536 
Fax 0115 950 2467 
Email beth.noble at artscouncil.org.uk 

-----Original Message-----
From: p2presearch-bounces at listcultures.org
[mailto:p2presearch-bounces at listcultures.org]On Behalf Of Michel Bauwens
Sent: 23 November 2007 14:02
To: Ned Rossiter
Cc: p2presearch at listcultures.org
Subject: Re: [p2p-research] Economic Options for Organizing Networks in
Beijing


Hi Ned:

done here at http://p2pfoundation.net/Nottingham_Peer_Production_Workshop
<http://p2pfoundation.net/Nottingham_Peer_Production_Workshop> 

let me know what I should add as your institutional affiliation as well as
anything other add-ons you may want, 

Michel


On Nov 22, 2007 7:24 AM, Ned Rossiter < ned at nedrossiter.org
<mailto:ned at nedrossiter.org> > wrote:


[here is my paper from the workshop. It really is preliminary - a
working paper - with heaps of undeveloped points (particularly on
experimental economics - a lot more to say there) and many disjointed
paragraphs etc etc. so it goes. Ned] 

---

The Political Economy of Peer Production
Workshop in Nottingham (UK), 15-16 November 2007
http://www.ntu.ac.uk/p2pworkshop2007/
<http://www.ntu.ac.uk/p2pworkshop2007/> 

Ned Rossiter

'Economic Options for Organizing Networks in Beijing'

Notwithstanding the commercialisation of the net, the hierarchical
systems embedded in social-technical infrastructures and dynamics, 
and the impact of national and surpranational government policy on
network cultures, to what extent can we really speak of a political
economy of peer-to-peer network practices? If political economy is
traditionally understood in terms of the role institutions and their 
concomitant interests play in the structuring and regulation of
economic life, then what might it mean to transpose this axiom to the
culture of networks? How, in other words, might organized networks as
nascent institutional forms provide new insights into the political 
economy of peer production? More specifically, how might the social-
technical properties of organized networks situated within the urban
and political context of Beijing facilitate new models for
interventions in local, regional and transnational 'creative 
economies'? What might such activity tell us about the geopolitical
variations of neoliberal capital? This paper outlines some
preliminary models of economic sustainability for the OrgNets
platform and considers the political implications for networks 
cultures that take seriously the problematic of political economy.

It seems to me that a social economy preconditions the possibility of
a political economy of network cultures. Without a social economy,
there is no political economy. Indeed, in many instances the social
economy within p2p networks marginalises or displaces the operative
force of political economy. Open publishing and bit torrents of
pirate cinema, software and music are obvious examples that come to 
mind. However, even in these instances of ostensibly 'free
culture' there lurks in the system a political economy, one that is
closely connected to infrastructure and info-governance. In a recent
dialogue with Paul Hartzog, Trebor Scholz frames this tension as 
follows: 'the means of production are available to networked
publics; these tools and platforms are, however, owned by
corporations'.[1] Aside from the ever-present potential of unruly
workers, the trouble so often faced by the owners of infrastructure 
is that they suffer from limited imagination. Without a few tinkerers
in the shop, capital is left without the invention of difference
necessary for its renewal. Thus a mutually parasitic relation exists
between owners and users of the means of production. As we know, 
historically this relation is one of constant oscillation that
constitutes the force of hegemony. A central interest of this
workshop is to discern how this relation plays out in the p2p culture
of networks.

By way of addressing the question of political economy, I wish to
focus my talk on the social-technical aspects of an experiment in
transdisciplinary urban-media research in Beijing built around the
logic of networks. My interest is in the ways in which such social- 
technical endeavours in institution formation might operate as what
Fabian Muniesa and Michel Callon term 'economic experiments' that
shape the construction of markets. The communication of relations
between emergent institutional forms and their invention of markets 
is underscored by the technics of mediation. Mediation, in turn, is
registed in the following key forms: systems of governance, rituals
and materialities of practice, discourses with uncertain borders and
technologies of collaborative constitution. The arrangement of these 
elements produces new territories for potential exploitation by
capital. The political and economic challenge is to produce
interventions into markets that enable economic resources for
experiments in organizing networks and living wages for participants. 
(Due to constraints of time I will not address typologies of
mediation in this talk.)


OrgNets in Beijing

 From May-July this year I coordinated a transciplinary research
platform that produced a counter-mapping of the creative industries 
in Beijing.[2] In the first instance this project was financed
through parasitical means, with funds from the research centre that I
work in enabling participants from Europe, India, Australia and New
Zealand to collaborate with local researchers and media practioners 
in Beijing. Such a model of financing research is a one-off, and self-
generating means of funding are required in order to sustain this
platform as a partially autonomous research network.

By undertaking a collaborative anthropology of new institutional 
forms – what I term 'organized networks' – this project is
interested in the transdisciplinary dimension of creative industries
in Beijing. The project is organized around six key vectors of research:
 migrant networks and service labour; network ecologies of creative 
waste; informational geographies vs. creative clusters; centrality of
real-estate speculation for creative economies; import cultures and
export innovations in architecture and urban design; and artist
villages and market engineering. In migrating media education outside 
of the university, the project recomposes media education as a
collaborative research process focussed on critique and analysis of
urban transformations and the politics of creative and service labour.

The project adopted the model of a mobile research laboratory as a 
framework for collaborative research on the creative industries,
urban transformation and media practice in Beijing. As a laboratory
the OrgNets project was an assemblage of experimentation and testing,
one that will continue to develop throughout the next year. And as a 
laboratory, the OrgNet project was excised or temporarily suspended
from the outside force of the real market. But the mobile and social
nature of OrgNets makes its borders porous. The distinction between
inside and outside is not fixed; borders are defined by the continuum 
of change that comes into play with the addition or departure of
participants, the particularities of urban situations, the topics of
investigation and the institutions of temporary connection.

As an assemblage whose spatial and temporal coordinates undergo 
constant transformation, the relation between inside and outside is
subject to processes of translation. It would be a mistake to think
the range of contingencies – many of which may register
imperceptably on the action of networks – can ever be brought under 
control. But within the territory of the known, faintly perceived and
vaguely intuited, it is not unreasonable to suppose an economy is
possible for networks that, at this stage, are without money.

Given the transdisciplinary orientation of the OrgNets project, the 
prevailing policy discourse of creative industries, the intense
economic and social changes underway in China and the exotic allure
the city as urban laboratory holds for intellectural tourists, the
expanding international market of education is an obvious economy 
awaiting intervention by non-traditional 'providers'. In fact,
this is already the case for mainstream external providers. As an
outsourced form of education provision, OrgNets offer established
institutions of education and research the possibility of value- 
adding at a cost that is going to be cheaper than if these
institutions hired staff on full benefits whose capacity to invent is
rapidly dulled by the burden of bureacracy and audit cultures.


Experimental Economics and Evidence Machines 

The field of experimental economics in its contemporary form emerged
out of game theory from the late 1940s and early 1950s. Francesco
Guala notes two distinct approaches within experimental economics –
theory-testing and institution-building; the former tends toward 
experiments in decision-making, the latter experiments in market
performativity.[3] Orthodox game theory combines or traverses these
two approaches, and plays the market as an institution whose
problematics are 'solved' by rational agents within controlled 
laboratory settings.[4] But what happens in occasions of 'irrational
exuberance' that define bubble economies, as seen in real-estate
speculation, dotcom-mania or the caffeine induced palpitations of day
traders? 

There is undoubtedly a logic at work in such instances, but it is not
one that conforms to rational intent. The logic of irrational
economics is one whose particularities are immanent to the
contingencies of the event. The experimental economics of game theory 
attempt to overcome or at least minimise contingency by designing
markets in which the desired results come to fruition. The world is
their laboratory. The structural adjustment programs of the World
Bank and IMF are good examples of experimental economics in 
operation. However, the desire to see the world in their own image is
the primary catalyst of failure for such models. Certainly, this
point is disputable; arguably the model of structural adjustment has
succeeded insofar as the World Bank and IMF agenda for countries in 
Africa and South America to 'leapfrog modernity' in such a way
that bypasses European models of state formation into a neoliberal
paradigm of governmental dependency on outsourcing to private
providers has proven financially beneficial to foreign investors. But 
such a view is limited in scope, to say the least. The production of
global poverty and massive disparities in wealth can hardly be rated
a success.

My proposal, then, is to see a project like OrgNets as a form of 
experimental economics that are open to the contigencies of the event
and the social-technical and disciplinary dynamics of conflictual
constitution. Contigencies necessitate factoring in the elusive
dimension of experience. My interest is not to exploit economic or 
social vulnerabilities, but rather to enhance capacities and address
trans-institutional economic realities and disciplinary foreclosure
brought about by intellectual property regimes, internal competition
and limits placed on research by the avalanche of adminstration. 

The trick with a project like OrgNets is to treat it as a symbiotic
device that both facilitates the generation of concepts and affects
the allocation of economic resources. The latter may take the form of
direct funding, commissions, participant fees for summer schools, or
in-kind support by institutional partners – e.g. office space, use
of equipment, personnel, etc. Of course any proposal to play the
neoliberal game of outsourcing education is going to meet the wrath 
of some leftists and activists. But it is hypocritical to dish out
critique without offering alternatives for economic subsistence.

Muniesa and Callon refer to platforms (as distinct from laboratories
and in situ experiments): 'the platform is an intermediate 
configuration, more open to compromises with several kinds of actors
than the laboratory' and refers to 'flexible organizational forms in
[sic] where surprise is more a resource than a problem' for
'strategic innovation'. OrgNets also share these features of a
platform – flexibility, most certainly, but the element of surprise
is less clear for OrgNets. A genealogy of OrgNets would establish the
connection with tactical media, reknowned for its hit-and-run 
approach to semiotic warfare. Where OrgNets corresponds with surprise
is perhaps most clear when OrgNets is brought in to relation with
established institutions of education and research, namely the
university, which is characterised by a transdisciplinary deficiency 
and has a limited capacity of invention.

As a collaborative anthropology of new institutional forms, the
project investigates how the emergence of organized networks
illuminate some of the material qualities and tensions of creative 
industries in Beijing. The project holds the precept that
transdisciplinary urban-media research is an autonomous expressive
capacity that subsists within a field of translocal and supranational
structural forces. This is not to suggest a form of structural 
determination, but it is to recognise that tensions of a particular
order are inherent to media education that refuses the stagnant
methods and orthodox theoretical approaches that by and large
characterise the state of play, be that in Chinese universities or 
the rest of the world.


The Neoliberal University

As government funding for higher education has diminished over the
past decade (or longer, in some national cases), universities have
found themselves increasingly positioned within a market economy. 
This structural relation alone locates education as a commodity
object. Inevitably there will be barriers to access learning in such
instances. An alternative – open access learning – has great
merit, but there are some fundamental issues to do with cost of 
delivery (labour, production, infrastructure, etc.) and technological
modes of communication that must be addressed. In building open
access repositories of research findings, this project investigates
the connection between peer-to-peer collaboration and new business 
models.

The glacial temporality of university curriculum development and
subjugation of teachers by the life-depleting demands of audit
cultures sets a challenge for media education programs that wish to
synchronise their curricula with the speed of popular media
literacies. To distinguish market and user hype from quality that
makes a substantive difference is near impossible. Consensus will not
be found beyond the fleeting moments of micro-adoption among A-list 
bloggers and their links, or whatever other community of users you
care to name. Ratified standards for media education within the
cultures of networks do not exist.

As the university increasingly loses its monopoly on the provision of 
knowledge as a result of neoliberal governance and the advent of peer-
to-peer and user-producer media systems, media education is in crisis
mode. Best practice is frequently found outside of university degree
programs. Expertise has become distributed across a population of
practioners and everyday users. How, then, might such knowledge feed
back into university programs? Can formal accreditation for
autonomous education be extended to non-university actors? Are such 
processes even desirable?

Crucial here are the different temporalities afforded by research
platforms positioned outside of the temporal order of the market and
its post-Fordist modality of just-in-time production, which 
underscores the habitus of the university today. In a posting earlier
this year to the edu-factory mailing list – an initiative by mostly
young activist researchers associated with Negri's uni-nomadi (an
informal teaching program across a network of media and social 
centres in Italy) – Taiwan based academic Jon Solomon phrases the
predicament of time and the university as follows:

'The students have been so disempowered by the compulsory national
primary and secondary education system (which favors the production 
of an elite) that when it comes to the university organization of
their own temporal rythms, they are completely passive in their forms
of resistance (and the faculty doesn't provide any relief or
alternative resources)'.[5] 

How, then, to create different temporalities which enable process of
counter-subjectivisation? A number of core elements come into play in
the repositioning of research and teaching outside of the university. 
And these, I would add, are not without precendents: think of the
mechanics institutes as sites of popular learning for the working
classes in the 19th century (albeit enframed by the morally uplifting
values of the middle-classes), adult education classes after the 
second world war, the rise of alternative schooling movements such as
Montessori in the 60s and 70s, and so on and so forth.

My point is that counter-sites of learning at the current conjuncture
are imbued with qualities special to the social-technical dimension 
of network cultures, and conditioned by the political economy of the
informational university.[6]

As a pilot study, the counter-mapping project in Beijing provides
inititial research data for future comparative research that examines 
the inter-relations between geopolitics (regional trade agreements,
national and multi-lateral policies on labour mobility, security and
migration, etc.) and the peculiarities of intraregional, translocal
and global cultural flows within the creative industries. A 
comparative focus on the creative industries enables new questions to
be asked about the mutually constitutive tensions between these
forces, practices, histories and policies.

The project establishes a prototype for new cross-cultural 
educational and research institutions organised about the logic of
networks. As signalled in policy milestones such as the Bologna
Process (1999), scholarly monographs and OECD reports, the landscape
in higher education has been undergoing gradual, and in some 
instances rapid, transformation toward a market model.
The Bologna Process is more complex than a simple transition toward a
market model, but its modularization of educational processes should
nonetheless be considered as a core dynamic of the contemporary 
second wave of globalization (services economy). This dynamic is also
how educational changes intersect with the emergent economy of
culture after the first wave (trade) has been nearly completed, which
is why the Bologna Process holds important implications beyond the 
realm of education.
The role of universities as exclusive providers of higher education
is changing as small and medium enterprises obtain government
accreditation for provision of 'educational services'. We are yet 
to see organisations develop out of the field of network cultures as
providers of high quality research and teaching.

Collaborative practices within the creative industries and network
cultures are now well established as the primary mode of production 
and communication. The business models which sustain the combination
of service labour and innovation as they are located on the margins
of industry are less understood. Primarily comprising of 'informal
economies' (symbolic, voluntary, word-of-mouth) and sustained
economically by various forms of financial support (parental, small
government funds such as the 'citizen wage' or grants,
associations with universities) and wealth generation ( e.g. the 'long
tail'[7]), there is great scope for further development and
understanding of new business models.[8]


Notes:

[1] http://www.re-public.gr/en/?p=201  <http://www.re-public.gr/en/?p=201> 

[2] http://orgnets.net <http://orgnets.net> 

[3] See Francesco Guala, 'How to Do Things with Experimental
Economics', in Donald MacKenzie, Fabian Muniesa and Lucia Siu (eds) 
Do Economists Make Markets? On the Performativity of Economics,
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007, p. 131.

[4] Ibid., p. 145.

[5] Jon Solomon, 'Knowledege Conflicts, Self-Education and Common 
Production', posting to edu-factory mailing list, 22 April 2007,
http://www.edu-factory.org <http://www.edu-factory.org> .

[6] See, for example, the recent Summit: Non-Aligned Initiatives in 
Education Culture, Berlin, 24-28 May, 2007, http://summit.kein.org
<http://summit.kein.org> .

[7] Chris Anderson, 'The Long Tail', Wired 12.10 (2004), http://
www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.html
<http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.html> 

[8] For a study of working conditions and experiences of new media
workers in Amsterdam, see Rosalind Gill, Technobohemians or the New
Cybertariat? New Media Work in Amsterdam a Decade after the Web, 
Network Notebooks no. 1, Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures,
2007, http://www.networkcultures.org/_uploads/17.pdf
<http://www.networkcultures.org/_uploads/17.pdf> 



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