[p2p-research] Fwd: LittleSis, open research into power structures

[Kevin Carson]

On 1/16/09, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:

> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Eddie A. Tejeda <eddie.tejeda at gmail.com>

> But all these people engaged in power structure research share a common
> piece of wisdom: if you want to understand power, either to shift it or to
> attain it, you have to scrutinize the underlying relationships between
> powerful people. Combine this principle with another from the internet age —
> linked data is far more valuable than lonely data — and LittleSis is born.

C. Wright Mills and G. William Domhoff founded this approach of
mapping social ties between individual members of the elite.

The phenomenon is especially visible at the local level.  Most
metropolitan areas have a nominally private "civic" organization that
acts as a shadow government.  Where I live, it's the Northwest
Arkansas Council, made up of representatives of the local government,
university, and large corporations headquartered in the area (Tyson,
Wal-Mart, J.B. Hunt trucking, and Jim Lindsey real estate); it's the
single most powerful influence on local government, lobbying for
subsidized infrastructure and other corporate welfare--often actually
drafting the legislation and getting it passed on an emergency basis
without public debate.  Anyway, it's the same individuals who move
back and forth, in a revolving door, between city councils and county
commissions, chambers of commerce, intergovernmental authorities, and
the NWA Council.  What it amounts to is that we have a democracy on
paper, but in the real world we're serfs to this group of people.

-- 
Kevin Carson
Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
http://mutualist.blogspot.com
Studies in Mutualist Political Economy
http://www.mutualist.org/id47.html
Anarchist Organization Theory Project
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html