[p2p-research] [Apropos Two Theories] New comment on New paper on “The Prospects for Cyberocracy (Revis....

[Michel Bauwens]

Hi David,

I'm really surprised by your different interpretation of Fiske, and I must
say that I missed the sequential interpretation that you mention (but then,
I've read only the first 100 pages of his massive book)

I have no doubt that communal sharing was important for the tribal form,
within the family unit. Bear in mind that CS is a form of 'general
reciprocity' which does not require an individual or precise counterpart.
But everything I read so far, from Mauss 'the gift' and other accounts, show
that as a society, goods where exchange on the basis of symmetry, not direct
as in market trade, but definitely creating obligations of some form of
return. For example, a potlach festival created a competition in giving, not
an indifference to that process.

So for me, as a society, i.e. a grouping of tribals, to exist, they were in
my mind necessarily organized around the gift exchange.

To know if this is true we would have to answer the question: if a
clan/tribe gave something away, did they expect a return or not. From what
I've read, the answer is an unequivocal yes.

Now we move to peer to peer. In free software and open knowledge, amongst
the volunteers who participate, can anyone have a direct expectation from
the other invididuals or collective? The answer is this time a unequivocal
no. You contribute to the whole, you get a lot of indirect benefits (use of
the whole, accrued reputational, knowledge, and relational capital), but no
expectation of tit for tat returns. So it is without doubt, for me at least,
not a gift economy of mutual obligations, but a clear form of CS.

This being said, I expect no identical overlap between both of your
framework

- for example: tribal society combines CS and EM with minimal markets and
hierarchical allocation

- slave-based, feudal, tributary societies combine hierarchical allocation,
with CS in the local agricultural communities, and a gifting competition of
the nobles towards the spiritual bodies

- market capitalism is based on the market pricing mechanisms, but could not
exist without a strong state, and significant redistributory mechanisms to
keep the social peace

I expect the coming P2P society to be dominated, for its social,
intellectual and cultural innovation, by CS dynamics, but surrounded,
onion-like, by peer-informed market forms, revived forms of reciprocity, and
new forms of hierarchical allocation that are compatible with its overall
logic

What the network society is concerned, I do not believe myself this is a
valid concept, because we have hierarchical, decentralized and distributed
networks, and only the latter allow for a deployment of the CS dynamic, in
the field of abundant immaterial reproduction. Bear in mind that for
scarcity-driven goods, this dynamic cannot fully operate, and will use
market forms (as advocated by Kevin), and others yet to be invented.

So, my view is that today we have a dominant market society, with networks
forms of the 3 varieties, and emerging distributed p2p networks. Because of
the dominance of the market form, all other formats are necessarily
'market-informed', though the already existing p2p networks have the
strongest transcendendal potential vis a vis the market.

Michel
On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 3:21 AM, David Ronfeldt <ronfeldt at mac.com> wrote:

>
> i'm delighted to see that you've treated my timn work well.  yes, i had
> spotted  your postings about it.  that's partly why i decided to include
> your name on my latest send-around: the cyboc paper.
>
> your email raises a lot of theoretical points, more than i can handle right
> now.  maybe later, because this is all very interesting, and we are seeking
> in rather similar directions.
>
> but i do have one  comment that i can offer quickly enough.  it's about
> fiske's framework.  there is some overlap  with  timn, but not exactly.  i
> briefly explain this in a 2006 study you may not have seen yet that focuses
> on the tribal (t) form, but also contains material on the other timn forms
> (see url below).
>
> my take on fiske is different from your own.  you equate the tribal form
> with equality-matching, but i equate it to his communal-sharing form.  you
> think his communal-sharing form matches p2p nicely.  in my view, none of his
> forms match the network form the way i'd like.  here's what i say there:
>
>        "One psychologist (Fiske, 1993) posits that all social relationships
> reduce to four forms of interaction:  communal sharing, authority ranking,
> equality matching, and market pricing.  People develop their capacities for
> social interaction in that order, from infancy through early childhood.  The
> sharing, ranking, and pricing forms correspond to the tribal, hierarchical,
> and market forms, respectively.  The equality-matching form, which is mainly
> about equal-status peer-group behavior, does not correspond to any single
> form; it has some attributes that fit under network form, but other
> attributes (e.g., reciprocity, feuding, revenge) fit better under the tribal
> form."
>
>        the url for this (including for .pdf download) is:
> http://www.rand.org/pubs/working_papers/WR433/  (Social Forms, 2006)
>
> a deeper issue here is whether the tribal and the network forms are all
> that different.  i think they are.  and i'd like them to be so.  i write
> several pages about this.   but as i note, if it turns out that the new
> network form is an upgraded version of the old tribal form, then the timn
> framework should be converted into a three-form framework, and what will
> come next later in spiral fashion is an upgraded version of the hierarchical
> form.  hmm.
>
> onward.
>
> ===
>
>
>
>
> ===
>
>
> On Jan 21, 2009, at 4:39 AM, Michel Bauwens wrote:
>
> Dear David,
>>
>> Thank you so much for engaging with us on our little criticisms, I would
>> rather not call it a critique yet, as it was based on a first cursory
>> reading of the postscript section only.
>>
>> If you agree, some further reactions.
>>
>> First of all, I want to reiterate how useful I have found your work past
>> and present, including your TIMN framework
>>
>> I had excerpted from it here
>> http://p2pfoundation.net/Tribes%2C_Institutions%2C_Markets%2C_Networks and
>> here
>> http://p2pfoundation.net/David_Ronfeldt_on_the_Evolution_of_Governance
>>
>> I'm using a very similar scheme from Alan Page Fiske, which I think is
>> totally congruent with yours, it's just that instead of taking a view of the
>> social formations, he takes a view of the relational dynamics as the
>> starting point, as do I.
>>
>> See http://p2pfoundation.net/Relational_Model_Typology_-_Fiske
>>
>> The main idea then, is that history starts with a equality matching (gift
>> economies of the tribal period) (TRIBES), the hierarchical allocation of
>> authority ranking (INSTITUTIONS), the market pricing dynamic (MARKETS) and
>> communal shareholding (NETWORKS)
>>
>> Each relational dynamic has always existed, but there seem be successive
>> historical epochs where they are dominant, and therefore dominate the form
>> of society, including the other relational logics.
>>
>> I guess an important question would be how much you would see your vision
>> of networks as indeed dominated by the communal shareholding logic, but this
>> issue could be solved by recognizing different network typologies as well,
>> and obviously, I would then be talking about a particular format of networks
>> that arises around the CS dynamic.
>>
>> If such changes do indeed occur in history, and these indeed occur over
>> the very long term (centuries), then we would expect:
>>
>> 1) a first phase in which the old dominant format (say Tribes adapting to
>> the early forms of tributary power), absorbs the new format, and can even
>> use it for strengthening itself. So today, the markets would absorb the p2p
>> dynamic, as would the state form.
>>
>> 2) in a second phase they would exist uneasily together, eventually
>> forming an unstable parity (I'm thinking of 18th century Europe, or the 5 to
>> 10th century transition from slavery to feudalism)
>>
>> 3) in a third phase though, the emerging form would start to become
>> dominant and in turn, the other forms would start to adapt to the new
>> meta-logic and meta-system.
>>
>> If that were true, and that is my thesis, then, we would eventually have a
>> p2p-network based logic society, but co-existing with peer-informed or
>> peer-transformed tribes, institutions, and markets, to use ure TIMN
>> language.
>>
>> This is of course speculation, and in any case, we are now in the emerging
>> phase of peer to peer logics coming to the fore, which means that the old
>> forms are indeed using them to strenghtem themselves.
>>
>> For example, the Obama campaign is the first to successfully
>> instrumentalize the p2p dynamics of social networks, for its own aims.
>>
>> So we have a top-down logic (a group wanting dominance in the
>> institutional field), using the new forms, but at the same time, the new
>> forms, however emergent, also exist on their own, and have their own logic
>> and strenght and a mutual adaptation arises, in which the instrumentalizing
>> party (Obama), needs to adapt just as much as do the social networks they
>> are mobilizing.
>>
>> But we need to be clear about what networks we are talking about
>> (centralized, decentralized, distributed), since p2p, as voluntary
>> aggegation around the production of common value, only pertains to
>> distributed networks, or to hybrid ones in which the distributed element
>> remains strong enough not to disallow the self-aggregation to occur.
>>
>> I would make a strong claim, and we may differ on our vision of
>> temporality here, as in our reliance on scholarship, that we are in the
>> midst of a rapid cristallisation of the new logics, that are taken an
>> institutional form already.
>>
>> I have no time to do this now, but amongst the 200+ items here at
>> http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/category/p2p-governance, I summarized about
>> a dozen (or more), serious academic studies of how this format already
>> operates around free software/FLOSS production.
>>
>> I discuss this more thoroughly in: The social web and its social
>> contracts. Re-public, . Retrieved from http://www.re-public.gr/en/?p=261
>>
>> Here a summary of the main ideas and hypotheses:
>>
>> It usually takes a triarchical form:
>>
>> 1) a self-aggregating community governed through peer governance
>>
>> 2) a new kind of NPO/NGO (misleading terms here because they imply
>> derivation from the other 2 forms), which I call 'for-benefit institutions',
>> which govern the infrastructure of cooperation
>>
>> 3) a business ecology of corporates, operating in the market but
>> practising benefit sharing with the 2 other players, see
>> http://p2pfoundation.net/Benefit_Sharing
>>
>> Two important points:
>>
>> - the community-corporate dynamic gives rise to a ladder of participation
>> giving rise to practices that may be dominated by either pole, but are
>> rarely ever totally controlled by either party
>>
>> - the for-benefit institutions (http://p2pfoundation.net/For_Benefit),
>> such as the open source software foundations (
>> http://p2pfoundation.net/Open_Source_Software_Foundations) differ
>> SIGNIFICANTLY from the older format.
>>
>> The reason is that they exist to support the community logic, and do not
>> command and control the community. Internally, they have skeleton staffs.
>>
>> I believe this can be understood by looking at the abundance/scarcity
>> polarity, with the new institutional formats only taking care of the
>> scarcity-driven infrastructure of cooperation, while the community functions
>> differently on the abundance logic of sharing immaterial goods according to
>> the p2p relational logic.
>>
>> The important thing though is that we have an observable logic at play,
>> even as it is early days. And what we see is that this same logic is now
>> being exported to the design of material things (http://p2pfoundation.net)
>> , in combination with more distributed manufacturing (
>> http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:Manufacturing).
>>
>> Because the design is immaterial, I content,  based on observation, that
>> the same triarchical structure seems to be operating as peer production
>> moves to that new sphere.
>>
>> Of the latter though, there is no scholarly material available as yet, as
>> far as I know, but we cannot possibly wait for the slow grinding academic
>> world, and we need hybrid outfits such as ours, which can at least present
>> the raw material for further study, and offer grounded, but non-academic,
>> speculations on it.
>>
>> One further step needs to be considered. Is peer production limited to 'an
>> aspect of the economy'. No no no!!!
>>
>> Self-aggregation works across all social fields, and so we can say that
>> social networks are peer producing politics as well, and that this may
>> exhibit the same triarchical logic.
>>
>> For example: self-aggregating communities of Obama sympathizers, more
>> formal institutions (such as Move.on etc..) which function as platforms BUT
>> WHICH DO NOT DIRECT the peer production, and institutions, such as the Obama
>> campaign, which attempt to extract institutional value from it (electoral
>> victory translating into power).
>>
>> So to make my point clear, what I would have liked to see in the
>> Postscript, is not just a phrase allowing for this dynamic, but a more
>> serious consideration of this very specific network logic, the p2p network
>> logic and its already observable transformative effects.
>>
>> Michel
>>
>> On Wed, Jan 21, 2009 at 1:21 PM, David Ronfeldt <ronfeldt at mac.com> wrote:
>> Michel et al. -- Fair enough.  Interesting too.  Some comments in reply:
>>
>> At first sight, I thought your criticisms meant we had generally neglected
>> p2p networks.  But that can't be.  We make a big deal out of the rise of
>> network forms of organization, including "p2p" (though I have previously
>> preferred the term "all-channel").
>>
>> Then I saw you refer to "peer production" (a la Benkler?), as found among
>> open-source undertakings for software development and file-sharing.  Well,
>> that we do not attend to.  I view it mostly as an innovation in a part of
>> the economy -- one that engages a proposition for my TIMN effort, and I'd
>> rather take it up when I get around to doing the rise-of-markets chapter for
>> that study.
>>
>> [See below for a reminder of what TIMN is about.  The proposition is that
>> the rise of a new form (and its realm) has effects that modify the existing
>> forms/realms.  Thus, state hierarchies get modified by market principles to
>> generate liberal democracies.  Today, capitalist markets are being modified
>> by network principles to generate new modes of social production.  But I
>> digress.]
>>
>> However, I finally spotted that you were mainly referring to
>> "peer-governed civil-society networks" that include newer kinds of entities
>> than just NGOs and NPOs.  Hmmm.  Well, the paper does repeatedly emphasize
>> NGOs and NPOs, partly for shorthand reasons, and it wouldn't have taken much
>> extra space to add epistemic communities, virtual associations, and other
>> new network entities to the picture, not to mention individuals, as we have
>> done in other writings.  Moreover, on review, I see I left out a phrase I've
>> used in the past to help cover such possibilities, by referring to the
>> emergence from civil society "of a new network-based realm whose name and
>> nature are not yet known."  I'm certainly not supposing that all of civil
>> society will fold into this new realm.  Maybe Danielle and I can edit for
>> all this before long.
>>
>> I try to keep an eye out for innovative entities and networks that
>> transcend existing NGO/NPO-related categories.  But I've not spotted a lot
>> yet, even less when it comes to durable new entities that would be of
>> interest to policymakers and could participate in governance programs.  It
>> will be interesting to see what happens to the "Obama network" in this
>> regard.
>>
>> Amid all this, you found our second section in the Postscript
>> "disappointing, as a third nonprofit sector already existed."  Well, yes, it
>> has kind of existed for a little over a decade or so.  But that isn't long.
>>  Researchers didn't make much of it as a social or third sector until the
>> 1980s-90s (see our citations).  Policymakers still aren't sure about it,
>> from what I've seen.  Our point is that its significance will be for sure
>> when policy dialogue shifts -- when it moves beyond the standard
>> public-private, government-or-market categorizing, and engages a language
>> that means going in distinctly new directions.
>>
>> Later, you claim we have a "top-down bias."  But in fact, there is lots of
>> room -- and need -- for bottom-up as well as side-to-side structures and
>> processes in our vision.  This is most evident in the section on sensory
>> apparatuses, as in our references to sousveillance and collective
>> intelligence.  However, your comment is aimed at the section on networked
>> governance.  There we observe that hierarchy will persist; it is essential
>> to some degree for states. But, even in the quote you use as an example of
>> top-down bias, what we look forward to seeing are more networked
>> partnerships between state and other actors.  I figured it would be implicit
>> that such networks would not have to be top-down hierarchical.
>>
>> Perhaps you have a deeper critique in mind, akin to Kevin Carson's
>> interesting comments aspiring for p2p networks and p2p governance to
>> displace hierarchies (not to mention markets too) as a main form of social
>> organization.  That networks are gaining ground relative to hierarchies and
>> markets has been a key theme in my work for many years, esp. in writings
>> with John Arquilla.  We have even helped argue that networks can outfight
>> hierarchies in some circumstances.  But it is quite another matter to
>> suppose that, over the long run, hierarchies (or markets) are goners, and
>> networks their entirely preferable successors.
>>
>> My theoretical stance stems from trying to figure out the TIMN framework
>> and what it means for social evolution.  As you may recall, it concerns how
>> societies have developed four major forms of organization -- tribes,
>> hierarchical institutions, markets, and networks -- and combined them (and
>> their resulting realms) in a prefered progression that takes centuries to
>> evolve:  from monoform T, to biform T+I, to triform T+I+M, and next to
>> quadraform T+I+M+N societies.  As I see it, one of the underlying principles
>> for success is balance:  Each form, as it arises, is essential.  For
>> societies to achieve higher levels of systemic complexity, no form (or the
>> realm it creates) should be allowed to dominate any other; some kind of
>> balance and equilibrium should be built among these inherently contradictory
>> forms and their realms.  If correct, I regard that as science, not bias.
>>
>> I hope to get back to working on this framework soon.  Our cyberocracy
>> paper relates to it, but I never meant for it to be a major endeavor.
>>
>> One advantage of posting and sharing via SSRN is that the paper is not
>> firmly published.  After we see what other comments roll in, we could revise
>> and repost.
>>
>> I commend you on the material here on your blog.  I've spent more time
>> than before in browsing it, and I'm impressed.  I'm also pleased that you've
>> helped circulate our paper.
>>
>> These are my personal, independent views (and Danielle's may differ).
>>
>> Onward.
>>
>> ===
>>
>>
>> On Jan 18, 2009, at 4:10 AM, Michel Bauwens wrote:
>>
>> Dear David,
>>
>> emailing is fine, I'll post it on the blog when appropriate and also
>> forward it to our p2p research list of academics and researchers,
>>
>> Michel
>>
>> On Sun, Jan 18, 2009 at 4:38 AM, David Ronfeldt <ronfeldt at mac.com> wrote:
>>
>> i'll get back to you guys soon on your various emails and blog posts.  my
>> inclination will be just to email back, and then if you want, you can insert
>> into your blog(s).  ok?  i'm not entirely averse to commenting directly
>> within a blog; i just don't have the inclination for it yet.   also, i'm so
>> new to blogging practices, i'm wondering where would i put a reply, my blog
>> or yours, when i'd want it to show in both?  anyway, i'm not ignoring you,
>> just being slow. . . .
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
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>> alternatives.
>>
>> Wiki and Encyclopedia, at http://p2pfoundation.net; Blog, at
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>>
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>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> The P2P Foundation researches, documents and promotes peer to peer
>> alternatives.
>>
>> Wiki and Encyclopedia, at http://p2pfoundation.net; Blog, at
>> http://blog.p2pfoundation.net; Newsletter, at
>> http://integralvisioning.org/index.php?topic=p2p
>>
>> Basic essay at http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=499; interview at
>> http://poynder.blogspot.com/2006/09/p2p-very-core-of-world-to-come.html
>> BEST VIDEO ON P2P:
>> http://video.google.com.au/videoplay?docid=4549818267592301968&hl=en-AU
>>
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>>
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>>
>
>


-- 
The P2P Foundation researches, documents and promotes peer to peer
alternatives.

Wiki and Encyclopedia, at http://p2pfoundation.net; Blog, at
http://blog.p2pfoundation.net; Newsletter, at
http://integralvisioning.org/index.php?topic=p2p

Basic essay at http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=499; interview at
http://poynder.blogspot.com/2006/09/p2p-very-core-of-world-to-come.html
BEST VIDEO ON P2P:
http://video.google.com.au/videoplay?docid=4549818267592301968&hl=en-AU

KEEP UP TO DATE through our Delicious tags at http://del.icio.us/mbauwens

The work of the P2P Foundation is supported by SHIFTN,
http://www.shiftn.com/
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