December 2001 - Air-L - lists.aoir.org

Community and Commerce
by Wendy Robinson 26 Dec '01

26 Dec '01

Do we not shop in our real-world communities? Are we not appealed to with advertisements? Where is the disconnect with online communities? Are virtual communities different today (this may have been partially what David was initially inquiring about)? Can they still be theorized as utopian, even other worldly? If so, does that take us back to 1992, rather than helping us develop theory for post-dot-com 2002? I'm really asking, partially from a pedagogical standpoint. My experience is that undergraduates today rarely are aware of a pre-commercial Internet; they can hardly get their heads around the concept that seems to strike them as quaint, not part of their experience hence interest. It's history, and all that that implies. The world that we're preparing them for is a world in which the Net has been mainstreamed. As has been often discussed with AoIR and the digital divide and legal issues, the Net isn't removed from real-world complexities. Money isn't far behind, if it is behind, race, gender, sexuality and identity in instigating such complexities. I'm unconvinced that the skills that students need to make sense of offline/online today can be understood without taking into account commercialization (hopefully with equanimity, although it can be difficult) or doesn't make use of other media theory by inference that also has had to come to terms with real-world financial concerns (e.g., newspapers, radio, television, the pamphleteering of nonprofit organizations). In 2002, what might an online community without commerce have to offer? What are representative examples? What would such a community feel like from a participating member's standpoint? How would the community be economically sustained? Does no commerce or company affiliation mean no marketing messages? Would such a community necessarily be marginalized or otherwise insular (e.g., an "Amish" community of the online world)? What could be learned from such a community? Wendy Robinson wgrobin(a)duke.edu

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re: [Air-l] community-company, and all that
by geert lovink 26 Dec '01

26 Dec '01

> a community is a set of (possibly bounded) extra-household relationships > that provide sociability, support and identity. > A company is a set of legally defined rights and duties organized around > an economic purpose. Thanks, Barry. I am not sure if I understood you well. Gemeinschaft could indeed be as translated a community, but Gesellschaft is usually translated as society. That is, society at large. The society. The definition you take here is even smaller then community. Society as a legal entity. I think in the Internet context the community (small, inward looking, safe, socially depressive and resistive) versus society (large, anonomous, liberating for the individual) could be more useful. In 1993 when Howard Rheingold many Europeans rejected his term "virtual community" because of its all too American approach in which the community concept is loaded up with positive characteristics, without mentioning the oppressive parts of community. Many Europeans that I knew were escaping "community" when got involved in the Net and were trying to get in contact with the big world outside. Often in the USA communities are presented as safe heavens to protect the vunerable individual against the big evil world. The Christian connotation of the word "community" is obvious and I guess doesn't need to be further explained here. So why go back to some narrow Christian concept, many friends of mine asked me? Why copy-paste US-American concepts and a cult of fear and anxiety, this false sense of togetherness? The Net is not a protection shield, not an escapist or utopian projection but something real and new, not connected to some old religions of the past which had only caused misery and civil wars. These were all questions, as I mentioned, of the early-mid nineties. Still, the unease of this somewhat religious term hasn't eased, altough I use the term here and there as well, I have to admit perhaps because there is not yet a better term. I think the concept of group (which has a whole history of its own in both sociology and psychology) could be one. Another one, perhaps even more problematic then community would be the tribe concept which has an even more clear regressive element (but became very fashionable in the nineties too). Community works for me if its well-defined, and if there is a sense of belonging, combined with drive towards discord and difference. Otherwise it's indeed nothing then Christian fundamentalism, sold as homebrew sociology. Ciao, Geert

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Re: community-company, and all that
by Bram Dov Abramson 26 Dec '01

26 Dec '01

wellman(a)chass.utoronto.ca: >Never thought I'd have to lecture social scientists, even those interested >in the Internet. (...) >It's pretty clear that you can have community within a company -- that's >what much ofindustrial relations and communities of practice literature is >about. But even with that, community doesn't become an identity with >company. They are 2 analytically separate things. I doubt that anyone would disagree -- sounds like there's a straw man here. The question, as I have heard it, has rather been as to the institutional locations of the practices through which "communities" come into being, where community is described as a particular form of sociability. An answer to that question is to say that, certainly, community-building practices can be mobilized by companies, and have been. What this has to do with positing an identity between "community" and "company", on the other hand, is somewhat mysterious. Perhaps the lecture can wait ;-). On the other hand, danah(a)media.mit.edu wrote: >Also, as Bram mentionned, by trying to bound community, companies are also >trying to regulate identity (the Passport phenomenon). Through things >like Passport, they can define _who_ belongs to what communities. I have >a rant on how this fails to recognize that 1) people belong to multiple >communities; 2) people share different facets with different communities; ... in which I'd replace "fails to recognize" with "fully recognizes and targets the fact that". As in, many corporate community-building strategies are *very* aware that people are members of different communities, etc., etc. -- but their goal is to change that. (Well, their *strategy* is to change that and realign people with their company, ie capture eyeballs, customers, etc.) Now, saying that isn't the same thing as dismissing all company-mediated involvement in community-building: I'm only talking about a specific kind of company-mediated community-building. It's the kind which tries to convert wins at certain layers into necessary affiliations at other layers. Vertical tying, in other words, of the type Felix talked about the other day. cheers Bram --

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re: [Air-l] community-company, and all that
by geert lovink 25 Dec '01

25 Dec '01

> a community is a set of (possibly bounded) extra-household relationships > that provide sociability, support and identity. > A company is a set of legally defined rights and duties organized around > an economic purpose. Thanks, Barry. I am not sure if I understood you well. Gemeinschaft could indeed be as translated a community, but Gesellschaft is usually translated as society. That is, society at large. The society. The definition you take here is even smaller then community. Society as a legal entity. I think in the Internet context the community (small, inward looking, safe, socially depressive and resistive) versus society (large, anonomous, liberating for the individual) could be more useful. In 1993 when Howard Rheingold many Europeans rejected his term "virtual community" because of its all too American approach in which the community concept is loaded up with positive characteristics, without mentioning the oppressive parts of community. Many Europeans that I knew were escaping "community" when got involved in the Net and were trying to get in contact with the big world outside. Often in the USA communities are presented as safe heavens to protect the vunerable individual against the big evil world. The Christian connotation of the word "community" is obvious and I guess doesn't need to be further explained here. So why go back to some narrow Christian concept, many friends of mine asked me? Why copy-paste US-American concepts and a cult of fear and anxiety, this false sense of togetherness? The Net is not a protection shield, not an escapist or utopian projection but something real and new, not connected to some old religions of the past which had only caused misery and civil wars. These were all questions, as I mentioned, of the early-mid nineties. Still, the unease of this somewhat religious term hasn't eased, altough I use the term here and there as well, I have to admit perhaps because there is not yet a better term. I think the concept of group (which has a whole history of its own in both sociology and psychology) could be one. Another one, perhaps even more problematic then community would be the tribe concept which has an even more clear regressive element (but became very fashionable in the nineties too). Community works for me if its well-defined, and if there is a sense of belonging, combined with drive towards discord and difference. Otherwise it's indeed nothing then Christian fundamentalism, sold as homebrew sociology. Ciao, Geert

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community-company, and all that
by Barry Wellman 25 Dec '01

25 Dec '01

Folks, I've been lecturing computer science audiences for years about the fallacy of Presentism: that there is no need to look to the dark pre-Wired ages for any knowledge. Never thought I'd have to lecture social scientists, even those interested in the Internet. Well over a century ago, Ferdinand Tonnies started the community-company debate going with his book about gemeinschaft and gesellschaft. Not that I agree with his either/or approach, but a huge amount of theorizing AND scholarship has developed around this issue. At the risk of offending some, here's my quick take: a community is a set of (possibly bounded) extra-household relationships that provide sociability, support and identity. A company is a set of legally defined rights and duties organized around an economic purpose. It's pretty clear that you can have community within a company -- that's what much ofindustrial relations and communities of practice literature is about. But even with that, community doesn't become an identity with company. They are 2 analytically separate things. Could you have "company" within community. To really push things, my sense is that's what the 'wages for housework' folks a decade+ ago tried to do, and that's why it failed. Happy Whatever Holiday You're Celebrating Barry (who's celebrating cleaning his office) ___________________________________________________________________ Barry Wellman Professor of Sociology NetLab Director wellman(a)chass.utoronto.ca http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman Centre for Urban & Community Studies University of Toronto 455 Spadina Avenue Toronto Canada M5S 2G8 fax:+1-416-978-7162 ___________________________________________________________________ On Sun, 23 Dec 2001 air-l-request(a)aoir.org wrote: > Date: Sun, 23 Dec 2001 12:01:00 -0500 (EST) > From: air-l-request(a)aoir.org > Reply-To: air-l(a)aoir.org > To: air-l(a)aoir.org > Subject: Air-l digest, Vol 1 #248 - 1 msg > > > > > > > Today's Topics: > > 1. Re: Community versus Company (John Daly) > > --__--__-- > > Message: 1 > Date: Sat, 22 Dec 2001 14:55:01 -0500 > From: John Daly <dalyj(a)erols.com> > Organization: self employed > To: air-l(a)aoir.org > Subject: [Air-l] Re: Community versus Company > Reply-To: air-l(a)aoir.org > > This discussion has been informative. I am interested in groups of > people interacting over the Internet the way we are interacting via this > listserve. So let me ask some questions about terminology. > > Are we who are subscribed to the AoIR listserve a "community".? If so, > what are characteristics that allow us to be so categorized? If, as I > suspect, we would be better described be a term other than "community", > what collective noun would you suggest? > > Does the fact that there is an "Association of Internet Researchers" > make a difference"? What would be the correct collective noun for a > similar group subscribed to a listserve if subscribers did not link also > through a formal organization? > > Communities seem to involve institutionalized relationships and > practices among community members. What, if any are the key > institutional relationships and practices involved in our group (other > than the formalized ones of the AoIR)? > > Finally, what are the institutional factors that make participation in > this listserve more (or less) valuable to our professional work? > > -- > John Daly > > > > > > --__--__-- > > _______________________________________________ > Air-l mailing list > Air-l(a)aoir.org > http://www.aoir.org/mailman/listinfo/air-l > > > End of Air-l Digest >

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re: abstraction and community redux
by Jonathan Sterne 23 Dec '01

23 Dec '01

First, a big thank you to Nancy for a great response, and now a response to her response -- At 12:01 PM 12/21/01 -0500, you wrote: >Message: 1 >Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2001 10:57:34 -0600 >To: air-l(a)aoir.org >From: Nancy Baym <nbaym(a)ku.edu> >Subject: Re: [Air-l] abstraction and community >Reply-To: air-l(a)aoir.org > >It's not a term imposed by academicians, it's one we co-opted from >popular discourse. It's certainly worth asking critically why online >activity is so often characterized in terms of community, but the >question needs to be broadened beyond scholars. [as a total aside, >i'm reminded of the creationist student in my nonverbal class who >argued that the reason primates have some facial expressions similar >to humans is that they learned them from hanging out with Darwin -- >the reason people describe their online groups as communities is that >they learned to use the term from scholarship about them?] Invoking >the term "community" with all of its attendant baggage and nuance is >a way that many internet users have made and continue to make sense >of this technology. Agreed that users didn't get the term from academics. But with the internet, ethnographers aren't so far -- in terms of social distance -- from their subjects. In other words, I'm suggesting that academics have some of the same forces that dispose them to use "community" that we find among internet users. I want to interrogate that disposition. >This side-steps the questions of whether community is good or bad and >what cultural forces lead late 20th/early 21st century westerners to >fret so much about community, questions which deserve critical >inquiry. But until I hear lots of users talking about their online >experience in terms of 'good will' or 'mutuality', I'll argue that >'community' is a more meaningful concept with which to start. This paragraph captures why I'm hung up on the issue. In the first sentence, you acknowledge you've sidestepped the question that I'm behind. But the next sentence reads like you're arguing that we need to take our analytical language from our sources. This combines what I tend to think of as two slightly different issues in research. There's the matter of understanding what terms your sources (ethnographic, historical, I'm not sure it matters so long at its people) use to describe their own participation in an event or experience -- obviously, this is essential for any kind of social analysis. It's altogether another thing when, at the moment of analytic abstraction or object construction, the researcher chooses to use the term in a homologous manner to his or her subjects to describe what they're doing. Our guy Bourdieu has a lot to say about this in his schtick on "objectifying objectification" in _the Logic of Practice_ and elsewhere. What is *our* investment in community, and how might that affect our understanding of the ways in which people online use the term? That's part of what I'm trying to get at. The whole company/listserv/community thing strikes me as a similar thing. I can imagine good arguments for and against the claim that this listserv fits some definition of community. But my prior question is why are we worried about that question in particular? What do we get when we find out if something fits the definition of community? Nancy says we get to systematize, and this is true, but is community our only or best road to systematic thinking? Anyway, I've made my point (at great length), so I'll quit before I'm dug in too deep. Hope you all get a break you can enjoy! Best, --Jonathan

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Re: Community versus Company
by John Daly 22 Dec '01

22 Dec '01

This discussion has been informative. I am interested in groups of people interacting over the Internet the way we are interacting via this listserve. So let me ask some questions about terminology. Are we who are subscribed to the AoIR listserve a "community".? If so, what are characteristics that allow us to be so categorized? If, as I suspect, we would be better described be a term other than "community", what collective noun would you suggest? Does the fact that there is an "Association of Internet Researchers" make a difference"? What would be the correct collective noun for a similar group subscribed to a listserve if subscribers did not link also through a formal organization? Communities seem to involve institutionalized relationships and practices among community members. What, if any are the key institutional relationships and practices involved in our group (other than the formalized ones of the AoIR)? Finally, what are the institutional factors that make participation in this listserve more (or less) valuable to our professional work? -- John Daly

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Re: Commerce vs. Community
by Wendy Robinson 21 Dec '01

21 Dec '01

As an academic and as someone who worked for a dot-com specializing in online community, media and ecommerce, who was deep into the "community" of those of who tried to bring online communities based on geographic communities and affinities into actuality, I too have been quite interested in the company vs. community thread. But I honestly don't recognize much of what I found out about the commercializing of community in the discussion. The people who worked for dot-coms weren't necessarily clueless and greedy, and damned as well for not helping all get rich quick. Many of us believed in what we were doing; we were far less cynical than the media that continues to beat up on the dead horse. Surely a more nuanced account of what happened could be offered by Net researchers. I strongly suggest that for those who are genuinely interested in how those in the real-world tried to find ways to "capitalize" on and, not so simply, to foster, to make happen, to bring into being, to help extend RL communities into cyberspace that you look into the Online Community Report, subscription info below. It still is not all about stock valuations and exploitation. >ONLINE COMMUNITY REPORT is a free twice-monthly publication edited by Dan >Shafer dan(a)OnlineCommunityReport.com and Jim Cashel >cashel(a)OnlineCommunityReport.com, with assistance from the staff of Forum >One Communications Corporation. If you would like to be included in or >excluded from this mailing list, please visit >http://www.OnlineCommunityReport.com . Comments and information are >welcome. The Report is also available online at >http://www.OnlineCommunityReport.com. And BTW, Rheingold too tried more than once to offer a commercial online community. He's been rather bitter over the last few years, I heard before the crash happened, when he was doing the Kinkos commercials, that others were profiting from his work. But Jaron Lanier isn't happy about VR research that doesn't involve him. The mouse got commercialized by others than Douglas Engelbart. But that's IT and how things get adopted and who finds ways to form companies, get financing and get out products and ideas, such as "virtual community," to a wider audience. This stuff we love and research, it isn't free. A more rounded consideration of the money trail is muchly appreciated. Happy Communal Holidays! Wendy Robinson wgrobin(a)duke.edu

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Re: Community versus Company
by David Neice 21 Dec '01

21 Dec '01

Hi, This thread, it seems, has struck a nerve. I offer another angle. Communalism relies on practices of reciprocity and on creative economy based on sharing. Companies are entities devoted to practices involving markets and exchange. There are of course plenty of hybrids - companies where caring for others is strongly valued as well as voluntary associations with business interests. There are also plenty of pretenders, where the relevant words are mouthed without actually being translated into practices. I do see them as antagonistic. Each inscribes a certain model of human activity. Communalism posits that we are first and foremost a social species, whereas companies, as legal agents within markets, posit that we are basically 'homo econimus'. This is the same tension that defines and separates sociology and contemporary economics. Which model truly represents our species' characteristics? The web of social ties or market transactions? The triumphalism of the latter fosters the yearning (or nostalgia) for the former. One of the really important distinctions between the reciprocal practices of communalism and the exchange practices of markets depends on the (relative) alienation of entities that circulate. In markets, entities are primarily alienable, they are sharply separated from their creator or owner and are then assigned exchange value or worth. In reciprocal practices the entities (usually gifts) are inalienable, they socially tie benefactor and beneficiary and carry moral obligations. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David C. Neice digital-literacy.com :-) Website at http://www.kw.igs.net/~neice/ Address: 47 Combermere, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 5B2 Tel: 519-885-2951 Fax: 519-885-5263 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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Re: Company vs. Community
by Bram Dov Abramson 21 Dec '01

21 Dec '01

dsilver(a)u.washington.edu wrote: >But it seems to me that one of the most common >(and nefarious depending where you stand on the issue) developments in >mainstream cyberculture during, say, 1997 - 2000 has been the >commercialization of online communities. Is it just me or does it appear >to the rest of you that the folks at Amazon, Yahoo, and >fill-in-the-blank.com have been reading Howard Rheingold? Not the commercialization of online communities, but the constitution of online communities inside commercial space. The Amazon community, or eBay community, etc didn't exist prior to Amazon or eBay and then become commercialized via Amazon's or eBay's behaviour. Rather, Amazon and eBay produced communities as commercial commodities. As commercial commodities, those communities had quantitative value: they were translated directly into dollar figures by equities analysts as a way of valuating the company's worth on the market. Which, in turn, provided incentive for this activity. The assumption that communities and commerce exist in an agonistic relationship is problematic. They don't, necessarily. The drive to build community is as native to commercial activity as it is to non-commercial zones, Howard Rheingold notwithstanding. (Heck, just look to what radio folks call the golden age of radio.) So, rather than fall into that can of worms, maybe it is better to talk about communal ties outside commercial enterprise in a normative way, ie as a Good Thing. What are the implications for the Internet when commercial enterprise expends the most resources on community-building? What are the different ways in which community can cohere (and does cohere) inside commercial spaces, and what are the implications of these different kinds of community-building? etc. cheers Bram --

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