Re: [ox-en] Gift economies - again
- From: Stefan Merten <smerten oekonux.de>
- Date: Wed, 07 Oct 2009 19:15:35 +0200
Hi David!
Last month (33 days ago) David Collins wrote:
Perhaps this is slightly off-topic, but I just have a quick question.
Thanks for checking so politely :-) .
Is there any forum which is dedicated to furthering gift-economy and sharing practices? I know that some (but not all) readers here are interested in this, but - at the same time - I'm not sure this is the most ideal forum for such discussions (I welcome differing viewpoints on that - i.e. if people think this is a good place to discuss such things, I am happy to do so).
Well, it depends.
This project is about peer production. Sharing of goods is obviously
an important aspect of peer production. In fact the external openness
is all about sharing. It is - by my definition - also an economy
because useful goods are produced, distributed and consumed. However,
I'd not call it gift-economy because the products are not gifts (no
personal relationship / obligations involved but a very anonymous flow
of goods instead).
However, how you formulate it you seem to imply something else.
May be you are more interested in communities / groups which share
goods which are somehow limited - be it because their production
involves little or no Selbstentfaltung or because their production or
other acquiring is expensive.
Then in this project it would be interesting to explore how sharing
can be done under such conditions - especially whether it is somehow
possible to go without implicit or explicit personal obligations or
abstract exchange relationships. This could be interesting for
transformative strategies especially if things work on a large scale
basis.
May be personal relationships / obligations are important for you?
This would probably not fit well in this project.
Grüße
Stefan
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