Post by @schock at MIT Center for Civic Media
Mayo Fuster Morell, Berkman Center Fellow
The Spanish Revolution & the Internet: From free culture to meta-politics
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/luncheon/2011/11/morell
These notes were liveblogged, all errors belong to @schock 🙂
Mayo Fuster Morell is a Berkman Fellow and scholar of free culture and social movements. She begins by locating her study within the Spanish context, even as similar processes are taking place in other locations (she cites the Arab Spring and OWS). She’s focused on the Spanish case, from the perspective of a person who was born and has grown up as one of the first generation of Spaniards raised within a democracy, following the fall of the dictatorship. This colors the interpretation of the current generation.
Begining with the proposal that some forms are more successful than others. Organizational logics are not all equally successful. There has been a reconfiguration of the broader environment.
Also, there has been a reconfiguration of power between the core agents: the market, the State, and civil society.
There is increased social cooporeration that follows the organizational ethos of the commons. There is also a shift towards a more participatory civil society.
These are the three main models of resource management and provision, and Mayo is going to argue that there has been a shift towards civil society, based on what has happened within the Free Culture and digital commons movement.
In the literature about social movements, and in the mass media, there’s a tendency to focus on protests. And movements are evaluated according to the degree to which they are able to impact state policy. Mayo believes we need a broader perspective to understand what social movements actually do. They go beyond a protest frame, and impacts are broader.
She begins by focusing on the Free Culture movement, and will later come to the Indignados movement. (For those unfamiliar with the Indignados, it’s the recent wave of 15th May mobilization which is the largest social action since the overthrow of the dictatorship).
Mayo describes the Free Culture and digital commons movement as emerging forms of social cooperation around common goals in the digital environment. Examples include Free Software, Wikipedia, file sharing, and open access repositories. These don’t follow the logic of either the State or the market.
Since 2006, there has also been a virtualization of some aspects of these movements based on the shift to cloud computing and the virtualization of platforms. The ethos of freedom and autonomy has been eroded because of this. That generates a conflict model between commons based forms of resource management, and a corporate model of providing platforms for the net
Mayo is drawing from 80 interviews to understand the goals of participants in the Free Culture movement. She found that political goals included:
1. the preservation of the digital commons,
2. sharing of key information with the public (for example Wikileaks)
3. increasing social justice and solidarity
A wide range of strategies were used to try and achieve these goals.
There is a performative strategy, which involves actually making commons based production models work (for example Wikipedia or F/LOSS). There’s a legal strategy of defense and offense, for example EFF and CC. There’s also lobbying for improved law and regulation. She also identifies citizen mobilization, institutional pedagogy, and political representation.
Q: what about cultural strategy?
Mayo puts that in either performative category, or locates it within another strategy if it’s attached to that kind of goal.
Based on 145 cases in Catalonia, the majority of strategies were performative or campaign based. The point is that focusing too much on protests limits our understanding of the free culture movement, and that the same analysis can be applied to the indignados movement. In other words, indignados do more than just protests: they also are developing concrete alternative models, building resources.
Q: don’t the performative strategies also fall into the campaigns? And isn’t the majority of activity grassroots?
Mayo replies by giving a couple of examples, including WiFiNet: a performative strategy to resources a shared need using commons based strategy. So the strategy is not to make a campaign to get the State to provide access, it’s to create the access. There are some groups that do both, but there’s also a separation.
We have seen a shift from a first phase of focus on only Free Culture, towards metapolitical goals. From digital commons to society of the commons. Mayo gives an example of Lessig’s move from creative commons towards Change Congress: in order to support the long term goals of creative commons, it’s necessary to shift the overarching political structure. In a similar way, the Spanish case in 2010 moved from ‘red sostenible’ (sustainable net) to #NoLesVotes (don’t vote for them). There is also a new generation of digital youth politicised through the criminalization of their cultural practices.
Mayo then shows a video on YouTube titled ‘Spanish Revolution, Join the #SpanishRevolution [link? is it this one?http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2xuSHdjZ00 ]
Second case: Indignant movement in Spain (Indignados)
Mayo then introduces the second case, of the #15M or Indignados movement. The demand was “We Want Real Democracy Now.” These demonstrations began the 15th of May, and grew to the largest cycle of mobilizations in the history of Spanish democracy. After 15m, a group in Madrid was inspired by the occpation of squares in the Arab countries, and decided to occupy the Plaza del Sol. The police managed to evict them, but through social media, the repression of the camp (just 40 people) became widely visible and circulated. From 40 people, by the next day, the entire square was filled with people demanding the end of violent repression against peaceful protesters. This was not marginally supported. 80% support for the protests (by one survey). It’s also important to understand that there is over 40% youth unemployment, a situation where many people purchased homes but not cannot pay for their home, and in addition, even if you are foreclosed upon in Spain, you have to continue payments on the house loan.
The Indignados movement has been represented in the media largely as people protesting in the street. However, Mayo claims there is also a strong element of people’s desire to come together in public. There have also been concrete initiatives to emerge, including the occupation of houses to provide homes to the foreclosed, the organizing of solidarity networks to block evictions from homes, the increase of self-education networks, all emerging from people who have met f2f in the squares. There has also been a 50% of increase in Catalonian cooperatives, also a great increase in time banking (exchange of time for needed goods or services). There has also been a growth of wireless cooperatives. In other words, the Indignant mobilization is willing not only to make demands on public policy and fighting corruption, but the squares also serve as a space where people meet each other and then organize to solve common needs.
Continuity and discontinuity
Mayo turns to an analysis of continuity and discontinuity between the two movement formations.
The Indignant movement feeds on several processes. For example, many people active in free culture moved into the Indignados, which had an impact on the cultural logics of organization of that movement. There were also actors from the housing rights movement, and from the movement against the privatization of public services, who moved into the Indignados movement.
Since the 15th of May, it was clear that there was a new generation becoming politicized through the Indignados process. However, it can’t be understaood as something entirely new: Indignados also draw from pre-existing social movement networks and structures. Indignants are thus a convergence of multiple social movement processes.
The Free Culture movement was part of the trajectory of mobilization, and helped shape the organizational logic of the Indignados.
Mayo says the main point of the presentation is to not understand social movements only in terms of protest, but also in terms of movement actors coming together in public spaces to create shared solutions to common problems. In other words, to generate social cooperation for the provision of public goods that go beyond the market and the State.
This coming together is also developed through particular organizational forms: certain logics are more able to succeed, namely, to have inclusive participation, to generate an ecosystem of multilayered engagement. For example, the free culture networks enable small acts of participation (not everyone needs to be a coder, you could just do something small), and Indignados found ways to do this as well.
Shared identities are also key. Collective identities are generated that reach beyond coalition politics, in which the coalition is the ‘sum of other organizations.’
Finally, both movements combine both performative and campaign based strategies. There is no assumption that the market or the State will provide the answers.
However, there is a contrast: in the Free Culture movement, there is a political ambivalence and a conscious effort to move beyond the traditional map of politicla families (left/right). However, in the Indignados movement, there is adherence to the right/left framework.
There is an ecology of change towards a digital commons based future, but there is also a State that is moving towards authoritarianism and a market captured by an ever smaller number of firms. Mayo believes that we would need to shift the State towards an institution that could support commons based models, as well as a shift of markets towards other forms that could support equal exchange.
Q: Taxis Metaxis asks, what contributed to the perception that the Indignados movement was unable to come together around a coherent political message? Do you think it was that they came from multiple movement networks?
Mayo: I beleive it’s characteristic of social movements to not have a single voice, and to not be willing to be represented in a single voice within the mass media. Perhaps the message is this: society has changed. We no longer have one type of family, one type of institution, one type of party. Society has changed, and we cannot expect that the movement was transmit a single discourse as in the industrial era. We have a more complex society, which needs to be able to handle diverse groups and needs. One of the elements of crisis of the political institutions is the failure to engage with new forms of complexity and diversity. Another interpretation is, if a journalist or politician understands that the movement is not only there to ask for something from the State, but that people are present in order to construct concrete alternatives. There are points of entry for those who are interested in actually participating. The State becoming more authoritarian means that it is not willing to listen to the voices of the mass mobilization. No political party in the recent Spanish elections talked about reform of the electoral system.
Jeff Juris: this is the same discussion around the Occupy movement. There’s a tension between the traditional logics and the new networked logics. To what extent is it possible to build on the collaborative base to generate demands that can be recognized by the traditional political system? Is that always a tension? Can we transcend that tension and translate processes?
Mayo: there is an element of the Free Culture movement that does participate in campaigning. The emergence of the #15M created a split inside the Free Culture movement. Previously, we had seen the emergence of the Free Culture forum in Barcelona. In previous years, all of the various strategies I mentioned were used together. This year, the forum converged with the demonstration of the Indignants. For example, I organized a debate about the Commons in the Plaza de Catalunya square, and invited Wikipedians. But, Wikipedians said, we don’t have to go there. We don’t want to be associated with intervention in politics in the classical sense. This generated tension between groups in the Free Culture movement who wanted to campaign and lobby, and those that wanted to just build things. My understanding is that they are a different type of people. There is a split of strategies. But I believe they can be done together. The possibility of combining different strategies is key to stopping the emergence of the authoritarian state. Resistance must be combined with building.
Mako: the free software movement has been helped a lot by the participation of capitalists. IBM, HP, big companies have been instrumental in the creation of free software as both a movement and a process that is now taken much more seriously. They have a very different set of logics, but have raised the visibility of the free software movement. How do you see this tension? There’s a whole other group of people using the same tools AND logics, in order to further a very different form of economic organization.
Mayo: I think the element of adopting political ambivalence for framing free software, not as leftist or right wing, has been very much present. It has been an intelligent decision, in the sense that it has allowed free software to expand. It has achieved the adoption of collaborative modes, free licensing, some of its goals. From an analytical perspective, there’s a tension in the free software movement around the role of the corporations and to what degree they are gaining control over the software process. Commons organization has great limitations. The natural commons, like the work of Ostrom, and the digital commons, depending on the case, also reproduce inequalities from broader society like gender, class, and so on. Openness reproduces existing inequalities in society. So we don’t have to think commons will solve all of our problems; it helps to solve some elements. For example, Ostrom has highlighted that gender inequality is reporduced there; this is the case in Wikipedia where only 10% of contributors are women. There are limitations. Some things need to be solved from a centralized position. Some elements find the best solution in the market. The organizational logic of the commons achieves some things but not others. I’m referring to a social economy market, not the kind of market we have now, where a company dominates a domain. I’m referring to a free market, not a monopolistic or concentrated position. We should be open to different forms.
Q: what about tensions between existing networks and newly politicized activists?
Mayo tells an anecdote about Plaza Catalunya. It was organized by different commissions. There was food, IT, etc. There was an attempt to develop a document to summarize all the demands and agreements. At some point, this commission decided to question the need for its own existence. I was involved in previous mobilization waves. When I went to the discussion of the Points of Unity, I knew most of the people there. Actonivists from a previous network congregated. Most of the people who were doing the concrete work (cleaning the square, cooking the food, etc) were new people. This opened a debate about how activists with experience could reformulate to learn from new people. When I went to the 17S mobilization in NYC, I also saw many people that I knew. So the initial stages included many people from previous movement networks. Beyond these anecdotes, I perceive a risk: the old social movements take the energy. We can see the Indignants as a new wave that has learned from previous movement networks. There’s a risk that older networks will dominate the new process. The shift from ‘activists’ to ‘the 99%’ is an important shift in framing. Older activists have lots of knowledge, including techniques, coordinating an assembly of 5000 people, and so on. They provide many knowledge resources, but also carry older frames with them.
It’s true, there are tensions between older activists and new citizens. There are tensions between self organization and impacting public policies. There are many tensions. But would we expect that there are not? These tensions are very creative. Coming together between different people is a great opportunity. Perhaps these tensions are a sign of energy.