Trebor Scholz has a great post investigating the motivations behind social networking and other forms of social collaboration. It’s a contribution related to both Jaron Lanier’s rant against digital maoism, and our own dialogue with Marc Fawzi on the unwisdom of crowds. It basically asks: is the motivation selfish, or altruistic.
Note that this very question should be put into context:
Heb Shepard, summarized by Rosa Zubizarreta:
“from the perspective of “primary mentality”, ‘individual’ and ‘group’ are experienced as opposite… in order to have a strong group, it appears that we need to ‘give up’ some of our individuality; conversely, to be ‘individuals’, it appears we need to ‘distance’ ourselves from the group…
in contrast, from the perspective of “secondary mentality” ‘individual’ and ‘group’ are experienced in a synergistic way: the MORE room there is for people to be individual and unique and eccentric, the stronger a group we will have; conversely, the more real support i can feel from the group, the more individual and unique and eccentric i can be… ”
Trebor’s points echo this insight, I won’t reproduce the whole contribution, but this review of motivations is particularly interesting and introduces the concept of agonistic giving:
“An additional variant of motivation for participation is “agonistic giving,â€? which Benkler sums up with the sentence “I give therefore I’m great.” Benkler adds other types of motivations: “individualist and solidaristicâ€? (teams; assertion of my individuality) and “reciprocityâ€? (p2p networks). In the context of sites like CiteUlike, del.icio.us, and others, I suggest that contributors are driven by a hybrid mix of motivations. They are not exclusively in it for themselves but they are also not completely driven by the idea of the greater good.
People contribute to sociable web media to find emotional support, a sense of belonging, relaxation, and encouragement, in addition to instrumental aid (finding a job, making money). Social capital is an additional motivating aspect, as Nick pointed out. But don’t forget fun. Russel Hardin talks about participation in demonstrations, driven by the desire to be part of history; it is propelled by the desire “to share the experiences of [one’s] time and place.” Harding focuses on the civil rights movement, a time when people took to the streets to participate in a social movement that they believed in. They participated, in addition to moral reasons, because the civil rights movement was a hugely formative series of events that they wanted to be a part of. Demonstrating can be a pleasurable experience.”
I would like to add my own five cents here. Last year, I had been reading some items on ‘value’ and its exchange through society. Money captures only a small part of this value. When we participate in online or other social projects, we basically exchange value, and in essence, what I feel is that by giving, we are receiving. So pure altruism may not exist, because when we are giving, it really means we are receiving something: recognition, reputation, the very fact of sharing might be giving us something. The emotional laws of thermodynamics, that no energy is lost, might apply here. Great altruists may simply be people who have evolved to the point that they nourish themselves through giving.
Comment from Adrian Chan:
“The agonistic view of society emphasizes competition, performance, and difference over consensus and understanding, if an abridged definition can suffice here. Agonistic giving, a term used by Yochai Benkler, describes the kind of giving that increases the giver’s power and status. Giving accrues stature to the giver by elevating him or her above others through generosity. Any theory of the gift, of course, assumes a recipient. For a gift to be given, it has to be accepted. Here then is where social relations come into play. Viewed only in terms of the giver’s indvidual performance, agonistic giving would be an act by which the giver can increase his or her stature just by giving. Have Bill Gates and Warren Buffet done just that? Or is that how our media report their act, and present it to us? In fact, the gift, to be a gift, must be accepted. The recipient must accept and acknowledge the giver’s performance. Viewed from a social perspective, the giver is not simply free to create power by simply giving; recognition, visibility, and some measure of symbolic or meaningful (if not real) power and status must attach to the act. The performance would then mean nothing out of context, namely social context. A rose, given is just a flower handed by one person to another. But as a symbolic gesture, the rose is an expression of one’s love, affection, perhaps even commitment. The recipient must accept the gift if it is to have the power invested in it. This binds the giver to the recipient. And to some social theorists and anthropologists, gift giving always involves the creation of a debt, a relation of obligation, an economy of reciprocity and circulation of debt. Debt being the future repayment and return of an obligation. In other words, debt being in fact not the object, nor its “objective” value, but the relationship it binds. One can go as far as to argue that debt is the preservation of tradition and the anchoring of social relations in time, for debt as an unresolved and “hanging” obligation projects social relations into the future. Whether agonistic giving is something we do to get power, respect, and status depends on whether we’re talking about the giver’s intent or the social and cultural context in which the performance takes place. One could say the same for pure giving.”
I am extremely fortunate to have stumbled upon this site, which expresses considerations with which I am currently in the process of coming to to terms. I would only introduce Lyotard as another relevant intellectual who tangentially addresses the subjected addressed in this blog through his description of language-games, which he of course took from Wittgenstein – something that was unique at the time for a French intellectual – and attributed to language-games the property that is typically translated into ‘agonistics.’ Lyotard described language-games as involving a concurrent cooperation as well as an adversarial relationship among the participants. I think this use of the term, agonistic, embodies many of the sigificant connotive properties that are associated with its use. Agonistics involves a type of play that is competitive and adversial, but also premised upon mutual cooperation and a necessary degree of trust with respect to the expectations projected onto other that essentially translate into an assumption that others will conform their behaviors to the implicitly recognized rules of the game. Agonistics has been consuming somewhat, simply because it is such a peculiar term that possesses so much nuansce and a utility – when one comes to understand the concept correctly – to illuminate so many aspects of human intercourse that would go unnoticed if not for the guidance provided by the eccentric aspect to our language.
R Cole