Comments on: Book of the Week: Brands, by Adam Arvidsson, part one https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/book-of-the-week-brands-by-adam-arvidsson-part-one/2006/12/04 Researching, documenting and promoting peer to peer practices Tue, 05 Dec 2006 12:20:47 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.5.15 By: Actics Blog » Brands, again https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/book-of-the-week-brands-by-adam-arvidsson-part-one/2006/12/04/comment-page-1#comment-10391 Tue, 05 Dec 2006 12:20:47 +0000 http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=663#comment-10391 […] There’s a debate on my Brands book on the P2Pfoundation blog. My analysis emphasises the role of brands as tools of governance; their ability to control and program consumer behaviour. Michel Bauwens and others argue that maybe we have now reached a new paradigm where ‘communities dominate brands‘. I have my doubts. Join th debate here. […]

]]> By: Adam https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/book-of-the-week-brands-by-adam-arvidsson-part-one/2006/12/04/comment-page-1#comment-10372 Tue, 05 Dec 2006 07:50:23 +0000 http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=663#comment-10372 Michel, I think you are partly right. It is true that some brands are more easily dominated by communities than others and that some online platforms allow more space for autonomy than others. At the same time, there is also a trend towards more advanced and sophisticated forms of control and (biopolitical) governance form below. Google can be an example of that too (who knows what they’re up to !), MySpace can be seen as a branded platform that promotes a highly particular form of agency and subjectivation (see next issue of ephemera for an exellent argument in that direction), MMORPGs are branded spaces par excellence where only highly particular forms of subjectivities and social relations are possible etc.

I agree though that parallel to these new more sophisticated forms of control and governance, there is a new and much more powerful potential for autonomy. I think the real divide will be between two managerial philosophies. One, you encourage autonomy, move with the wisdom of the crowds and seek to valorize that though new, innovative ways, perhaps various forms of folksonomies that permit autonomous value standards to emerge. This would effectively mean that the brand steps beyond capitlaism as we know it (autonomous porduction AND autonomous valorization/command). Two, you seek to keep the productivity of communities within the fold of top-down brand structures, deploying an array of surveilance, trend scouting, cool huinting and quantiative measurement strategies to ensure that whatever happens can be easily commodified and tied back to the capitalist valorization process. I guess my book has focuse don the second strategy: I agree though, the first is much more interesting!

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