Notes on the Horizontality of Peer to Peer Relationships in the Context of the Verticality of a Hierarchy of Values

* Essay: Par Cum Pari. Notes on the Horizontality of Peer to Peer Relationships in the Context of the Verticality of a Hierarchy of Values. Michel Bauwens. In: Pursuing the Common Good: How Solidarity and Subsidiarity Can Work Together. Fourteenth Plenary Session, 1-6 May 2008. Acta 14, eds Margaret S. Archer and Pierpaolo Donati. Vatican City, 2008 pp. 708.

This is an older essay of mine from 2008, written for an invitation to participate in a session of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, inside the Vatican, dedicated to the social doctrine of the Catholic Church, and its great compatiblity with p2p thinking (i.e. the centrality of civil society, with state and market at the servive of it), was a great discovery for me.

Here is the abstract:

“This essay has several aims. Firstly, we aim to offer an ethical evaluation of the emerging mode of peer production, governance and property, and see how it stacks up as an implicit or explicit expression of a number of ethical values. We will also specifically examine whether peer to peer represents an opportunity for a more complete realization of the aims of the social doctrine, in terms of its four key principles (i.e. personhood, common good, solidarity and subsidiarity).”

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