Andreas Wittel

Toward a Network Sociality

This article explores some current transformations of the social. It argues for a shift from a model of sociality based on community towards a network sociality. This shift is particularly visible in urban spaces and in the cultural industries. However, it seems to become paradigmatic more widely of the information society. The article is to be read as a cultural hypothesis. In the first part I introduce some examples that document the rise of a network sociality. Most of these examples are drawn from a two-year ethnographic study of Londons new media. The second part consists of a critique of some theoretical accounts of contemporary transformations of sociality. The third part is an attempt to outline the concept of network sociality. It is a form of sociality that is ephemeral but intense, it is informational and technological, it combines work and play, it is disembedded and generic, and it emerges in the context of individualization.

Culture, labour and subjectivity: For a political economy from below:

The central theme of this article is the relationship between political economy and culture. This raises related questions of the place and valuation of subjectivity, and of immaterial cultural labour within the cultural economy. These relationships and questions have been articulated in a relatively narrow way, if at all, by contemporary debates, which have not sufficiently taken into account recent social and cultural transformations. So this article attempts to discuss how a political economy of culture might develop a broader approach towards labour, culture, and subjectivity. The objective is to identify some of the problematic, under-researched and under-illuminated issues and areas. It culminates in the speculative discussion of a ‘political economy from below’, inherently geared to understanding the micro-productive activities of cultural producers themselves.

Counter-commodification: The economy of contribution in the digital commons

This is an article about digital production and the crisis of capitalism. It is about production in the digital commons and its implications for the building of alternatives to a commodified world. As digital production is at the very heart of cognitive capitalism, the digital commons is not just any other disruption of the process of commodification. This is the field of a fierce struggle over the future of the Internet and the future of capitalism itself. It is potentially the moment which moves back the frontiers of measurement, value and quantification towards qualities, values and an expansion of the gift economy. For this potential to unfold, it is vital that those who are giving, sharing, and contributing for the benefit of humanity are supported by global policies that enable them to do so. They have to be supported because their gifts are not based on reciprocity and the obligation to return the gift. This is an argument about the future of digital labour. The article concludes that this could be achieved through a global basic income scheme.

Arbeit und Ethnografie im Zeitalter des digitalen Kapitalismus

Fur Karl Marx ist Arbeit bekanntlich einer der Grundbegriffe seiner Philosophie. Arbeit ist fur ihn nicht nur eine wirtschaftliche, sondern eine menschliche Tatigkeit. Sie ist eine Universalkategorie der menschlichen Existenz und ist als solche unabhangig von spezifischen sozialen und okonomischen Formen.