Journal articles on the topic 'Capitalists and financiers Corporations'

Certain European notions of the nature of the Asian economies — especially the peddling character of Asian trade and its contrast with the rational capitalist business organization which was supposed to be a purely European enclave superimposed by conquest on the peddling, precapitalist basis of Asian production and exchange — were formulated most clearly of all by Dutch sociologists and economists from their experience of Netherlands India of the nineteenth century and of the Eastern Archipelago in the age of Portuguese and Dutch voyages. They were not unaware of the existence of Chinese and Indian business groups in Southeast Asia with some of the features of early modern capitalism, but these were regarded as the bastard offspring of developed European capitalism. Such immigrant Asian groups were supposed to have sprung from the need of the Europeans for intermediaries to deal with the economically innocent natives and were thought to be completely dependent on servicing the European enclave with no autonomous business concerns of their own. This essay focusses on the Chinese financiers and Chetti bankers operating long distance credit networks in the Southern Ocean (Nanyang) before and after the opening of the Suez Canal (1869). The aim is to show that these immigrant business groups derived from a sophisticated financial and mercantile background in their home countries and that they conducted autonomous operations in the Eastern Archipelago with their own capital and business techniques: a large volume of such operations were conducted within a purely inter-Asian framework quite apart from the colonial trade with Europe, and in their dealings with the Dutch and the English banks and corporations, these towkays and nagarathars showed a strength and resilience which made ‘dependence’ and ‘collaboration’ a mutual process.

Au cours des trente dernières années, la grande corporation de droit privé a connu des transformations structurelles qui ont affecté aussi bien sa dynamique interne que les modalités d’adaptation à son environnement. La mise en place d’un régime d’accumulation financiarisée a, parmi d’autres facteurs, entraîné une reconfiguration des principaux dispositifs de contrôle de la corporation, qui doit désormais composer avec un système d’organisations financières matérialisant un nouvel espace de régulation de la vie économique. S’appuyant sur les travaux récents de la sociologie institutionnaliste américaine de la corporation, cet article vise à identifier les principales logiques de restructuration de la grande corporation qui ont été concomitantes du déploiement du capitalisme financiarisé. Ces modalités seront schématiquement analysées à partir des pratiques des principaux acteurs qui leur ont donné une effectivité propre.

La Benefit Corporation es la nueva forma de empresa social surgida en el panorama legislativo norteamericano. Sobre la base de una estructura de sociedad mercantil capitalista, se pretende poder obtener resultados en beneficio del interés general. Este tipo social, trata de aunar los legítimos intereses financieros de los accionistas, con los de los otros stakeholders de la compañía. Para ello los administradores deberán aplicarse en la obtención de beneficios, pero a través del ejercicio de una actividad empresarial que, en su conjunto, tenga un impacto positivo en la sociedad y en el medio ambiente. Este impacto positivo, deberá poder ser, a su vez, objeto de evaluación a través de su contraste con normas estandarizadas, ideadas y aprobadas por terceros. Recibido: 10 junio 2013Aceptado: 30 julio 2013

Venture capitalists are investing their money in portfolio enterprises and hence are putting their capital at risk. As portfolio enterprises may pursue different objectives than those of their financiers, venture capitalists may perceive agency problems as an important risk factor. Venture capitalists can limit the scope of these risks by specifying the form of financing that they provide to portfolio enterprises and/or by inserting particular covenants in their financial contracts. This paper first briefly reviews the various contractual provisions that can be used to decrease the extent of venture capitalists’ exposure to agency problems. Next, the importance of various securities and covenants is examined in the context of South Africa, where the venture capital market is still relatively young, but growing. Overall, it is concluded that venture capitalists in South Africa limit their exposure to risk, but in a different manner than is typically done in the USA

This paper uses the theory of transactions economics to model the process whereby venture capitalists and financiers negotiate the terms of financing. We show that the process has both static and dynamic elements, and involves incomplete information in a world of uncertainty. Central to the arrangement is the alignment of borrower attributes and lender capabilities.

Several sources have emphasized the importance of the entrepreneurial economy, and the role venture capitalists (VCs) plays as financiers. VCs are often actively and personally involved in their portfolio companies, but the cost of governance is high and they therefore have to select when to be active participants. Four different risks are identified in this paper: agency risk, business and market risk, coalition risk, and conformity risk. Weak support is found for the categories of agency and business and market risk. The data speak in favor of VCs getting more involved when the portfolio companies experience some kind of trouble. Their activity level increases when the portfolio companies have an inexperienced CEO, when the companies are in an early stage of their development, are young, have a weak board of directors, and/or a weak performance.

This paper studies how critical entrepreneurial finance outcomes such as the investment return and equity division are shaped by venture characteristics, financier risk preferences, and competitive searching. Our analysis uses a double-hazard agency model in which financiers determine the equity division to maximize the expected utility of their investment return while entrepreneurs search for the best deal. Model results provide new theoretical insights on the venture funding cycle, the coexistence of angels/venture capitalists (VCs) with heterogeneous risk aversion, and risk separation in the entrepreneurial finance market. The model predicts that financiers with higher funding capacity and advisory capabilities (e.g., VC firms) will prefer to fund at later stages as their expected investment return rises with the venture’s initial value and financier productivity. Competitive searching by entrepreneurs enables financiers with a diverse set of risk preferences to coexist profitably by reducing the advantage (disadvantage) of lower (higher) risk aversion financiers and making investment returns more similar. Further, the model shows the emergence of a risk separation cutoff beyond which only angels/VCs with lower levels of risk aversion can profitably fund riskier ventures.

In his recent book, The Enlightened Capitalists, James O’Toole explores the challenges faced by two centuries of business pioneers who tried to do well by doing good. While many of their firms were financially successful, few of their progressive business practices turned out to be enduring. In light of this mixed historical record, this article explores the future of enlightened business leadership. It critically evaluates six trends that will greatly determine the extent to which corporate executives will introduce virtuous practices in the coming decade, including a new generation of enlightened capitalists, several consortia of socially progressive business leaders, the growth of social entrepreneurship, the emergence of benefit corporations, and changes in investor attitudes.

Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists is an ambitious probe into capitalism's past, present, and future. Whereas Joseph A. Schumpeter viewed capitalism as doomed because it was losing its political and social supports, Rajan and Zingales see it more as threatened from within by established or “incumbent” industrialists and financiers who become enemies of free markets. The authors contend that free financial markets foster economic progress while undermining the ability of incumbents to have their way. Rajan and Zingales may overstate the significance of “the great reversal” of financial development in the middle decades of the twentieth century, and their evidence and interpretations are sometimes flawed. Nonetheless, they make a strong case for the fundamental importance of financial development for economic modernization and their warnings about the antimarket tendencies of incumbents are well worth pondering.

Abstract The paper claims that conspiracy theories in Bulgaria are organized as a milieu rather than as a genre, and that, depending on their intensity, conspiracy theories can perform heterogeneous functions, which range from justification of political claims and popular mobilization to entertainment. Building on that conceptual framework, the paper illustrates the most prominent functional types of Bulgarian conspiracy theories. The higher-intensity theories are exemplified by the narratives of corruption and of the afterlife of the former communist secret services. The lower-intensity theories are illustrated by the fortunately short-lived question if the president of the United States has been abducted by aliens. The impact of the Bulgarian conspiratorial milieu on global theories is represented by the example of the Bulgarian modifications of the traveling narrative of the conspiracy of Jewish bankers. The emancipatory potential of the conspiracy theories is demonstrated by the example of the 2011 anti-GMO protests, motivated by narratives of conspiracy between the government and transnational corporations, which derived their energy from the associated milieu of ecological concerns.

AbstractSome of the world's most powerful corporations practise what Shoshana Zuboff (2015; 2019) calls ‘surveillance capitalism’. The core of their business is harvesting, analysing and selling data about the people who use their products. In Zuboff's view, the first corporation to engage in surveillance capitalism was Google, followed by Facebook; recently, firms such as Microsoft and Amazon have pivoted towards such a model. In this paper, I suggest that Karl Marx's analysis of the relations between industrial capitalists and workers is closely analogous to the relations between surveillance capitalists and users. Furthermore, three problematic aspects of industrial capitalism that Marx describes – alienation, exploitation and accumulation – are also aspects, in new forms, of surveillance capitalism. I draw heavily on Zuboff's work to make these parallels. However, my Marx-inspired account of surveillance capitalism differs from hers over the nature of the exchange between users and surveillance capitalists. For Zuboff, this is akin either to robbery or the gathering of raw materials; on the Marx-inspired account it is a voluntary sale. This difference has important implications for the question of how to resist surveillance capitalism.

This article traces California's constitutional development from 1849 through 1911, examining how and why California's constitution developed into a quasi-legislative document that constitutionalized policies involving corporations, banks, railroads, taxes, and other economic relationships, thereby limiting the power of the legislature. I argue that drafters of California's constitutions deliberately curtailed legislative power and transformed class issues into constitutional ones. California's experience was consistent with state constitutional developments throughout the United States, especially in the West. Advocates of constitutional reform saw state legislatures as corrupt captives of "capitalists" and other "special interests" that could not to be trusted to serve the people's interests. These issues permeated debates over constitutional reform in California and other states from the 1840s through the initial decades of the twentieth century, leading to the adoption of the initiative and referendum.

This article argues that popular revolution was closely tied to the establishment of capitalism. Contrary to the revisionist George V. Taylor’s view that the Revolution had nothing to do with the advance of capitalism because financial and productive capital were divided from one another, this article contends that the Revolution played a critical role in tying them together. Prior to the Revolution financiers began to make limited investments in wholesale trade, manufacturing and mining. But during the revolutionary crisis the sans-culottes pushed the Jacobins to create a national money and to curb speculation in order to foster production and exchange and reduce unemployment. With speculative activity blocked by popular resistance and state interference, bankers and other capitalists increasingly turned to productive investments and forged a link between financial and productive capital which proved crucial to further capitalist accumulation.

Socialists at the turn of the century explained modern imperialism as an attempt to escape the crisis of monopoly capitalism. “Super-profits” that could be secured in the periphery, according to Lenin, were necessary to offset declining rates of return in the advanced economies. Today, radical theorists stress the role of the multinational corporations in accounting for neocolonialism. If great national power does produce material benefits for foreign investors, this should be apparent in two cases: the experience of British capitalists in the “high age of imperialism,“ 1870–1913, and the operations of U.S. multinational corporations abroad after World War II. But rates of return on foreign investments have not been significantly different in the developed and less developed regions of the world—a finding that is relevant not only for theories of imperialism but also for understanding development and modernization, the operation of the multinational corporation, and international capital markets.

Entrepreneurship is the driver of growth. It helps creating innovative enterprises which provide foundation for building a nation's competitiveness. Enterprise creation needs risk capital. Venture capitalists provide risk capital and facilitate the development of entrepreneurship. There are several issues relating to entrepreneurship development and venture capital that deserve serious discussion. To put these issues into perspective, the Centre for Innovation, Incubation, and Entrepreneurship and Entre Club at IIMA organized a panel discussion which was coordinated by I M Pandey, Professor at Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. Some of the key questions that the panel has addressed to are: What is the contribution of entrepreneurship in the economic development of India? What factors have facilitated or hindered the development of entrepreneurship in India? What role has venture capital played in fostering the growth of entrepreneurship in India? What do entrepreneurs look for from venture capitalists other than the capital in the growth of their enterprises? What are the experiences of venture capitalists and entrepreneurs vis-a-vis the interface between venture capital and entrepreneurship? The following are some important points that emerged from the panel discussion: There is a direct link between entrepreneurship and the economic growth. There is some evidence that entrepreneurship has made contribution to India's growth. Factors responsible for the slow growth of entrepreneurship and lack of innovative spirit included the faulty education system, absence of proper incentives and environment to innovate, lack of proactive and favourable government policies, non-availability of risk capital, and the Indian mindset favouring comfortable and secured career choices. Entrepreneurship is a prerequisite for building our nation's global competitiveness. There is no short-cut. The liberalization of the Indian economy and the increased access to the global capital have paved way for entrepreneurship development and for facing international competition. The role of venture capital in fuelling the growth of entrepreneurship is inevitable. Venture capitalists need to play a proactive role. The Indian experience shows that venture capital is capable of creating a facilitating environment to build entrepreneurship culture and help entrepreneurship develop as a preferred career option. Venture capitalists should play the dual role of financiers and mentors. They should facilitate the networking of entrepreneurs with customers, distributors, financial institutions, consultants, etc. Efforts should be made by public and private sectors to create critical mass of venture capital funds, especially to finance start-ups and ventures of the first-time entrepreneurs. The education system in India should focus on developing entrepreneurship skills and risk-taking abilities of students.

This article identifies recent developments in the ownership and management of New Zealand media institutions since Bill Rosenberg’s 2009 article in Pacific Journalism Review. New Zealand is enmeshed within global capitalism; a reality which shapes contemporary ownership patterns. Often the media ownership discussion in New Zealand is centred on media moguls, but they are answerable to their investors, shareholders, international investment banks, fund managers and venture capitalists whose primary objective is to maximise profit rates. New Zealand media corporations treat news as a commodity and news organisations as revenue generators. Consequently, public media space is shrinking as the practice of journalism declines.

SummaryA series of artisan revolts in the London corporations between 1635 and 1659 found both radical ideas of individual liberty and the guild ethos of fraternity relevant to their aims. The apparent paradox of democratic demands combined with calls for stricter economic regulation can be explained only by examining the participants' concrete grievances and specific demands. The protesters were neither rising industrial capitalists nor a new wage-earning class, but small masters attempting to restrain competition, the use of cheap labour, and the enlargement of enterprises. Their concerns had something in common with those of the Levellers, but the movements diverged in significant ways.

The economic and political arguments for the market principle over alternative forms of economic organization are to my mind irrefutable. It is on the moral level that the perplexing concerns about capitalism center, concerns that have been raised from the beginnings of the industrial era down to the present time. This essay focuses on one major aspect of the ongoing moral test of capitalism: the test of whether our major corporations can both succeed in their profit-making efforts and also serve as one of society’s chief mediating structures that stand, like family, church and community, between the individual and the state. Should the corporation serve not simply as a utilitarian arrangement for the efficient production of high quality goods and services, but also as a moral community that shapes human character and behavior? How can it do so in this age of brutal markets?James Q. Wilson, professor of management at UCLA, has no doubt about the answer. In an article last year, he said: “The problem of imbuing large-scale enterprise with a decent moral life is fundamental.” Corporations “are systems of human action that cannot for long command the loyalty of their members if their standards of collective action are materially lower than those of their individual members.” Capitalists should recognize, he concluded, “that, while free markets will ruthlessly eliminate inefficient firms, the moral sentiments of man will only gradually and uncertainly penalize immoral ones. But, while the quick destruction of inefficient corporations threatens only individual firms, the slow anger at immoral ones threatens capitalism, and thus freedom itself.”

Abstract New forms of stockholder activism call into question longstanding assumptions underpinning our system of corporate governance. Scholarship has largely failed to explain the basis for these new forms and, in particular, the differences among activists. Activists are not one undifferentiated mass. Both small activist hedge funds and large union-sponsored or -influenced pension funds use governance mechanisms to influence corporate behaviour. Pension funds, however, have a different set of incentives than hedge funds. The beneficiaries of these funds cannot easily switch between consumption and investment by buying or selling their holdings in firms. Thus, instead, institutional investors exercise an embedded ‘governance option’ found within shares of common stock to engage with firms. Organised labour, in particular, now uses its influence in pension funds to motivate progressive change by corporations. This form of activism has the potential to alter the balance of power between workers and capitalists in the era of financial capitalism.

PurposeFinancing is a major obstacle to achieving quality education for all persons of school-going age in less-developed countries. Consequently, corporate institutions through corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives are increasingly becoming government partners in financing education sector projects. The effect of these CSR interventions on education funding gap, school enrollment and academic performance is yet to be adequately evaluated, hence the reason for this study.Design/methodology/approachThis study used in-depth interviews and focus group discussions on examining the contributions of CSR initiatives to school funding, enrollment and academic performance from the viewpoint of teachers, students and heads of schools. The interviews were tape-recorded, transcribed, reviewed and sorted according to key and recurrent themes.FindingsThe study shows that CSR interventions have contributed to student enrollment in beneficiary schools, improved academic and core-curricular performances of students. Funding gaps in schools have also being unraveled through this study which will inform policy decisions going forward. However, the informal financiers may have other reasons unknown to the resource recipients for investing in the education sector.Research limitations/implicationsThe research only considered the perspectives of teachers, students, pupils and heads of schools on the effect of CSR interventions on enrollment and performance. The views of CSR initiators (corporations), opinion leaders and other stakeholders of the schools are reserved for future research.Practical implicationsIt is therefore imperative that managers of school systems are cautious in establishing exchange relationship with informal financiers as there may be other hidden reasons behind the corporate support to the beneficiary schools.Originality/valueThe addition of other stakeholders' perspective on the effect of CSR initiatives on school enrollment and students' performance is a novelty.

This study of the annual reports of the Illinois Central Railroad (IC) from the 1850s supports a conclusion that the statements, as to form and content, were developed to serve the needs of two classes of investors and to inform the general community of the activities of the company. The need to report to the public as to the success of the company's role in its “social contract” to develop the state required details of a demographic nature, which were provided by the land commissioner. Operating results provided evidence of the ability to service the debts held by European investors and to inform British venture capitalists of the extent of the company's operations. This communication with the distant capital providers was a new development in financial reporting as the capital-intensive railroads experienced management and ownership separation on a scale not seen before. In summary, the IC provided annual reports more detailed and informative than those of other corporations of the period because of a need to provide European investors with evidence of management's activities.

AbstractThis paper explores how the staff of İstanbul’s food banks perceive the donors and the donations. The paper begins by exploring the literature on food banks; what food banks recover and redistribute; and the role food banks play in managing food insecurity. Next, how these three issues are represented in different models of food banks are discussed: in the non-profit model, the donors are “socially aware citizens” who contribute to the common good by helping to feed the hungry; whereas, for the for-profit model they are “caring capitalists” doing their best to reduce their carbon footprint and eliminate food waste while effectively managing the costs of waste disposal. In the municipal social markets, in contrast, the donors are “prodigal consumers” who cannot make correct resource allocation decisions and waste food as a result. For all the models, the donors are predominantly individuals or households and waste generation is perceived as a consumer problem, whereas in practice the donors are mostly corporations giving away their surplus stock. The paper concludes by underlining that this misperception shifts the conversation on waste generation and management away from production and supply chain problems and disciplines individuals as consumers.

Abstract The paper aims at demonstrating the relevance of financing instruments, their terms and financing strategies in relation to the cost of wind power production and the ability of wind power plant (PP) to participate in the electricity market in Lithuania. The extended approach to the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) is applied. The feature of the extended approach lies in considering the lifetime cost and revenue received from the support measures. The research results have substantiated the relevance of financing instruments, their terms and strategies in relation to their impact on the LCOE and competitiveness of wind PP. It has been found that financing of wind PP through the traditional financing instruments (simple shares and bank loans) makes use of venture capital and bonds coming even in the absence of any support. It has been estimated that strategies consisting of different proportions of hard and soft loans, bonds, own and venture capital result in the average LCOE of 5.1–5.7 EURct/kWh (2000 kW), when the expected electricity selling price is 5.4 EURct/kWh. The financing strategies with higher shares of equity could impact by around 6 % higher LCOE compared to the strategies encompassing higher shares of debt. However, seeking to motivate venture capitalists, bond holders or other new financiers entering the wind power sector, support measures (feed-in tariff or investment subsidy) are relevant in case of 250 kW wind PP. It has been estimated that under the unsupported financing strategies, the average LCOE of 250 kW wind PP will be 7.8–8.8 EURct/kWh, but it will reduce by around 50 % if feed-in tariff or 50 % investment subsidy is applied.

A belief that there is a pervasive and enduring adversarial relationship between business and the welfare state is shared widely across scholarly disciplines engaged in historical and comparative analysis of social politics. According to that view, each stage in the expansion of the American welfare state was a defeat for capitalists. Detailed evidence on the politics of health care, with special focus on the passage of Medicare in 1965, casts serious doubt on this dominant view about class politics, the welfare state, and the power of business. It shows that much of the literature takes a hazardous inferential leap from national business organizations’ official positions against reform to overconfident conclusions about actual business opinions. The literature also mistakenly discounts evidence of business support for moderate reforms as strategic camouflage of actual opposition designed to head off more radical ones. Extensive evidence reveals enormous division within business rather than unity about the health care state, and a great deal of support from large and powerful corporations for its creation and expansion. Evidence about the economic implications of health insurance for businesses, including before and after Medicare, and all the way to the Affordable Care Act of 2010, indicates that the support was genuine, not strategic, and that sometimes it was critical for passage. That support calls for new thinking about how to answer the perennial question about class power in America: “Who actually governs?”

AbstractAs the Qing state launched its full-scale educational reform at the turn of the twentieth century, tens of thousands of new schools mushroomed all over China. Their urgent and enormous demand for textbooks created a thriving new market that attracted both Chinese and foreign publishing firms. Nurtured in China's traditional book trade, Chinese print capitalists had local knowledge of distribution networks and cultural politics, but not a real command of producing educational Western knowledge. To keep up with Chinese students’ increasing demand for Western knowledge, they pirated textbooks published by foreign companies. Meanwhile, leading American and British publishing corporations were expanding their international business by targeting developing countries that had recently established a modern general education system, like China. Drawing from government and company archives, as well as personal papers and legal documents, this article traces the multinational competition, copyright disputes, and business collaborations between a leading textbook provider in China and their Anglo-American competitors between the 1900s and the 1930s. It illustrates an unexpected and uneasy partnership some foreign publishers formed with Chinese pirates in order to gain better access to China's textbook market. Chinese publishers, on the other hand, used piracy and their local knowledge to bargain for better import credit and deals with their foreign rivals. Both sides were dependent on each other to gain the advantage in their transnational business operations in the globalizing Asian textbook business.

Like many other leftists working in labor or community organizations, I have long struggled to understand the role I can play in building a larger left movement. I have spent nearly a decade organizing for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and have only recently caught a glimpse of what a vibrant and popular leftist practice could look like.&hellp; In this analysis, I take inspiration from Antonio Gramsci's ideas. He described a "war of position"&mdash;a protracted revolutionary effort to create an anti-capitalist hegemony&mdash;as a methodology for anti-capitalists in advanced industrial countries. Counter-hegemony is a process, built by concrete effort both through political education and political action. As a labor union organizer, I have become quite skilled at political action, but not at political education.&hellp;One alignment of organizations in Minnesota&mdash;Minnesotans for a Fair Economy (MFE)&mdash;has the potential to be part of such a counter-hegemonic process. On a day-to-day basis, member organizations of MFE organize people to confront their bosses and banks, as well as the corporations holding back their communities. On a sporadic basis, the member organizations come together to create a new narrative of what kind of a world we want.&hellp; It was in a MFE "week of action" that I first began to understand how the process of creating a counter-hegemony might play out in practice.<p class="mrlink"><p class="mrpurchaselink"><a href="http://monthlyreview.org/index/volume-67-number-1" title="Vol. 67, No. 1: May 2015" target="_self">Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the <em>Monthly Review</em> website.</a></p>

During the greater part of the 15th century, the Burgundian princes created a stable, unified center for industry and the flourishing of the arts in the Netherlands. Philip the Good became one of the most powerful and wealthy princes of the House of Burgundy in the period. Under his rule, the Netherlands became an important center for commerce. The port of Bruges, and later Antwerp, offered easy access to the important trade routes. The German merchants of the Hansa towns of Bremen, Danzig, Lübeck, and Hamburg and ships from England and the Baltic regions brought wares to be bought and sold in Flemish towns. The routes along the Atlantic and Mediterranean provided direct lines of communication between Italian merchants from Venice, Genoa, Florence, and Bruges.The Netherlands soon became a center of a large part of the business activity in Europe and its prosperity grew. The concentration of trade, the presence of numerous banks, and the commission they charged contributed to the wealth of its bourgeois merchants and financiers. They soon became as rich and sometimes richer than the Burgundian princes. Thus they had the means to become important patrons of the arts so as to display their wealth. The acquisition of rare and exotic goods became an essential part of a society where exhibiting one's wealth was admired.Flemish artists' corporations were well organized, not unlike modern businesses. They were well-known locally and abroad and had significant influence on the art of the period. Works of art were created in workshops where a long apprenticeship afforded the artists guidance and expert training in their craft. High standards which contributed to the good reputation of the art of Flanders, were maintained by setting the quality of the materials and establishing the techniques used. The painters' guild controlled the production of paintings and took measures to control the supply of materials to keep down prices and to control competition. Also, contracts between artist and patron would sometimes stipulate the type of materials to be used.

Determining whether the current situation of Latin America is better described as “post-neoliberalism” or as “commodities consensus” requires an analysis of recent changes in the region. Capitalism has expanded in agriculture and mining, accentuating the preeminence of basic exports. Traditional industry is declining, and remittances and tourism have increased in importance. Local capitalists associated with foreign corporations have replaced the national bourgeoisie, while the exodus of peasants consolidates labor precariousness, poverty, and inequality. At the same time, the United States is deploying troops to reorganize its domination. The South American rebellions have limited neoliberal aggression and achieved unusual victories in other parts of the world. The concept of post-neoliberalism emphasizes the region’s political turn toward autonomy but overlooks the persistence of the economic model generated during the previous phase. The opposing concept, commodities consensus, highlights the extractivism prevailing throughout the region but plays down the extreme divergences among right-wing, center-left, and radical governments in all other areas. Both concepts contain part of the truth, but neither fully explains the regional scenario. Para determinar si la situación actual de Latinoamérica es mejor descrita como “post-neoliberalismo” o como un “consenso de los commodities” hay que hacer un análisis de los cambios recientes en la región. El capitalismo se ha expandido en la agricultura y la minería, acrecentando la preeminencia de las exportaciones básicas. La industria tradicional ha disminuido, y la importancia del turismo y las remesas ha aumentado. Los capitalistas locales asociados con empresas extranjeras han reemplazado a la burguesía nacional, mientras que el éxodo de los campesinos ha consolidado la precariedad laboral, la pobreza y la desigualdad. Al mismo tiempo, Estados Unidos despliega tropas para reorganizar su dominio. Las rebeliones en América del Sur han puesto barreras a la agresión neoliberal y logrado victorias inusuales en otras partes del mundo. El concepto del post-neoliberalismo destaca el giro político de la región hacia la autonomía pero con una tendencia a la persistencia del modelo económico generado durante la fase anterior. El otro concepto, el consenso de las commodities, destaca el extractivismo que prevalece en toda la región pero minoriza las divergencias entre los gobiernos de derecha, centro-izquierda y radicales en todas las demás áreas. Ambos conceptos son parcialmente ciertos, pero no explican totalmente el escenario regional.

This paper contextualizes and analyses the policy proposals of new “left populisms” (Mouffe 2018) for the regulation and reform of the “platform capitalism” (Srnicek 2017) that increasingly organizes digital communication. The era of the 2008 crash and subsequent recession saw the emergence in North America and Europe of new left-wing electoral initiatives, either as new parties or fractions within older parties. These include, in the USA, Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Democrats; in the UK, Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party; in Spain, Podemos; in Germany, Die Linke; in France, La France Insoumise. While many of these groupings might be described as socialist, or democratic socialist, they often also distinguish themselves from older socialist or social democratic formations; so, for lack of a better term, we call them left populisms. Left populisms are connected in contradictory ways to the appearance of platform capitalism, a corporate model exemplified by Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon and Uber, deploying proprietorial software as a launch-point for user activities accessing commodified or advertising-driven goods and services. The rise of left populism correlates with the ascent of platform capitalists. Left populist parties emerged from the anti-austerity movements (Occupy in the USA, the Indignados in Spain, student campus occupations in the UK) organized with the help of social media platforms. However, it is also the failures and scandals of platform capitalism have been important to left populism. Edward Snowden’s revelations of ubiquitous surveillance and the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica-Russian hacker imbroglio around the 2016 US election have fuelled a “techlash” against giant digital corporations that is now an important component of left populist sentiment. Drawing on policy documents, manifestos, speeches, position paper, this paper analyses the policy platforms in which left populist parties confront platform capitalism around issues of content regulation; concentration of ownership; the rights of digital workers; alternative ownership models; and proposals for a high-tech driven transition to “postcapitalism” (Mason 2016). It considers the similarities and difference between and within left populist parties on these issues; the extent of their departure from neoliberal policies; and their differences, and occasional erratic similarities, with right-wing populisms, such as that of Trump. It then reviews critiques of left populism made from Marxist and ecological anti-capitalist positions, with particular reference to technological issues. The paper concludes with a summary of the opportunities and problems for a left wing “data populism” (Morozov 2016) in the current political conjuncture.

Los tiempos actuales son convulsos y requieren de un riguroso análisis intelectual, mismo que permita identificar los causales de las problemáticas que más lastiman a la región, pero sobre todo, permitir construir alternativas y horizontes de cambio, plantear y proponer que es posible una transformaci- ón de la situación actual de Nuestra América en donde el capitalismo y la violencia no son el destino al cual debemos someter a nuestros pueblos. En las primeras semanas de diciembre, se llevó a cabo la reunión de la Organización Mundial de Comercio (OMC), en la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, Argentina, primera que se realiza en Sudamérica, cuyo mensaje entre líneas era la idea del final de los gobiernos llamados progresistas, el afianzamiento del neoliberalismo y con ello, del libre mercado como el único camino a seguir en la región. Se proponen mercados y flujos de capitales libres, pero sociedades oprimidas por la ambición de las trasnacionales que se han convertido en mercancías, los derechos de los trabajadores, la vida y los recursos naturales. La reunión de la OMC se llevó a cabo en medio de fuertes medidas de seguridad y en lugares cerrados, mientras en la emblemática Avenida 9 de Julio de la capital Argentina, trabajadores, estudiantes, ambientalistas, defensores de derechos humanos, campesinos, indígenas, desempleados, feministas, sindicalistas y miles de activistas repudiaban las negociaciones y la posición de la Organización que sólo pretende beneficiar y acrecentar los beneficios corporativos. Pero las protestas no sólo tuvieron lugar contra la presencia de la OMC y su agenda aperturista, el gobierno de Macri impuso en esos días una reforma previsional que en síntesis disminuye las jubilaciones promedio, además de castigar el gasto de seguridad social. Se trata de un embate del capitalismo financiero que ha impuesto su agenda y que pretende garantizar el pago de sus beneficios a costa del presupuesto público. Las protestas sociales fueron masivas, pero el uso de la fuerza pública se hizo presente; numerosas imágenes quedarán gravadas debido al proceder brutal e intolerante del actual régimen argentino que castigó severamente a quienes se opusieron a este ajuste (más no reforma), como correctamente se le identificó por los manifestantes en las calles y en las múltiples consignas. Una muestra clara de que el neoliberalismo y sus ideólogos fortalecen su embate y no están dispuestos a ceder su lugar predominante como política de Estado en la mayoría de los gobiernos latinoamericanos, pero ello implica violencia, represión y muerte a quienes se oponen a sus corporativos preceptos. Otro caso que llamó la atención en semanas recientes es el lastimoso e indignante indulto humanitario al expresidente peruano Alberto Fujimori concedido por el actual mandatario, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, en medio de polémica y una posible destitución debido a las acusaciones de recibir sobornos por parte de la constructora brasileña Odebrecht. El presidente en turno no fue destituido, pero en plenas celebraciones navideñas concedió el indulto al genocida ex mandatario, dejando sin castigo los actos de corrupción y convirtiendo en una víctima a quien atentó contra los derechos humanos de numeroso ciudadanos y opositores a su régimen de terror. En México, los tiempos no son mejores, el país ha sido azotado por la violencia, los fenómenos naturales como los terremotos y la puesta en marcha de la transición presidencial que opera en medio de prácticas coercitivas y poco democráticas, además de una amnesia histórica entre quienes olvidan los actos de corrupción cometidos por sus correligionarios. Se avecina una coyuntura en la cual se apuesta por el marketing y se demerita las funciones reales de un régimen político al servicio de la sociedad. Nuestro país estará nuevamente presente en la reflexión de los sucesos políticos, económicos y sociales por venir en este año electoral en donde es claro que el neoliberalismo ha dejado una herencia de despojo y precariedad para millones de mexicanos, cuyo hartazgo al modelo definirá en gran medida el futuro de América Latina. Es el momento de despertar de este letargo dependentista, es el tiempo en que la utopía nos permita caminar y abrir las puertas a una nueva realidad, reflexión que es una herencia del gran maestro Eduardo Galeano. Debe frenarse el avance de la derecha en nuestra región; los resultados de las elecciones en Honduras y Chile, así como actuar de los gobiernos, en los casos ya comentados deben prender las alertas sobre los riesgos de que el actual modelo de dominación se profundice en México y en las restantes naciones latinoamericanas que en este año se sujetarán a procesos electorales. Ante esta compleja realidad, se requieren reflexiones y aportes que nos permitan silenciar con argumentos rigurosos al pensamiento hegemónico de la derecha. La lectura crítica de los tiempos actuales es vital y desde todas las expresiones sociales, económicas, humanísticas y artísticas se debe afirmar que la agenda de los organismos financieros internacionales no es aceptada por los pueblos. En razón de ello, es motivo de celebración que durante 2017 se llevaron a cabo númerosos y éxitosos eventos que nos recordaran los 100 años del inicio de la Revolución Rusa y los 150 años de la publicación y vigencia del Capital de Karl Marx. En el año 2018, recordaremos las protestas de estudiantes, obreros y el magisterio entre otros actores sociales, quienes demandaron un cambio político y social en México, aspiraciones truncadas hace 50 años en la masacre de la Plaza de las Tres Culturas de Tlatelolco. En el curso de esta vorágine capitalista, estamos ciertos que requerimos espacios alternativos para poder manifestar nuestra oposición al sistema. Ante esta realidad avasallante, la revista De Raíz Diversa reafirma su compromiso con el pensamiento crítico y la difusión del conocimiento realizado por la comunidad intelectual latinoamericana. El actual número incluye trabajos que abordan temas centrales en los Estudios Latinoamericanos contemporáneos. El primero de ellos es el elaborado por Daniel Inclán titulado “Violencia y diseño de territorios. La relación negada de la economía contemporánea en América Latina”. El texto estudia las formas en las que opera la violencia en la vida social del siglo XXI. Se afirma que no estamos ante un desajuste de la vida civilizada, tampoco ante una anomia. La violencia es estructural en la vida social, juega un papel estratégico en la definición de las realizaciones culturales contemporáneas; es una realidad de múltiples niveles, con diferentes ritmos y con diversas escalas. Los dos siguientes trabajos se fundamentan en analizar los aportes y discusiones que surgen a partir de la teoría de la dependencia; el primero es realizado por Pablo Cuevas Valdés y se titula, “La unidad mundial de la acumulación de capital y la renta de la tierra: una contra-crítica desde la teoría de la dependencia”. El texto tiene por objetivo analizar las diversas lecturas y críticas que desde la economía política tiene el resurgimiento y auge de la teoría marxista de la dependencia en varios países de la región. Se trata de críticas que pretenden superar la noción de economía dependiente, principalmente a partir de la idea de “unidad mundial de la acumulación de capital”. El texto realiza una contra-crítica a estas formulaciones. El segundo trabajo se titula: “Meditaciones dusselianas acerca de la teoría de la dependencia y su fundamento” y es elaborado por Juan Cristóbal Cárdenas Castro. El artículo analiza dos asertos que han formado parte del núcleo de diferendos que han mantenido diversos científicos sociales latinoamericanos en torno a la cuestión de la dependencia. En primer lugar, la tesis sobre el fundamento de la teoría dependentista; en segundo lugar, el carácter de la superexplotación (o sobreexplotación) de la fuerza de trabajo. Para tales propósitos, se hace una revisión crítica de la manera en que el filósofo Enrique Dussel medita sobre esos asuntos. El cuarto artículo que integra este número se titula “Los buenos vivires. Una aproximación a las corrientes teóricas del buen vivir”, elaborado por Emilio Nudelman, documento en el cual se reflexiona acerca del debate reciente que se suscitó en diversos espacios académicos, gubernamentales, y al interior de distintos movimientos sociales, sobre dos conceptos que a primera vista parecieran contrarios y excluyentes: desarrollo y buen vivir. El concepto desarrollo es fuertemente cuestionado, y en muchos casos se contrapone a éste el concepto buen vivir, el cual adquirió notoriedad internacional tras convertirse en principios constitucionales de Ecuador y Bolivia, con base en formas de vida propias de los pueblos originarios andinos y amazónicos: sumak kawsay y sumaq qamaña. Pero éstas no son las únicas expresiones del buen vivir, debido a que no existe un buen vivir sino distintas formas de vivir bien, o muchos buenos vivires. Pablo Alderete Soto nos presenta el trabajo “Formas de politización campesina en Chile, una aproximación microhistórica (Curicó, 1941-1942)”. Los enfoques con los cuales tradicionalmente se ha pesquisado el problema de la politización campesina en el periodo anterior a la reforma agraria en Chile, han oscilado entre los que afirman la ausencia absoluta de movilización y acción política por parte de las comunidades campesinas y las que enfatizan la politización formal y semi-autónoma de los sindicatos agrícolas. En este artículo, por el contrario, se propone una tercera vía de análisis histórico: especificar el ecosistema social agrario, dando cuenta de las estratificaciones laborales y su incidencia en la politización, las luchas laborales cotidianas y las especificidades del hábitat sociocultural curicano. Dos trabajos abordan la incidencia del cine como instrumento de propaganda y como un instrumento esencial para recuperar la memoria y el testimonio del pasado reciente. Iniciamos con el artículo “La propaganda fílmica gubernamental mexicana (1934-1940)” escrito por Jesús Roberto Bautista Reyes. En el gobierno de Lázaro Cárdenas, la propaganda fílmica gubernamental persiguió dos fines específicos: al interior, fortalecer y legitimar al régimen emanado de la Revolución; y al exterior, difundir la misma Revolución como proyecto político con la capacidad de modernizar al país. Es así que cobra vital importancia entender las temáticas de las películas realizadas y cómo fueron proyectadas en toda Latinoamérica, con el objetivo principal de construir una zona de influencia cultural que al final se tradujera en una influencia política. El segundo lleva por título “Cine de memoria: del cine militante a Seré Millones”, escrito por Raúl Roydeen García Aguilar y José Axel García Ancira Astudillo. El estudio de la relación entre cine y memoria requiere la visibilización de diversos factores que intervienen en su constitución, tales como su distinción con el relato histórico oficial y los factores coyunturales, políticos y psicoló- gicos que permiten que un suceso o un proceso social se cristalice en el imaginario de una comunidad, para tal fin se problematiza con la obra Seré millones (Mascaró cine, 2014) por sus estrategias intermediales, intertextuales y de fundamento metaficcional. Los artículos concluyen con el texto “Todo lo que no te dirán Mongo: desarmando los mythscapes canadienses” con la literatura de Dany Laferrière, realizado por Alexandre Beaudoin Duquette. En este trabajo, se busca contribuir a desarmar los principales mythscapes nacionales canadienses, el multiculturalismo y el interculturalismo, usando Tout ce qu’on ne te dira pas Mongo (Todo lo que no te dirán Mongo) de Dany Laferrière, un escritor haitiano establecido en Montreal. El autor parte de la hipótesis de que la novela ofrece elementos de información incompatibles con dichos mythscapes nacionales, por lo cual constituye una oportunidad de aprendizaje. Inspirándose en el giro de las movilidades, así como en las teorías de los regímenes de movilidad, el autor acude a los estudios literarios para cuestionar la imagen estereotipada, propagada por actores sociales de poder, representados por los aparatos estatales de Canadá y Quebec, con el afán de aprovechar la fuga de cerebro para fortalecer su ventaja competitiva en un mercado globalizado. El número cierra con tres reseñas de material bibliográfico de reciente aparición. En esta sección se comenta el libro Cuando solo reinasen los indios. La política aymara en la era de la insurgencia, que busca recuperar e iluminar la historia del pueblo aymara en un momento y una región particular: 1780-81, en donde se escenificó una trascendental insurrección pan-andina. El segundo libro reseñado titulado: Neoliberalismo: treinta años de migración en América Latina, México y Michoacán, nos habla de tres décadas de migración, en la región, tomando como caso de estudio a México, pero analizando el fenómeno migratorio en una perspectiva global y en el contexto neoliberal. Finalmente en la sección de reseñas, Capitalismo en el nuevo siglo: el actual desorden Mundial, se refiere a un material que analiza los cambios en los últimos cuarenta años del sistema económico mundial y sus especificidades en la región de América Latina, resultantes de la crisis del capitalismo. No se puede concluir esta editorial sin agradecer las invaluables colaboraciones y propuestas realizadas por el actual Comité Editorial que amablemente aceptó sumarse a este proyecto. Para ellas y ellos un reconocimiento por parte de todo el equipo que hace posible la edición de la revista.

Los tiempos actuales son convulsos y requieren de un riguroso análisis intelectual, mismo que permita identificar los causales de las problemáticas que más lastiman a la región, pero sobre todo, permitir construir alternativas y horizontes de cambio, plantear y proponer que es posible una transformaci- ón de la situación actual de Nuestra América en donde el capitalismo y la violencia no son el destino al cual debemos someter a nuestros pueblos. En las primeras semanas de diciembre, se llevó a cabo la reunión de la Organización Mundial de Comercio (OMC), en la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, Argentina, primera que se realiza en Sudamérica, cuyo mensaje entre líneas era la idea del final de los gobiernos llamados progresistas, el afianzamiento del neoliberalismo y con ello, del libre mercado como el único camino a seguir en la región. Se proponen mercados y flujos de capitales libres, pero sociedades oprimidas por la ambición de las trasnacionales que se han convertido en mercancías, los derechos de los trabajadores, la vida y los recursos naturales. La reunión de la OMC se llevó a cabo en medio de fuertes medidas de seguridad y en lugares cerrados, mientras en la emblemática Avenida 9 de Julio de la capital Argentina, trabajadores, estudiantes, ambientalistas, defensores de derechos humanos, campesinos, indígenas, desempleados, feministas, sindicalistas y miles de activistas repudiaban las negociaciones y la posición de la Organización que sólo pretende beneficiar y acrecentar los beneficios corporativos. Pero las protestas no sólo tuvieron lugar contra la presencia de la OMC y su agenda aperturista, el gobierno de Macri impuso en esos días una reforma previsional que en síntesis disminuye las jubilaciones promedio, además de castigar el gasto de seguridad social. Se trata de un embate del capitalismo financiero que ha impuesto su agenda y que pretende garantizar el pago de sus beneficios a costa del presupuesto público. Las protestas sociales fueron masivas, pero el uso de la fuerza pública se hizo presente; numerosas imágenes quedarán gravadas debido al proceder brutal e intolerante del actual régimen argentino que castigó severamente a quienes se opusieron a este ajuste (más no reforma), como correctamente se le identificó por los manifestantes en las calles y en las múltiples consignas. Una muestra clara de que el neoliberalismo y sus ideólogos fortalecen su embate y no están dispuestos a ceder su lugar predominante como política de Estado en la mayoría de los gobiernos latinoamericanos, pero ello implica violencia, represión y muerte a quienes se oponen a sus corporativos preceptos. Otro caso que llamó la atención en semanas recientes es el lastimoso e indignante indulto humanitario al expresidente peruano Alberto Fujimori concedido por el actual mandatario, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, en medio de polémica y una posible destitución debido a las acusaciones de recibir sobornos por parte de la constructora brasileña Odebrecht. El presidente en turno no fue destituido, pero en plenas celebraciones navideñas concedió el indulto al genocida ex mandatario, dejando sin castigo los actos de corrupción y convirtiendo en una víctima a quien atentó contra los derechos humanos de numeroso ciudadanos y opositores a su régimen de terror. En México, los tiempos no son mejores, el país ha sido azotado por la violencia, los fenómenos naturales como los terremotos y la puesta en marcha de la transición presidencial que opera en medio de prácticas coercitivas y poco democráticas, además de una amnesia histórica entre quienes olvidan los actos de corrupción cometidos por sus correligionarios. Se avecina una coyuntura en la cual se apuesta por el marketing y se demerita las funciones reales de un régimen político al servicio de la sociedad. Nuestro país estará nuevamente presente en la reflexión de los sucesos políticos, económicos y sociales por venir en este año electoral en donde es claro que el neoliberalismo ha dejado una herencia de despojo y precariedad para millones de mexicanos, cuyo hartazgo al modelo definirá en gran medida el futuro de América Latina. Es el momento de despertar de este letargo dependentista, es el tiempo en que la utopía nos permita caminar y abrir las puertas a una nueva realidad, reflexión que es una herencia del gran maestro Eduardo Galeano. Debe frenarse el avance de la derecha en nuestra región; los resultados de las elecciones en Honduras y Chile, así como actuar de los gobiernos, en los casos ya comentados deben prender las alertas sobre los riesgos de que el actual modelo de dominación se profundice en México y en las restantes naciones latinoamericanas que en este año se sujetarán a procesos electorales. Ante esta compleja realidad, se requieren reflexiones y aportes que nos permitan silenciar con argumentos rigurosos al pensamiento hegemónico de la derecha. La lectura crítica de los tiempos actuales es vital y desde todas las expresiones sociales, económicas, humanísticas y artísticas se debe afirmar que la agenda de los organismos financieros internacionales no es aceptada por los pueblos. En razón de ello, es motivo de celebración que durante 2017 se llevaron a cabo númerosos y éxitosos eventos que nos recordaran los 100 años del inicio de la Revolución Rusa y los 150 años de la publicación y vigencia del Capital de Karl Marx. En el año 2018, recordaremos las protestas de estudiantes, obreros y el magisterio entre otros actores sociales, quienes demandaron un cambio político y social en México, aspiraciones truncadas hace 50 años en la masacre de la Plaza de las Tres Culturas de Tlatelolco. En el curso de esta vorágine capitalista, estamos ciertos que requerimos espacios alternativos para poder manifestar nuestra oposición al sistema. Ante esta realidad avasallante, la revista De Raíz Diversa reafirma su compromiso con el pensamiento crítico y la difusión del conocimiento realizado por la comunidad intelectual latinoamericana. El actual número incluye trabajos que abordan temas centrales en los Estudios Latinoamericanos contemporáneos. El primero de ellos es el elaborado por Daniel Inclán titulado “Violencia y diseño de territorios. La relación negada de la economía contemporánea en América Latina”. El texto estudia las formas en las que opera la violencia en la vida social del siglo XXI. Se afirma que no estamos ante un desajuste de la vida civilizada, tampoco ante una anomia. La violencia es estructural en la vida social, juega un papel estratégico en la definición de las realizaciones culturales contemporáneas; es una realidad de múltiples niveles, con diferentes ritmos y con diversas escalas. Los dos siguientes trabajos se fundamentan en analizar los aportes y discusiones que surgen a partir de la teoría de la dependencia; el primero es realizado por Pablo Cuevas Valdés y se titula, “La unidad mundial de la acumulación de capital y la renta de la tierra: una contra-crítica desde la teoría de la dependencia”. El texto tiene por objetivo analizar las diversas lecturas y críticas que desde la economía política tiene el resurgimiento y auge de la teoría marxista de la dependencia en varios países de la región. Se trata de críticas que pretenden superar la noción de economía dependiente, principalmente a partir de la idea de “unidad mundial de la acumulación de capital”. El texto realiza una contra-crítica a estas formulaciones. El segundo trabajo se titula: “Meditaciones dusselianas acerca de la teoría de la dependencia y su fundamento” y es elaborado por Juan Cristóbal Cárdenas Castro. El artículo analiza dos asertos que han formado parte del núcleo de diferendos que han mantenido diversos científicos sociales latinoamericanos en torno a la cuestión de la dependencia. En primer lugar, la tesis sobre el fundamento de la teoría dependentista; en segundo lugar, el carácter de la superexplotación (o sobreexplotación) de la fuerza de trabajo. Para tales propósitos, se hace una revisión crítica de la manera en que el filósofo Enrique Dussel medita sobre esos asuntos. El cuarto artículo que integra este número se titula “Los buenos vivires. Una aproximación a las corrientes teóricas del buen vivir”, elaborado por Emilio Nudelman, documento en el cual se reflexiona acerca del debate reciente que se suscitó en diversos espacios académicos, gubernamentales, y al interior de distintos movimientos sociales, sobre dos conceptos que a primera vista parecieran contrarios y excluyentes: desarrollo y buen vivir. El concepto desarrollo es fuertemente cuestionado, y en muchos casos se contrapone a éste el concepto buen vivir, el cual adquirió notoriedad internacional tras convertirse en principios constitucionales de Ecuador y Bolivia, con base en formas de vida propias de los pueblos originarios andinos y amazónicos: sumak kawsay y sumaq qamaña. Pero éstas no son las únicas expresiones del buen vivir, debido a que no existe un buen vivir sino distintas formas de vivir bien, o muchos buenos vivires. Pablo Alderete Soto nos presenta el trabajo “Formas de politización campesina en Chile, una aproximación microhistórica (Curicó, 1941-1942)”. Los enfoques con los cuales tradicionalmente se ha pesquisado el problema de la politización campesina en el periodo anterior a la reforma agraria en Chile, han oscilado entre los que afirman la ausencia absoluta de movilización y acción política por parte de las comunidades campesinas y las que enfatizan la politización formal y semi-autónoma de los sindicatos agrícolas. En este artículo, por el contrario, se propone una tercera vía de análisis histórico: especificar el ecosistema social agrario, dando cuenta de las estratificaciones laborales y su incidencia en la politización, las luchas laborales cotidianas y las especificidades del hábitat sociocultural curicano. Dos trabajos abordan la incidencia del cine como instrumento de propaganda y como un instrumento esencial para recuperar la memoria y el testimonio del pasado reciente. Iniciamos con el artículo “La propaganda fílmica gubernamental mexicana (1934-1940)” escrito por Jesús Roberto Bautista Reyes. En el gobierno de Lázaro Cárdenas, la propaganda fílmica gubernamental persiguió dos fines específicos: al interior, fortalecer y legitimar al régimen emanado de la Revolución; y al exterior, difundir la misma Revolución como proyecto político con la capacidad de modernizar al país. Es así que cobra vital importancia entender las temáticas de las películas realizadas y cómo fueron proyectadas en toda Latinoamérica, con el objetivo principal de construir una zona de influencia cultural que al final se tradujera en una influencia política. El segundo lleva por título “Cine de memoria: del cine militante a Seré Millones”, escrito por Raúl Roydeen García Aguilar y José Axel García Ancira Astudillo. El estudio de la relación entre cine y memoria requiere la visibilización de diversos factores que intervienen en su constitución, tales como su distinción con el relato histórico oficial y los factores coyunturales, políticos y psicoló- gicos que permiten que un suceso o un proceso social se cristalice en el imaginario de una comunidad, para tal fin se problematiza con la obra Seré millones (Mascaró cine, 2014) por sus estrategias intermediales, intertextuales y de fundamento metaficcional. Los artículos concluyen con el texto “Todo lo que no te dirán Mongo: desarmando los mythscapes canadienses” con la literatura de Dany Laferrière, realizado por Alexandre Beaudoin Duquette. En este trabajo, se busca contribuir a desarmar los principales mythscapes nacionales canadienses, el multiculturalismo y el interculturalismo, usando Tout ce qu’on ne te dira pas Mongo (Todo lo que no te dirán Mongo) de Dany Laferrière, un escritor haitiano establecido en Montreal. El autor parte de la hipótesis de que la novela ofrece elementos de información incompatibles con dichos mythscapes nacionales, por lo cual constituye una oportunidad de aprendizaje. Inspirándose en el giro de las movilidades, así como en las teorías de los regímenes de movilidad, el autor acude a los estudios literarios para cuestionar la imagen estereotipada, propagada por actores sociales de poder, representados por los aparatos estatales de Canadá y Quebec, con el afán de aprovechar la fuga de cerebro para fortalecer su ventaja competitiva en un mercado globalizado. El número cierra con tres reseñas de material bibliográfico de reciente aparición. En esta sección se comenta el libro Cuando solo reinasen los indios. La política aymara en la era de la insurgencia, que busca recuperar e iluminar la historia del pueblo aymara en un momento y una región particular: 1780-81, en donde se escenificó una trascendental insurrección pan-andina. El segundo libro reseñado titulado: Neoliberalismo: treinta años de migración en América Latina, México y Michoacán, nos habla de tres décadas de migración, en la región, tomando como caso de estudio a México, pero analizando el fenómeno migratorio en una perspectiva global y en el contexto neoliberal. Finalmente en la sección de reseñas, Capitalismo en el nuevo siglo: el actual desorden Mundial, se refiere a un material que analiza los cambios en los últimos cuarenta años del sistema económico mundial y sus especificidades en la región de América Latina, resultantes de la crisis del capitalismo. No se puede concluir esta editorial sin agradecer las invaluables colaboraciones y propuestas realizadas por el actual Comité Editorial que amablemente aceptó sumarse a este proyecto. Para ellas y ellos un reconocimiento por parte de todo el equipo que hace posible la edición de la revista.

Whether or not people in advantages contexts around the globe recognize it, it seems clear that our world is in serious peril. While small fractions of populations enjoy safety, basic comforts and many luxuries, increasingly more people are suffering from job insecurities, a range of health problems and manipulation facilitated by mass surveillance systems. Meanwhile, as few benefit, most of us are threatened by devastating climate change, environmental spoilage and species losses — all apparently undermined by systematic democratic assaults. Although network conceptions of phenomena may suggest distribution of responsibilities for such ills, much data and argument place considerable blame on few rich pro-capitalist individuals (e.g., financiers) and groups (e.g., corporations, think tanks and transnational trade organizations). Given collusion of governments in such social and ecological injustices, it appears extremely necessary that power in masses of people be rallied to critically interrogate actions of powerful entities and develop and take social actions that may lead to increases in social justice and environmental wellbeing. An important context, in light of roles of fields of science and technology in enactment of power, for promotion of such critical and action-oriented civic engagement is school science. Such roles have, indeed, been acknowledged — at least in part — for about the last half-century through ‘science-in-context’ educational domains like ‘STSE’ (Science, Technology, Society, Environment) education. Such more contextualized approaches have, however, been marginalized in most contexts. They are either given little attention or treated in somewhat ‘token’ ways (given severity of harms) by emphasizing individual — albeit reasoned — choices, which happen to be a priority of many capitalists. Marginalization of potential critical and action-oriented science education seems to have, meanwhile, dramatically increased with recent advent of ‘STEM’ (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education initiatives — many of which prioritize teaching and learning of ‘products,’ such as laws, theories and innovations, of STEM fields and skills to develop them, at expense of educating students about problematic STSE relationships and preparation for possibly-rectifying actions. Given its hegemonic influences, as discussed here, one approach to promoting ecojustice through science education may be through encouraging and enabling youth to develop commodities that are both functional and aim to maximize wellbeing for individuals, societies and environments (WISE). Studies of one teacher’s efforts in this regard suggest considerable successes with such WISE engineering — although, as reported here, successes seem to come at expense of some educational losses that have been tied to pro-capitalist science education. Although such tempered achievements may seem frustrating, those promoting social justice and environmental wellbeing through school science may be motivated by emergent successes and possibilities for mobilizing them across networks of living, nonliving and symbolic entities.

El capitalismo “verde”, como se presenta en las tres Conferencias de las Naciones Unidas sobre el Medio Ambiente y el Desarrollo, se ha propuesto para enfrentar las crisis del medio ambiente (ecológicos) y social (pobreza) que se vive actualmente en todo el mundo. Este "enverdecimiento" es una nueva etapa de acumulación de capital que implica: el uso de mecanismos financieros, como los intercambios de deuda por naturaleza; la licencia de las ongambientales para negociar los recursos de los países endeudados con las grandes corporaciones, el establecimiento de los valores monetarios de los “bienes comunes globales”. Por otro lado, los nuevos trabajadores son mujeres y hombres campesinos e indígenas que han adquirido nuevos papeles como proveedores de servicios en las nuevas industrias, como el llamado turismo ecológico. En este artículo se considera Costa Rica en esta etapa del capitalismo y se hacen las críticas al respecto.----Green Capitalism, as presented at the three linked United Nations Conferences on Environment and Development, has been proposed as a means to confront the environmental (ecological) and social (poverty) crises currently being experienced around the world. This “greening” is a new stage of capital accumulation that entails: the use of financial mechanisms, such as debt-for-nature exchanges; the license of environmental ngos to broker the indebted countries’ resources with large corporations, and to establish the monetary values of the ‘global commons’. Meanwhile, the new labourers are peasants and Indigenous women and men who have acquired new roles as service providers in the new industries, such as eco-tourism. This paper considers this stage of capitalism in Costa Rica and the critiques to it.

We argue that a new form of finance capital has been consolidated in the United States since the 2008 crisis—defined as a fusion of financial and industrial capital. In this regime, financiers have become more entrenched in the governance of nonfinancial corporations while, reciprocally, industrial firm managers have increasingly become financiers. Indeed, this fusion has taken place on two interconnected levels: (1) within the nonfinancial corporation itself, and (2) between the nonfinancial corporation and the financial sector. Internal diversification and internationalization over the postwar era led to the reorganization of the industrial corporation as a financial group, managing not concrete production processes, but portfolios of financial assets. This was reinforced by the increasing power of outside investors over the neoliberal period. However, new forms of financial organization that emerged after 2008 produced tighter and more direct linkages between external financiers and the nonfinancial corporation, constituting the new finance capital.

Contrary to what orthodox Marxism claims, the article defends that the legal field has been a fundamental aspect of the capitalist social ordering, and an unavoidable feature to understand how dominated subjectivities are produced and exploited. Expanding Lessig’s concept of ‘code as law’ with Marxist scholarly, the article argues that digital capitalists are reorganising work and the labour force through a form of algorithmic regulation. The article states that algorithms – that is, digital machines – have become not only part of the means of production of the era of automation, but also the code by which capitalists are writing the conditions of existence and exploitation of the digital proletariat. The article bridges recent contributions on labour law, AI and algorithmic regulation with the latest Marxist sociological contributions analysing the relation of work and digital exploitation, opening with it new ways to understand how sociotechnical systems owned by corporations regulate the behaviour not only of the working class but of the wider citizenry.

This paper reconstructs the history of the reform of Britain’s company laws during the 1850s and makes three major arguments. First, the Law Amendment Society was the driving force for reform and organized the campaign for change. Second, the advancement of working-class interests and ideas of fairness were central to the conceptualization of these reforms and the course of their advocacy. Company law reform was broadly conceived to include the revision of the law of partnership, corporations, and cooperatives to create a level playing field in which smaller entrepreneurs could compete against established capitalists. Finally, central to this campaign was the institutional logic of “fair competition.” Socialists and liberals both used this logic, demonstrating how moral ideas can shape organizational change.

In a recent synopsis of theories and findings on transnational corporate ties published in this journal, Nollert (2005) argues that while there may be good theoretical reasons to hypothesize the emergence of a Transnational Capitalist Class (tcc), to this point there is relatively little empirical evidence, aside from Sklair’s (2001) work, to support the claim that such a class exists or is forming. However, a few researchers have attempted to apply the study of interlocking directorates to the search for a network of transnational directors who might be in a position to form such a class. Drawing on empirical findings on the world’s largest transnational corporations and banks reported elsewhere (Staples 2007a; Staples 2007b), as well as additional analyses done specifically for this paper, I argue that studies that rely exclusively on transnational corporate interlocks dramatically underestimate the extent of the tcc network because such studies count only transnational connections between corporations and miss transnational connections within corporations—connections that have grown more numerous in recent years as corporate boards have become more multinational, largely as a result of the concentration of global capital. Counting both between and within transnational capitalist connections points to a far greater level of capitalist transnationality than is suggested by focusing exclusively on between corporate connections, as has been done in this work so far. And while the existence of such a network falls well short of convincing proof that a tcc exists, it does show that capitalists from different countries increasingly have opportunities to interact as they work together to run the world’s largest corporations, and it is out of such interactions that we would expect a tcc to emerge.

This study predicted the bankruptcy risk of companies listed in Japanese stock markets for the entire industry and individual industries using multiple discriminant analysis (MDA), artificial neural network (ANN), and support vector machine (SVM) and compared the methods to determine the best one. The financial statements of the companies listed in the Tokyo Stock Exchange in Japan were used as data. The data of 244 companies that went bankrupt between 1991 and 2015 were used. Additionally, the data of 64,708 companies that did not go bankrupt between 1991 and 2015 (24 years) were used. The data was acquired from the Nikkei NEEDS database. It was found from the results of empirical analysis that the SVM is more accurate than the other models in predicting the bankruptcy risk of companies. In the ANN analysis and MDA, bankruptcy prediction could be made accurately only for some individual industries. In contrast, the SVM could predict the bankruptcy risk of companies almost perfectly for either entire and individual industries. This bankruptcy prediction model can help customers, investors, and financiers prevent losses by focusing on the financial indicators before finalizing transactions.

Newspaper and Television commentaries in the United States and Europe abound with references to “outbursts of populism” in United States as a stereotypically American response to economic crisis.1 Their story lines trivialize historic Populism in the U.S., both its substance and its contribution to financial regulation. American Agrarian movements arose in response to grievances rooted in pathologies of mature, weakly regulated capitalism. The agrarians had real grievances linked to rigidities of the gold standard and bank control of note issue, monopoly control of long distance transportation and crop storage, the use of the growing power of large firms to repress labor, and a rising cost of living due to growing monopolization and high tariffs. Most of the policy solutions demanded by late 19th century populism and its progressive era legatees were enacted in some form in the two spurts of regulation during the early 20th century (the progressive era and New Deal). There are indeed some commonalities between public criticism of capitalist greed in those periods and the present; but scorn for “populist outbursts” against the risks taken by greedy financiers who made billions while bringing financial ruin to the global economy distracts our attention from the destructive folly of those financial actors, and presumes that public outrage is unjustified and counter-productive. In fact, it is neither. That such a small number of actors could wreck such havoc on the world is surely a cause for outrage among reasonable people around the globe. Recognition of error is essential for human learning and the evolution of institutions. It would be quite peculiar, and disturbing, if there were no wave of criticism in the face of such unethical and damaging conduct. No American reform surge has occurred in absence of such public outrage. It was public offense over corporate malfeasance that gave us the 1887 Interstate Commerce Act, the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act, the 1894 income tax law (and the 1913 Constitutional amendment needed to overcome Supreme Court objections), the 1913 Federal Reserve Act, the Child Labor Acts, the 1933-34 laws taking the dollar off gold, the 1934 Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act (which moved the nation away from the protectionist disaster of the Hawley-Smoot Tariff and toward trade expansion), the 1933 and 1934 Securities Acts, the 1933 Glass-Steagall Banking Act, the creation of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in 1933, the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act, and many other laws that served this country, and the world economic system quite well for many decades.

Capitalist-style reforms were an important factor in the economic and social evolution of the Late Ottoman Empire. This research investigates how foreign governments and financiers, and especially Britain, influenced these various financial reforms implemented in the Ottoman Empire during the 19th century. The chief purpose of such reforms was to integrate the Empire into the capitalist world-economy by imposing, both directly and indirectly, the adoption of rules, institutions, attitudes and procedures amenable to exploitation on the part of foreign and also local capitalists. Drawing on primary sources, mainly from the United Kingdom’s National Archives, the article argues that foreign pressure for financial reforms was instrumental in the Empire’s economic subjection to the rules and norms that regulated the capitalist world-economy, most notably in the field of public finance, banking and the monetary sector. It takes a long-term view and largely adheres to the scholarly evolution of Antonio Gramsci’s theory of hegemony and world-systems theory and methodology developed by Fernand Braudel, Immanuel Wallerstein and Giovanni Arrighi, adopting a multidisciplinary and macro-scale perspective. Special attention is paid to the correlation between secondary and primary sources in support of empirical evidence. More broadly, this research contributes to the literature on the capitalist world-economy and brings a set of theoretical frameworks to bear on defining the role of financial reforms induced mainly by Britain in peripheral and semi-peripheral countries.

Abstract This article takes a fresh look at the history of private colonial enterprise in order to show how companies influenced British settlement and emigration to South Australia and New Zealand in the 1830s, thus connecting the settler revolution to global capitalism. Bringing into a single analytical frame the history of company colonization in the antipodes and its Atlantic predecessor, it examines how and why the actors involved in the colonization of South Australia and New Zealand invoked North American precedent to justify their early nineteenth-century colonial ventures. The article shows how the legitimating narratives employed by the colonial reformers performed two key functions. On the one hand, they supplied a historical and discursive tradition that authorized chartered enterprise in the antipodes. On the other hand, they furnished legal arguments that purportedly justified the appropriation of Aboriginal Australian and Māori tribal land. In illuminating how language and time shaped the world-making prophesies of these colonial capitalists, the article aims to extend recent work on corporations in global context.

Concerns regarding the prevalence of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) have led some critical public health scholars to propose analyses of the “double burden of neoliberalism.” In turn, analysts shine a light on corporate power and how it is mobilized to create a food system that works, in the first place, for capital. This paper builds on these contributions to argue that getting to grips with corporate power in the food and drinks industry requires looking beyond its instrumentality or short-range functionality and developing an understanding of its mode of operation and longer-range objectives. I specifically propose focusing on the way corporations push for and territorialize “selective openness.” The ongoing iterative task facing firms is constructing geographical arrangements that suit their respective but sometimes collective requirements to establish as much control as possible over the conduits connecting capitalists in any particular place to the wider, chaotic, throwntogether, and contingency-laden world. My empirical reference point is the practice of corporate power in Ireland as it was expressed in corporate lobbying activities and during parliamentary hearings on childhood “obesity and political debates about the country’s sugar tax.

Abstract Drawing on Shoshana Zuboff's (2019) The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, along with additional sources not ordinarily referenced in the social work literature, the article examines some of the economic and political imperatives that are driving forward new surveillance practices. The aspiration is to provide conceptual coordinates enabling practitioners, educators and those receiving social work services to arrive at a theoretically expansive sense of what may be occurring across a societal canvas. The focus is on a cluster of five enmeshed themes: first, what Zuboff means by ‘surveillance capitalism’; second, why this form of capitalism has appeared so quickly over the past couple of decades; third, what the tech corporations, such as Google, seek to achieve; fourth, how surveillance capitalists aim to eliminate chance by refining technologies so as to try and constitute us as predictable human subjects; fifth, the trajectory of surveillance capitalist interventions and how they are ‘doubling down’ on the processes of data extraction. Zuboff’s book was completed prior to the COVID-19 global pandemic and, in the latter part of article, it is argued that the current crisis will result in new forms of surveillance becoming socially embedded.

Luciano Floridi and Nick Srnicek claims that with a decline in manufacturing profitability, capitalism has turned to data as one way to maintain economic growth in the face of a slow production sector. In the twenty-first century data have become central to firms and their relations with workers and customers (Floridi, 2013; Srnicek 2017). The platform has emerged as a new model, capable of extracting and controlling immense amounts of data, and with this shift we have seen the rise of monopolistic firms. We are told that today we are living in an age of massive transformation. Platforms, big data, additive manufacturing, advanced robotics, machine learning, and the internet of things – create our current living environment. In the presented text I am going to ask what is the place of the university in such a new digital constellation? What are universities for in the time of platform capitalism? My main line of reasoning follows to idea of “entrepreneurial state”. An innovative university is understood as an analogue of an “entrepreneurial state”. Mariana Mazzucato has convincingly demonstrated that developments like railways, the internet, computing, supersonic flight, space travel, satellites, pharmaceuticals, voice-recognition software, nanotechnology, touchscreensand clean energy have all been nurtured and guided by states, not corporations. During the golden postwar era of research and development, two-thirds of research and development was publicly funded. High-risk inventions and new technologies are too risky for private capitalists to invest in (Mazzucato, 2014; Srnicek, Williams, 2015). Socializing of the risk and privatization of profits – this is the main climate of “non-innovative capitalism”.

This paper is included in the First Monday Special Issue #3: Internet banking, e-money, and Internet gift economies, published in December 2005. Special Issue editor Mark A. Fox asked authors to submit additional comments regarding their articles. How has the hi-tech gift economy evolved since 1998, when the paper was written? This article was a product of its time. When I originally wrote The Hi-Tech Gift Economy, the Net was still a novelty for most people even in the developed world. Nearly 8 years later, using this technology is no longer something special. This means that it is impossible to understand my article without remembering the bizarre moment in the late-1990s when so many pundits believed that the Net had almost magical powers. Led by Wired, dotcom boosters were claiming that the Net was creating the free market only found up to then in neo-classical economics textbooks. Inspired by post-modernist gurus, new media activists were convinced that humanity would soon liberate itself from corporate control by escaping into cyberspace. What intrigued me at the time was how these devotees of irreconcilable ideologies shared a common faith in McLuhan-style technological determinism. The Net – not people – was the subject of history. This demiurge promised the final victory of one – and only one - method of organizing labor: the commodity or the gift. When I was writing this article, my goal was to attack these almost totalitarian ideologies. The sharing of information over the Net disproved the neo-liberal fantasies of Wired. The leading role of capitalist businesses within the open source movement was incompatible with the anarcho-communist utopia. I wanted to argue that the choice wasn’t the commodity or the gift. On the Net, the same piece of information could exist both as a commodity and a gift. Nowadays, this conclusion is hardly controversial. My ideological opponents have long ago left the theoretical battlefield. We won’t hear their arguments again until the next wave of innovation within the information technologies creates the conditions for another revival of McLuhanist prophecy. In the meantime, it is common sense to describe the Net’s economy as a mixed economy. Information is shared and sold. Copyright is protected and broken. Capitalists benefit from one advance and lose out from another. Users get for free what they used to pay for and pay for what they used to get for free. In 2005, the dotcom commodity economy and the hi-tech gift economy are – at one and the same time – in opposition and in symbiosis with each other. What are some current examples of the hi-tech gift economy in action? Over the past decade, the hi-tech gift economy has moved from the fringes into the mainstream. When I was writing The Hi-Tech Gift Economy, the open source movement was the iconic example of non-commercial production over the Net. In the intervening period, blogging has become the public face of this new way of working. What was once the preserve of a small minority is now a mass phenomenon. Crucially, just like their techie predecessors, the participants in this enlarged hi-tech gift economy don’t have to think about the political implications of their method of working together. Free market fanatics can happily give away their blog-making labor without realizing they’ve become cyber-communists! This ideological inconsistency has hidden the social impact of the hi-tech gift economy. Allowing people to download your photos for free from Flickr doesn’t seem very radical. Putting up your latest tunes on-line can’t really be a threat to the music moguls. Making your own website doesn’t look like attack on the media corporations. Yet, when large numbers of people are engaged in these activities, commercial self-interest is checked by social altruism within the mixed economy of the Net. Before buying information, every sensible person checks whether you can download it for free. What are the impediments and what are the driving forces of the hi-tech gift economy? Is it possible to distinguish between the two? Long ago, Karl Marx pointed out that socialists had been forced to define their own political position to counter attacks by their liberal and conservative critics. It seems to me that we could make a similar observation today about the two sides in the copyright debate. During the past few decades, American and European politicians have steadily increased and extended the legal privileges of the media corporations. Entranced by the neo-liberal version of the McLuhanist prophecy, they’re convinced that the knowledge economy will be built around the buying and selling of intellectual property – and the state must punish anyone who threatens this new paradigm. In the digital Panopticon, Big Brother will spying on you to make sure that you don’t have any illegally copied files on your hard drive. Since the mid-1960s, the ideological appeal of the post-industrial future has protected the interests of the copyright owners. According to neo-liberal pundits, the global marketplace is founded upon the North exchanging its information commodities for the South’s manufactured goods. Economic prosperity now depends upon the World Trade Organisation imposing copyright protection as a universal obligation. Ironically, by proclaiming their global ambitions, the media and software corporations have exposed the weakness of their economic position. Across the developing world, governments know that copyright laws are unenforceable. Only the rich can afford to pay Northern prices in the South. If piracy can no longer be tolerated, alternatives must be found. In Brazil, the ministry of culture is promoting open source software as not just a more affordable product, but also an opportunity to create local employment. At the international level, they’re advocating the replacement of rigid copyright protection with flexible copyleft licenses. Inspired by this good example, other governments in the South are launching their own open source initiatives. In the developing world, participating within the hi-tech gift economy is a necessity not a hobby. During the last year, the American movie and music industries have forced the leading file-sharing services to limit unauthorized copying by their users. But, as soon as one threat is seen off, another arises. In 2005, over three-quarters of online music is still distributed for free. By forcing the issue, the owners of intellectual property have proved that the hard-line definition of copyright is as anachronistic in the North as in the South. Up-and-coming bands long ago learnt that giving away tunes attracts punters to their gigs and – in due course – sells their music. Yet, in contrast with the South, few politicians in the developed world have accepted the copyright laws need updating for this new dispensation. But, eventually, legislation must match social reality. The dotcom commodity economy can’t displace the hi-tech gift economy. Miscegenation is the epitome of the Net. During the Sixties, the New Left created a new form of radical politics: anarcho-communism. Above all, the Situationists and similar groups believed that the tribal gift economy proved that individuals could successfully live together without needing either the state or the market. From May 1968 to the late Nineties, this utopian vision of anarcho-communism has inspired community media and DIY culture activists. Within the universities, the gift economy already was the primary method of socialising labour. From its earliest days, the technical structure and social mores of the Net has ignored intellectual property. Although the system has expanded far beyond the university, the self-interest of Net users perpetuates this hi-tech gift economy. As an everyday activity, users circulate free information as e-mail, on listservs, in newsgroups, within on-line conferences and through Web sites. As shown by the Apache and Linux programs, the hi-tech gift economy is even at the forefront of software development. Contrary to the purist vision of the New Left, anarcho-communism on the Net can only exist in a compromised form. Money-commodity and gift relations are not just in conflict with each other, but also co-exist in symbiosis. The 'New Economy' of cyberspace is an advanced form of social democracy.

According to Oscar Wilde, the problem with socialism was that it took up too many evenings. Wilde’s aphorism alludes to a major issue that bedevils all attempts to influence the public sphere: the fact that public activities encroach unduly on citizens’ valuable time. In the 21st century, the dilemma of how to deal with “too many evenings” is one that many citizen journalists face as they give their own time to public pursuits. This paper will look at the development of the public citizen and what it means to be a citizen journalist with reference to some of the writer’s own experiences in the field. The paper will conclude with an examination of future possibilities. While large media companies change their change their focus from traditional news values, citizen journalism can play a stronger role in public life as long as it grasps some of the opportunities that are available. There are substantial compensations available to citizen journalists for the problems presented by Wilde’s evenings. The quote from Wilde is borrowed from Albert Hirschman’s Shifting Involvements, which among other things, is an examination of the disappointments of public action. Hirschman noted how it was a common experience for beginners who engage in public action to find that takes up more time than expected (96). As public activity encroaches not only on time devoted to private consumption but also on to the time devoted to the production of income, it can become a costly pursuit which may cause a sharp reaction against the “practice of citizenship” (Hirschman 97). Yet the more stimuli about politics people receive, the greater the likelihood is they will participate in politics and the greater the depth of their participation (Milbrath & Goel 35). People with a positive attraction to politics are more likely to receive stimuli about politics and participate more (Milbrath & Goel 36). Active citizenship, it seems, has its own feedback loops. An active citizenry is not a new idea. The concepts of citizen and citizenship emerged from the sophisticated polity established in the Greek city states about 2,500 years ago. The status of a citizen signified that the individual had the right to full membership of, and participation in, an independent political society (Batrouney & Goldlust 24). In later eras that society could be defined as a kingdom, an empire, or a nation state. The conditions for a bourgeois public sphere were created in the 13th century as capitalists in European city states created a traffic in commodities and news (Habermas 15). A true public sphere emerged in the 17th century with the rise of the English coffee houses and French salons where people had the freedom to express opinions regardless of their social status (Habermas 36). In 1848, France held the first election under universal direct suffrage (for males) and the contemporary slogan was that “universal suffrage closes the era of revolutions” (Hirschman 113). Out of this heady optimism, the late 19th century ushered in the era of the “informed citizen” as voting changed from a social and public duty to a private right – a civic obligation enforceable only by private conscience (Schudson). These concepts live on in the modern idea that the model voter is considered to be a citizen vested with the ability to understand the consequences of his or her choice (Menand 1). The internet is a new knowledge space which offers an alternative reading of the citizen. In Pierre Lévy’s vision of cyberculture, identity is no longer a function of belonging, it is “distributed and nomadic” (Ross & Nightingale 149). The Internet has diffused widely and is increasingly central to everyday life as a place where people go to get information (Dutton 10). Journalism initially prospered on an information scarcity factor however the technology of the Internet has created an information rich society (Tapsall & Varley 18). But research suggests that online discussions do not promote consensus, are short-lived with little impact and end up turning into “dialogues of the deaf” (Nguyen 148). The easy online publishing environment is a fertile ground for rumours, hoaxes and cheating games to circulate which risk turning the public sphere into a chaotic and anarchic space (Nguyen 148). The stereotypical blogger is pejoratively dismissed as “pajama-clad” (Papandrea 516) connoting a sense of disrespect for the proper transmission of ideas. Nevertheless the Internet offers powerful tools for collaboration that is opening up many everyday institutions to greater social accountability (Dutton 3). Recent research by the 2007 Digital Futures project shows 65 percent of respondents consider the Internet “to be a very important or extremely important source of information” (Cowden 76). By 2006, Roy Morgan was reporting that three million Australians were visiting online news site each month (Cowden.76). Crikey.com.au, Australia’s first online-only news outlet, has become a significant independent player in the Australia mediascape claiming over 5,000 subscribers by 2005 with three times as many non-paying “squatters” reading its daily email (Devine 50). Online Opinion has a similar number of subscribers and was receiving 750,000 page views a month by 2005 (National Forum). Both Crikey.com.au and Online Opinion have made moves towards public journalism in an attempt to provide ordinary people access to the public sphere. As professional journalists lose their connection with the public, bloggers are able to fill the public journalism niche (Simons, Content Makers 208). At their best, blogs can offer a “more broad-based, democratic involvement of citizens in the issues that matter to them” (Bruns 7). The research of University of North Carolina journalism professor Philip Meyer showed that cities and towns with public journalism-oriented newspapers led to a better educated local public (Simons, Content Makers 211). Meyer’s idea of good public journalism has six defining elements: a) the need to define a community’s sense of itself b) devotion of time to issues that demand community attention c) devotion of depth to the issues d) more attention to the middle ground e) a preference for substance over tactics and f) encouraging reciprocal understanding (Meyer 1). The objective of public journalism is to foster a greater sense of connection between the community and the media. It can mean journalists using ordinary people as sources and also ordinary people acting as journalists. Jay Rosen proposed a new model based on journalism as conversation (Simons, Content Makers 209). He believes the technology has now overtaken the public journalism movement (Simons, Content Makers 213). His own experiments at pro-am Internet open at assignment.net have had mixed results. His conclusion was that it wasn’t easy for people working voluntarily on the Internet to report on big stories together nor had they “unlocked” the secret of successful pro-am methods (Rosen). Nevertheless, the people formerly known as the audience, as Rosen called them, have seized the agenda. The barriers to entry into journalism have disappeared. Blogging has made Web publishing easy and the social networks are even more user friendly. The problem today is not getting published but finding an audience. And as the audience fragments, the issue will become finding a niche. One such niche is local political activism. The 2007 Australian federal election saw many online sites actively promoting citizen journalism. Most prominent was Youdecide2007 at Queensland University of Technology, funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC) in partnership with SBS, Online Opinion and the Brisbane Institute. Site co-editor Graham Young said the site’s aim was to use citizen journalists to report on their own electorates to fill the gap left by fewer journalists on the ground, especially in less populated areas (Young). While the site’s stated aim was to provide a forum for a seat-by-seat coverage and provide “a new perspective on national politics” (Youdecide2007), the end result was significantly skewed by the fact that the professional editorial team was based in Brisbane. Youdecide2007 published 96 articles in its news archive of which 59 could be identified as having a state-based focus. Figure 1 shows 62.7% of these state-based stories were about Queensland. Figure 1: Youdecide2007 news stories identifiable by state (note: national stories are omitted from this table): State Total no. of stories %age Qld 37 62.7 NSW 8 13.6 Vic 6 10.2 WA 3 5.1 Tas 2 3.4 ACT 2 3.4 SA 1 1.6 Modern election campaigns are characterised by a complex and increasingly fragmented news environment and the new media are rapidly adding another layer of complexity to the mix (Norris et al. 11-12). The slick management of national campaigns are is counter-productive to useful citizen journalism. According to Matthew Clayfield from the citizen journalism site electionTracker.net, “there are very few open events which ordinary people could cover in a way that could be described as citizen journalism” (qtd. in Hills 2007). Similar to other systems, the Australian campaign communication empowers the political leaders and media owners at the expense of ordinary party members and citizens (Warhurst 135). However the slick modern national “on message” campaign has not totally replaced old-style local activity. Although the national campaign has superimposed upon the local one and displaced it from the focus of attention, local candidates must still communicate their party policies in the electorate (Warhurst 113). Citizen journalists are ideally placed to harness this local communication. A grassroots approach is encapsulated in the words of Dan Gillmor who said “every reporter should realise that, collectively, the readers know more than they do about what they write about” (qtd. in Quinn & Quinn-Allan 66). With this in mind, I set out my own stall in citizen journalism for the 2007 Australian federal election with two personal goals: to interview all my local federal Lower House candidates and to attend as many public election meetings as possible. As a result, I wrote 19 election articles in the two months prior to the election. This consisted of 9 news items, 6 candidate interviews and 4 reports of public meetings. All the local candidates except one agreed to be interviewed. The local Liberal candidate refused to be interviewed despite repeated requests. There was no reason offered, just a continual ignoring of requests. Liberal candidates were also noticeably absent from most candidate forums I attended. This pattern of non-communicative behaviour was observed elsewhere (Bartlett, Wilson). I tried to turn this to my advantage by turning their refusal to talk into a story itself. For those that were prepared to talk, I set the expectation that the entire interview would be on the record and would be edited and published on my blog site. As a result, all candidates asked for a list of questions in advance which I supplied. Because politicians devote considerable energy and financial resources to ensure the information they impart to citizens has an appropriate ‘spin’ on it, (Negrine 10) I reserved the right to ask follow-up questions on any of their answers that required clarification. For the interviews themselves, I followed the advice of Spradley’s principle by starting with a conscious attitude of near-total ignorance, not writing the story in advance, and attempting to be descriptive, incisive, investigative and critical (Alia 100). After I posted the results of the interview, I sent a link to each of the respondents offering them a chance to clarify or correct any inaccuracies in the interview statements. Defamation skirts the boundary between free speech and reputation (Pearson 159) and a good working knowledge of the way defamation law affects journalists (citizen or otherwise) is crucial, particularly in dealing with public figures. This was an important consideration for some of the lesser known candidates as Google searches on their names brought my articles up within the top 20 results for each of the Democrat, Green and Liberal Democratic Party candidates I interviewed. None of the public meetings I attended were covered in the mainstream media. These meetings are the type of news Jan Schaffer of University of Maryland’s J-Lab saw as an ecological niche for citizen journalists to “create opportunities for citizens to get informed and inform others about micro-news that falls under the radar of news organisations who don’t have the resources” (Schaffer in Glaser). As Mark Bahnisch points out, Brisbane had three daily newspapers and a daily state based 7.30 Report twenty years ago which contrasts with the situation now where there’s no effective state parliamentary press gallery and little coverage of local politics at all (“State of Political Blogging”). Brisbane’s situation is not unique and the gaps are there to be exploited by new players. While the high cost of market entry renders the “central square” of the public sphere inaccessible to new players (Curran 128) the ease of Web access has given the citizen journalists the chance to roam its back alleys. However even if they fill the voids left by departing news organisations, there will still be a large hole in the mediascape. No one will be doing the hardhitting investigative journalism. This gritty work requires great resources and often years of time. The final product of investigative journalism is often complicated to read, unentertaining and inconclusive (Bower in Negrine 13). Margaret Simons says that journalism is a skill that involves the ability to find things out. She says the challenge of the future will be to marry the strengths of the newsroom and the dirty work of investigative journalism with the power of the conversation of blogs (“Politics and the Internet”). One possibility is raised by the Danish project Scoop. They offer financial support to individual journalists who have good ideas for investigative journalism. Founded by the Danish Association for Investigative Journalism and funded by the Danish Foreign Ministry, Scoop supports media projects across the world with the only proviso being that a journalist has to have an agreement with an editor to publish the resulting story (ABC Media Report). But even without financial support, citizens have the ability to perform rudimentary investigative journalism. The primary tool of investigative journalism is the interview (McIlwane & Bowman 260). While an interview can be arranged by anyone with access to a telephone or e-mail, it should not be underestimated how difficult a skill interviewing is. According to American journalist John Brady, the science of journalistic interviewing aims to gain two things, trust and information (Brady in White 75). In the interviews I did with politicians during the federal election, I found that getting past the “spin” of the party line to get genuine information was the toughest part of the task. There is also a considerable amount of information in the public domain which is rarely explored by reporters (Negrine 23). Knowing how to make use of this information will become a critical success factor for citizen journalists. Corporate journalists use databases such as Lexis/Nexis and Factiva to gain background information, a facility unavailable to most citizen journalists unless they are either have access through a learning institution or are prepared to pay a premium for the information. While large corporate vendors supply highly specialised information, amateurs can play a greater role in the creation and transmission of local news. According to G. Stuart Adam, journalism contains four basic elements: reporting, judging, a public voice and the here and now (13). Citizen journalism is capable of meeting all four criteria. The likelihood is that the future of communications will belong to the centralised corporations on one hand and the unsupervised amateur on the other (Bird 36). Whether the motive to continue is payment or empowerment, the challenge for citizen journalists is to advance beyond the initial success of tactical actions towards the establishment as a serious political and media alternative (Bruns 19). Nguyen et al.’s uses and gratification research project suggests there is a still a long way to go in Australia. While they found widespread diffusion of online news, the vast majority of users (78%) were still getting their news from newspaper Websites (Nguyen et al. 13). The research corroborates Mark Bahnisch’s view that “most Australians have not heard of blogs and only a tiny minority reads them (quoted in Simons, Content Makers 219). The Australian blogosphere still waits for its defining Swiftboat incident or Rathergate to announce its arrival. But Bahnisch doesn’t necessarily believe this is a good evolutionary strategy anyway. Here it is becoming more a conversation than a platform “with its own niche and its own value” (Bahnisch, “This Is Not America”). As far as my own experiments go, the citizen journalism reports I wrote gave me no financial reward but plenty of other compensations that made the experience richly rewarding. It was important to bring otherwise neglected ideas, stories and personalities into the public domain and the reports helped me make valuable connections with public-minded members of my local community. They were also useful practice to hone interview techniques and political writing skills. Finally the exercise raised my own public profile as several of my entries were picked up or hyperlinked by other citizen journalism sites and blogs. Some day, and probably soon, a model will be worked out which will make citizen journalism a worthwhile economic endeavour. In the meantime, we rely on active citizens of the blogosphere to give their evenings freely for the betterment of the public sphere. References ABC Media Report. “Scoop.” 2008. 17 Feb. 2008 http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2008/2151204.htm#transcript>. Adam, G. Notes towards a Definition of Journalism: Understanding an Old Craft as an Art Form. St Petersburg, Fl.: Poynter Institute, 1993. Alia, V. “The Rashomon Principle: The Journalist as Ethnographer.” In V. Alia, B. Brennan, and B. Hoffmaster (eds.), Deadlines and Diversity: Journalism Ethics in a Changing World. Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 1996. Bahnisch, M. “This Is Not America.” newmatilda.com 2007. 17 Feb. 2008 http://www.newmatilda.com/2007/10/04/not-america>. Bahnisch, M. “The State of Political Blogging.” Larvatus Prodeo 2007. 17 Feb. 2008 http://larvatusprodeo.net/2007/09/30/the-state-of-political-blogging/>. Bartlett, A. “Leaders Debate.” The Bartlett Diaries 2007. 19 Feb. 2008 http://andrewbartlett.com/blog/?p=1767>. Batrouney, T., and J. Goldlust. Unravelling Identity: Immigrants, Identity and Citizenship in Australia. Melbourne: Common Ground, 2005. Bird, R. “News in the Global Village.” The End of the News. Toronto: Irwin Publishing, 2005. Bruns, A. “News Blogs and Citizen Journalism: New Directions for e-Journalism.” In K. Prasad (ed.), E-Journalism: New Directions in Electronic News Media. New Delhi: BR Publishing, 2008. 2 Feb. 2008 http://snurb.info/files/News%20Blogs%20and%20Citizen%20Journalism.pdf>. Cowden, G. “Online News: Patterns, Participation and Personalisation.” Australian Journalism Review 29.1 (July 2007). Curran, J. “Rethinking Media and Democracy.” In J. Curran and M. Gurevitch (eds.), Mass Media and Society. 3rd ed. London: Arnold, 2000. Devine, F. “Curse of the Blog.” Quadrant 49.3 (Mar. 2005). Dutton, W. Through the Network (of Networks) – The Fifth Estate. Oxford Internet Institute, 2007. 6 April 2007 http://people.oii.ox.ac.uk/dutton/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/ 5th-estate-lecture-text.pdf>. Glaser, M. “The New Voices: Hyperlocal Citizen’s Media Sites Want You (to Write!).” Online Journalism Review 2004. 16 Feb. 2008 http://ojr.org/ojr/glaser/1098833871.php>. Habermas, J. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989 [1962]. Hills, R. “Citizen Journos Turning Inwards.” The Age 18 Nov. 2007. 17 Feb. 2008 http://www.theage.com.au/news/federal-election-2007-news/citizen-journos- turning-inwards/2007/11/17/1194767024688.html>. Hirschman, A, Shifting Involvements: Private Interest and Public Action. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1982. Hunter, C. “The Internet and the Public Sphere: Revitalization or Decay?” Virginia Journal of Communication 12 (2000): 93-127. Killenberg, G., and R. Dardenne. “Instruction in News Reporting as Community Focused Journalism.” Journalism & Mass Communication Educator 52.1 (Spring 1997). McIlwane, S., and L. Bowman. “Interviewing Techniques.” In S. Tanner (ed.), Journalism: Investigation and Research. Sydney: Longman, 2002. Menand, L. “The Unpolitical Animal: How Political Science Understands Voters.” The New Yorker 30 Aug. 2004. 17 Feb. 2008 http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/08/30/040830crat_atlarge>. Meyer, P. Public Journalism and the Problem of Objectivity. 1995. 16 Feb. 2008 http://www.unc.edu/%7Epmeyer/ire95pj.htm>. Milbrath, L., and M. Goel. Political Participation: How and Why Do People Get Involved in Politics? Chicago: Rand McNally M, 1975. National Forum. “Annual Report 2005.” 6 April 2008 http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/documents/reports/ annual_report_to_agm_2005.pdf>. Negrine, R. The Communication of Politics. London: Sage, 1996. Nguyen, A. “Journalism in the Wake of Participatory Publishing.” Australian Journalism Review 28.1 (July 2006). Nguyen, A., E. Ferrier, M. Western, and S. McKay. “Online News in Australia: Patterns of Use and Gratification.” Australian Studies in Journalism 15 (2005). Norris, P., J. Curtice, D. Sanders, M. Scammell, and H. Setemko. On Message: Communicating the Campaign. London: Sage, 1999. Papandrea, M. “Citizen Journalism and the Reporter’s Privilege.” Minnesota Law Review 91 (2007). Pearson, M. The Journalist’s Guide to Media Law. 2nd ed. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2004. Quinn, S., and D. Quinn-Allan. “User-Generated Content and the Changing News Cycle.” Australian Journalism Review 28.1 (July 2006). Rosen, J. “Assignment Zero: Can Crowds Create Fiction, Architecture and Photography?” Wired 2007. 6 April 2008 http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2007/07/assignment_zero_all>. Ross, K., and V. Nightingale. Media Audiences: New Perspectives. Maidenhead, Berkshire: Open UP, 2003. Schaffer, J. “Citizens Media: Has It Reached a Tipping Point.” Nieman Reports 59.4 (Winter 2005). Schudson, M. Good Citizens and Bad History: Today’s Political Ideals in Historical Perspective. 1999. 17 Feb. 2008 http://www.mtsu.edu/~seig/paper_m_schudson.html>. Simons, M. The Content Makers. Melbourne: Penguin, 2007. Simons, M. “Politics and the Internet.” Keynote speech at the Brisbane Writers’ Festival, 14 Sep. 2007. Tapsall, S., and C. Varley (eds.). Journalism: Theory in Practice. South Melbourne: Oxford UP, 2001. Warhurst, J. “Campaign Communications in Australia.” In F. Fletcher (ed.), Media, Elections and Democracy, Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1991. White, S. Reporting in Australia. 2nd ed. Melbourne: MacMillan, 2005. Wilson, J. “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Electorate.” Youdecide2007 2007. 19 Feb. 2008 http://www.youdecide2007.org/content/view/283/101/>. Young, G. “Citizen Journalism.” Presentation at the Australian Blogging Conference, 28 Sep. 2007. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Barry, Derek. "Wilde’s Evenings: The Rewards of Citizen Journalism." M/C Journal 10.6/11.1 (2008). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0804/09-barry.php>. APA Style Barry, D. (Apr. 2008) "Wilde’s Evenings: The Rewards of Citizen Journalism," M/C Journal, 10(6)/11(1). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0804/09-barry.php>.

According to Oscar Wilde, the problem with socialism was that it took up too many evenings. Wilde’s aphorism alludes to a major issue that bedevils all attempts to influence the public sphere: the fact that public activities encroach unduly on citizens’ valuable time. In the 21st century, the dilemma of how to deal with “too many evenings” is one that many citizen journalists face as they give their own time to public pursuits. This paper will look at the development of the public citizen and what it means to be a citizen journalist with reference to some of the writer’s own experiences in the field. The paper will conclude with an examination of future possibilities. While large media companies change their change their focus from traditional news values, citizen journalism can play a stronger role in public life as long as it grasps some of the opportunities that are available. There are substantial compensations available to citizen journalists for the problems presented by Wilde’s evenings. The quote from Wilde is borrowed from Albert Hirschman’s Shifting Involvements, which among other things, is an examination of the disappointments of public action. Hirschman noted how it was a common experience for beginners who engage in public action to find that takes up more time than expected (96). As public activity encroaches not only on time devoted to private consumption but also on to the time devoted to the production of income, it can become a costly pursuit which may cause a sharp reaction against the “practice of citizenship” (Hirschman 97). Yet the more stimuli about politics people receive, the greater the likelihood is they will participate in politics and the greater the depth of their participation (Milbrath & Goel 35). People with a positive attraction to politics are more likely to receive stimuli about politics and participate more (Milbrath & Goel 36). Active citizenship, it seems, has its own feedback loops. An active citizenry is not a new idea. The concepts of citizen and citizenship emerged from the sophisticated polity established in the Greek city states about 2,500 years ago. The status of a citizen signified that the individual had the right to full membership of, and participation in, an independent political society (Batrouney & Goldlust 24). In later eras that society could be defined as a kingdom, an empire, or a nation state. The conditions for a bourgeois public sphere were created in the 13th century as capitalists in European city states created a traffic in commodities and news (Habermas 15). A true public sphere emerged in the 17th century with the rise of the English coffee houses and French salons where people had the freedom to express opinions regardless of their social status (Habermas 36). In 1848, France held the first election under universal direct suffrage (for males) and the contemporary slogan was that “universal suffrage closes the era of revolutions” (Hirschman 113). Out of this heady optimism, the late 19th century ushered in the era of the “informed citizen” as voting changed from a social and public duty to a private right – a civic obligation enforceable only by private conscience (Schudson). These concepts live on in the modern idea that the model voter is considered to be a citizen vested with the ability to understand the consequences of his or her choice (Menand 1). The internet is a new knowledge space which offers an alternative reading of the citizen. In Pierre Lévy’s vision of cyberculture, identity is no longer a function of belonging, it is “distributed and nomadic” (Ross & Nightingale 149). The Internet has diffused widely and is increasingly central to everyday life as a place where people go to get information (Dutton 10). Journalism initially prospered on an information scarcity factor however the technology of the Internet has created an information rich society (Tapsall & Varley 18). But research suggests that online discussions do not promote consensus, are short-lived with little impact and end up turning into “dialogues of the deaf” (Nguyen 148). The easy online publishing environment is a fertile ground for rumours, hoaxes and cheating games to circulate which risk turning the public sphere into a chaotic and anarchic space (Nguyen 148). The stereotypical blogger is pejoratively dismissed as “pajama-clad” (Papandrea 516) connoting a sense of disrespect for the proper transmission of ideas. Nevertheless the Internet offers powerful tools for collaboration that is opening up many everyday institutions to greater social accountability (Dutton 3). Recent research by the 2007 Digital Futures project shows 65 percent of respondents consider the Internet “to be a very important or extremely important source of information” (Cowden 76). By 2006, Roy Morgan was reporting that three million Australians were visiting online news site each month (Cowden.76). Crikey.com.au, Australia’s first online-only news outlet, has become a significant independent player in the Australia mediascape claiming over 5,000 subscribers by 2005 with three times as many non-paying “squatters” reading its daily email (Devine 50). Online Opinion has a similar number of subscribers and was receiving 750,000 page views a month by 2005 (National Forum). Both Crikey.com.au and Online Opinion have made moves towards public journalism in an attempt to provide ordinary people access to the public sphere. As professional journalists lose their connection with the public, bloggers are able to fill the public journalism niche (Simons, Content Makers 208). At their best, blogs can offer a “more broad-based, democratic involvement of citizens in the issues that matter to them” (Bruns 7). The research of University of North Carolina journalism professor Philip Meyer showed that cities and towns with public journalism-oriented newspapers led to a better educated local public (Simons, Content Makers 211). Meyer’s idea of good public journalism has six defining elements: a) the need to define a community’s sense of itself b) devotion of time to issues that demand community attention c) devotion of depth to the issues d) more attention to the middle ground e) a preference for substance over tactics and f) encouraging reciprocal understanding (Meyer 1). The objective of public journalism is to foster a greater sense of connection between the community and the media. It can mean journalists using ordinary people as sources and also ordinary people acting as journalists. Jay Rosen proposed a new model based on journalism as conversation (Simons, Content Makers 209). He believes the technology has now overtaken the public journalism movement (Simons, Content Makers 213). His own experiments at pro-am Internet open at assignment.net have had mixed results. His conclusion was that it wasn’t easy for people working voluntarily on the Internet to report on big stories together nor had they “unlocked” the secret of successful pro-am methods (Rosen). Nevertheless, the people formerly known as the audience, as Rosen called them, have seized the agenda. The barriers to entry into journalism have disappeared. Blogging has made Web publishing easy and the social networks are even more user friendly. The problem today is not getting published but finding an audience. And as the audience fragments, the issue will become finding a niche. One such niche is local political activism. The 2007 Australian federal election saw many online sites actively promoting citizen journalism. Most prominent was Youdecide2007 at Queensland University of Technology, funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC) in partnership with SBS, Online Opinion and the Brisbane Institute. Site co-editor Graham Young said the site’s aim was to use citizen journalists to report on their own electorates to fill the gap left by fewer journalists on the ground, especially in less populated areas (Young). While the site’s stated aim was to provide a forum for a seat-by-seat coverage and provide “a new perspective on national politics” (Youdecide2007), the end result was significantly skewed by the fact that the professional editorial team was based in Brisbane. Youdecide2007 published 96 articles in its news archive of which 59 could be identified as having a state-based focus. Figure 1 shows 62.7% of these state-based stories were about Queensland. Figure 1: Youdecide2007 news stories identifiable by state (note: national stories are omitted from this table): State Total no. of stories %age Qld 37 62.7 NSW 8 13.6 Vic 6 10.2 WA 3 5.1 Tas 2 3.4 ACT 2 3.4 SA 1 1.6 Modern election campaigns are characterised by a complex and increasingly fragmented news environment and the new media are rapidly adding another layer of complexity to the mix (Norris et al. 11-12). The slick management of national campaigns are is counter-productive to useful citizen journalism. According to Matthew Clayfield from the citizen journalism site electionTracker.net, “there are very few open events which ordinary people could cover in a way that could be described as citizen journalism” (qtd. in Hills 2007). Similar to other systems, the Australian campaign communication empowers the political leaders and media owners at the expense of ordinary party members and citizens (Warhurst 135). However the slick modern national “on message” campaign has not totally replaced old-style local activity. Although the national campaign has superimposed upon the local one and displaced it from the focus of attention, local candidates must still communicate their party policies in the electorate (Warhurst 113). Citizen journalists are ideally placed to harness this local communication. A grassroots approach is encapsulated in the words of Dan Gillmor who said “every reporter should realise that, collectively, the readers know more than they do about what they write about” (qtd. in Quinn & Quinn-Allan 66). With this in mind, I set out my own stall in citizen journalism for the 2007 Australian federal election with two personal goals: to interview all my local federal Lower House candidates and to attend as many public election meetings as possible. As a result, I wrote 19 election articles in the two months prior to the election. This consisted of 9 news items, 6 candidate interviews and 4 reports of public meetings. All the local candidates except one agreed to be interviewed. The local Liberal candidate refused to be interviewed despite repeated requests. There was no reason offered, just a continual ignoring of requests. Liberal candidates were also noticeably absent from most candidate forums I attended. This pattern of non-communicative behaviour was observed elsewhere (Bartlett, Wilson). I tried to turn this to my advantage by turning their refusal to talk into a story itself. For those that were prepared to talk, I set the expectation that the entire interview would be on the record and would be edited and published on my blog site. As a result, all candidates asked for a list of questions in advance which I supplied. Because politicians devote considerable energy and financial resources to ensure the information they impart to citizens has an appropriate ‘spin’ on it, (Negrine 10) I reserved the right to ask follow-up questions on any of their answers that required clarification. For the interviews themselves, I followed the advice of Spradley’s principle by starting with a conscious attitude of near-total ignorance, not writing the story in advance, and attempting to be descriptive, incisive, investigative and critical (Alia 100). After I posted the results of the interview, I sent a link to each of the respondents offering them a chance to clarify or correct any inaccuracies in the interview statements. Defamation skirts the boundary between free speech and reputation (Pearson 159) and a good working knowledge of the way defamation law affects journalists (citizen or otherwise) is crucial, particularly in dealing with public figures. This was an important consideration for some of the lesser known candidates as Google searches on their names brought my articles up within the top 20 results for each of the Democrat, Green and Liberal Democratic Party candidates I interviewed. None of the public meetings I attended were covered in the mainstream media. These meetings are the type of news Jan Schaffer of University of Maryland’s J-Lab saw as an ecological niche for citizen journalists to “create opportunities for citizens to get informed and inform others about micro-news that falls under the radar of news organisations who don’t have the resources” (Schaffer in Glaser). As Mark Bahnisch points out, Brisbane had three daily newspapers and a daily state based 7.30 Report twenty years ago which contrasts with the situation now where there’s no effective state parliamentary press gallery and little coverage of local politics at all (“State of Political Blogging”). Brisbane’s situation is not unique and the gaps are there to be exploited by new players. While the high cost of market entry renders the “central square” of the public sphere inaccessible to new players (Curran 128) the ease of Web access has given the citizen journalists the chance to roam its back alleys. However even if they fill the voids left by departing news organisations, there will still be a large hole in the mediascape. No one will be doing the hardhitting investigative journalism. This gritty work requires great resources and often years of time. The final product of investigative journalism is often complicated to read, unentertaining and inconclusive (Bower in Negrine 13). Margaret Simons says that journalism is a skill that involves the ability to find things out. She says the challenge of the future will be to marry the strengths of the newsroom and the dirty work of investigative journalism with the power of the conversation of blogs (“Politics and the Internet”). One possibility is raised by the Danish project Scoop. They offer financial support to individual journalists who have good ideas for investigative journalism. Founded by the Danish Association for Investigative Journalism and funded by the Danish Foreign Ministry, Scoop supports media projects across the world with the only proviso being that a journalist has to have an agreement with an editor to publish the resulting story (ABC Media Report). But even without financial support, citizens have the ability to perform rudimentary investigative journalism. The primary tool of investigative journalism is the interview (McIlwane & Bowman 260). While an interview can be arranged by anyone with access to a telephone or e-mail, it should not be underestimated how difficult a skill interviewing is. According to American journalist John Brady, the science of journalistic interviewing aims to gain two things, trust and information (Brady in White 75). In the interviews I did with politicians during the federal election, I found that getting past the “spin” of the party line to get genuine information was the toughest part of the task. There is also a considerable amount of information in the public domain which is rarely explored by reporters (Negrine 23). Knowing how to make use of this information will become a critical success factor for citizen journalists. Corporate journalists use databases such as Lexis/Nexis and Factiva to gain background information, a facility unavailable to most citizen journalists unless they are either have access through a learning institution or are prepared to pay a premium for the information. While large corporate vendors supply highly specialised information, amateurs can play a greater role in the creation and transmission of local news. According to G. Stuart Adam, journalism contains four basic elements: reporting, judging, a public voice and the here and now (13). Citizen journalism is capable of meeting all four criteria. The likelihood is that the future of communications will belong to the centralised corporations on one hand and the unsupervised amateur on the other (Bird 36). Whether the motive to continue is payment or empowerment, the challenge for citizen journalists is to advance beyond the initial success of tactical actions towards the establishment as a serious political and media alternative (Bruns 19). Nguyen et al.’s uses and gratification research project suggests there is a still a long way to go in Australia. While they found widespread diffusion of online news, the vast majority of users (78%) were still getting their news from newspaper Websites (Nguyen et al. 13). The research corroborates Mark Bahnisch’s view that “most Australians have not heard of blogs and only a tiny minority reads them (quoted in Simons, Content Makers 219). The Australian blogosphere still waits for its defining Swiftboat incident or Rathergate to announce its arrival. But Bahnisch doesn’t necessarily believe this is a good evolutionary strategy anyway. Here it is becoming more a conversation than a platform “with its own niche and its own value” (Bahnisch, “This Is Not America”). As far as my own experiments go, the citizen journalism reports I wrote gave me no financial reward but plenty of other compensations that made the experience richly rewarding. It was important to bring otherwise neglected ideas, stories and personalities into the public domain and the reports helped me make valuable connections with public-minded members of my local community. They were also useful practice to hone interview techniques and political writing skills. Finally the exercise raised my own public profile as several of my entries were picked up or hyperlinked by other citizen journalism sites and blogs. 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