Abstract
As my mother always admonished me, when preparing a meal for company, be sure to present the piece de resistance on the dining room table; do not make the guests wade through the kitchen and witness all of the elaborate—and sometimes not very pretty—details of its creation. While preparing food may be a far cry from academic scholarship, my mother’s advice could have well served Mirko Schäfer, author of Bastard Culture!. For, having pierced the veil of a somewhat convoluted theoretical framework, which draws from a wide range of approaches, one discovers a very interesting—and at times provocative—narrative about the role of users in today’s cultural production.
Employing a very broad brush to paint his narrative, Schäfer employs Foucault’s notion of dispositif to frame his analysis and organize his data for the macro picture outlined in the first part of the book. Commendably, this approach allows the author to conceive of participatory culture in an holistic way, taking into account the full range of factors—”discourses, institutions, architectural forms, regulatory decisions, laws, administrative measures, scientific statements, philosophical, moral and philanthropic propositions” — (Foucault 1980: 194–5) that constitute it. Thus, the first three chapters are organized around the subjects of discourses, social usage, and technology—the three interdependent components that the author identifies as part of the dispositif of participatory culture. Unfortunately, because of myriad details, these chapters suffer from a lack of structure, making it difficult for the reader to relate each to the larger theoretical framework, much less to one another.
Persevering through the text, however, one encounters some useful, identifiable takeaways. In Chapter One, “Promoting Utopia/Selling Technology,” Schäfer traces how the rhetoric of participatory culture played a critical role in both the design and the sale of media technologies. As he notes in Chapter Two, “Claiming Participation,” today’s narrative around technology has evolved from one celebrating access to information to one praising our ability to create our own culture by collaborating around shared knowledge. In describing user participation, Schäfer distinguishes between “explicit” and “implicit” production. In contrast to authors like Henry Jenkins (2006) who emphasize how “explicit” user production, such as fan sites, can come into conflict with traditional business models, Schäfer points out that user production often extends and enhances a media company’s offerings, creating something of a real—even if inadvertent—symbiotic relationship between users and media firms. Chapter Three, “Enabling/Repressing Participation,” examines the socio-technical ecology that derives from the unique characteristics of digital technologies. Constituting a shared space as well as a “digital workbench,” these technologies have both inspired and afforded user participation. Software, the author contends, has played an especially critical role, given its modularity, flexibility, and reusability.
Three case studies, which exemplify and extend the author’s argument, are presented in Chapter Four, entitled “Bastard Culture.” These cases include an analysis of the modification of the Xbox, the Xbox-Linux-Project, and the Hacking of AIBO. The first two cases entail explicit user production, whereas the latter involves implicit user production. Employing a micro analytical approach based on Actor Network Theory (Latour 1993), Schäfer tracks the networks of actors and events that lead to the production, and/or reproduction, of media products. In contrast to many other accounts, which depict user production in relatively simplistic terms, Schäfer’s analysis shows that production is a complex, hybrid process in which participants converge to form a heterogeneous constellation of interdependent producers, both professional and amateurs, which—in keeping with Actor Network Theory—includes the technologies themselves.
Whereas in Chapter Five Schäfer describes how users are moving into the realm of business, in Chapter Six, “The Extension of Cultural Industries,” he examines how media firms are extending themselves into the lives of users. According to the author, it is the intersection of these two networks which engenders the socio-political issues associated with digital technologies, the most prominent being copyright, privacy, and security. In addressing these issues, firms pursue any of three strategies: (1) direct confrontation in opposition to participation, (2) implementing user contributions while using design to maintain control of them, and (3) fully embracing participation by using it to enhance the media product.
In the final chapter, “Participatory Culture,” the author brings together many of the threads that are woven into the text. It is here that he argues explicitly for a more sophisticated understanding of participatory culture that is centered within the context of a socio-technical media ecology in which actor networks are simultaneously engaged. I greatly appreciate his argument as well as the many insights he provides. I only wish that the text had been more streamlined, with clearer guideposts directing the reader where the narrative was heading. Bastard Culture! is a very worthwhile read. But, to get the most from it, be prepared to read the book at least twice.