As chapter 4 shows, these platforms are reinforcing new modes of production, and indeed contributing to the tendency toward outsourced labour, in some cases ‘free’ labour, under the guise of both increased participation and what has been coined ‘gamification’. This leads to polymorphous forms of entrepreneurship, within the organisation of platforms themselves, but also among project carriers, who have an obligation to not only seek funding but activate networks, educate and communicate in order to generate confidence and participation.
The final chapter allows us to reflect on these questions from a broader perspective. Does the development of such platforms, and the uptake of their usage, in the so-called ‘Global South’, correspond to (or link up with) new opportunities of emancipatory politics, diverging with the homogenizing efects of Western ‘free-market’ economics and forms of ‘globalization’ suggested by Appadurai (2001)? The results of our fieldwork in both Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America provide some significant answers to this key question. They ofer various complex examples of both compliance and resistance toward international trends, but highlight the constraints of a broadly neocolonial context within which cultural, social and economical players continue to fight out struggles which are often far removed from the simple issue of cultural crowdfunding.
In the Service of Cultural Democratization?
These forms of cultural financing, which aim to develop individual ‘creativity’, also attract public and para-public institutions, which may use private platforms or develop their own. Participatory funding makes it possible to ‘place cultural activity clearly at the heart of city life, as a major element in innovation, economic dynamism, attractiveness, social cohesion, and influence’ (Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication 2015: 3). Ultimately, viewed this way, crowdfunding is ‘without doubt a strong vector of cultural democratization and a means of reappropriating public action’ (Fohr 2016: 23). If we follow this logic, will we soon see similar apparatuses emerge which allow the inhabitants of an area to directly fund a new doctor’s surgery, or a new hospital? Or to finance public transport, if they live in an area abandoned by the authorities as too unprofitable? Looking past the claims of politicians and administrators who see crowdfunding as a complementary tool, rather than an exclusive one, we believe these platforms are the forerunners of logics aiming at generalized outsourcing, with activities, teams and communal and ‘public’ organizations funded solely by those citizens who consume them—all in the name of ‘participative democracy’ and a ‘collaborative’ economy. We should add that, while the use of crowdfunding is primarily a communication activity, it is also a way of overcoming the state’s own failures using private economic logics.
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Cultural Crowdfunding: Platform Capitalism, Labour and Globalization