Participative and communitarian logic is certainly at the heart of these first, emblematic cases of collaborative financing and production mentioned above and, in large part, it also marked the broadening out from these first virtuous circles towards other amateur users. Yet it should be emphasized that—setting aside their subsequent expansion—these initial practices did not rely on denouncing capitalist economics and society, any more than they saw themselves as part of an opposition to them.
As Turner (2005) has shown, it is above all a matter of the productions of groups and individuals who, having temporarily ‘retired’ from the dominant ways of life (joining neo-rural communities in the 1970s), returned to urban centres over the course of the following decade, and there invented new ‘lifestyles’ in which information technology practices seemed an asset in terms of both cultural and economic capital. These digital ‘pioneers’ combined economic neoliberalism and libertarian political convictions, something that may seem surprising from a European, and especially a French point of view. But this was a non-negligible ingredient in the fertility of the Bay Area for IT startups (Barbrook and Cameron 1996). From the mid-1990s onward—particularly after Congress rescinded the ban on online commerce (Flichy 2007)—these collaborative uses of the web were increasingly resolutely embedded within a ‘new economy’ concerned above all with profitability (even if rational valuation was no longer a priority), and which was increasingly coveted both by institutional investors and by oligopolistic players from the culture and communications industries.
- A History Legitimated by Pre-Digital Collaborative Cultural Financing and Production
The other way in which crowdfunding is legitimated involves situating it in a more distant past, locating its origins in participative funding, whether in terms of simple gift-giving, or a logic of gift-giving and rewards. These models have come in many forms and formats, and have gone by many names, including patronage, tontine and fundraising. Their main shared feature is fundraising for projects using collective mobilization and participation.
Religions, for example, have long used this as a major expansion strategy. In the name of ‘charity’ and ‘saving souls’, or by imposing taxes, financial and/ or material participation on the part of the community (for instance, through bequests and donations) has financed artistic work, the construction of hundreds of monuments, and aid to the poor. This and many other historical examples could be developed further, but such a question obviously exceeds the scope of this volume. Therefore we have selected just a few examples specifically involving cultural financing.
Crowdsourcing and Crowdfunding: The Origins of a New System?
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