Interestingly, the reference to ‘crowds’ has been erased in French legislative texts. The Journal Oficiel (which publishes all oficial national laws and decrees) validated the translation of crowdfunding by ‘financement participatif’ (participative funding), hence hinting at more individualised usages but keeping with a sense of homogenization. The Quebec French usage of the term ‘sociofinancement’ (social funding) is also worth noting. These forms avoid any reference to both communities (or indeed communitarianism), and to the remanence of social inequality. As shown by our quantitative research, launching a project on a crowdfunding site involves the participation of one’s family, acquaintances and—something far more dificult—a number of people one does not know.
Perhaps we should end by emphasizing that, behind this participative ideology, we can glimpse a desire to extend financial participation and innovative competition everywhere and into all everyday relations, putting the collective in the service of individual goals. We also see, in line with the conclusions of Raymond Williams referred to above, an attempt to use the concept of the ‘crowd’ to hide social and class inequalities.
The quantitative data collected during our research (figure 2 opposite) shows that these platforms are mostly invested in and financed by so-called ‘middle and ‘higher’ socio-professional categories.9 They render social stratification invisible in the name of this ‘creative class’—but there is no way this can hide the inequalities in access, use, and financing that exist on these platforms.
Notes
Crowdsourcing and Crowdfunding: The Origins of a New System?
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2 https://blogs.mediapart.fr/mark-white/blog/200613/what-crowdfundingand-why-it-revolutionary Accessed 10 September 2018.
1 See endnote 1, p.9.