In the fourth chapter, Jacob Matthews and Vincent Rouzé address crowdfunding from the perspective of labour—even though the ideology of digital technologies seeks to emphasize the ludic nature of the phenomenon and leaves aside the issue of labour, both inside and on these platforms. This chapter doesn’t consider project creators and platform employees separately: its original contribution is to question their activity conjointly, as both participating in the same logic of ‘polymorphic entrepreneurship’.
In the fifth chapter, Jacob Matthews, Stéphane Constantini and Alix Bénistant question the role played by crowdfunding platforms in processes of globalization. The preceding chapters ofer an overview and critical analysis of the platforms and their models in Western countries, but what about the Global South? Can we locate original endogenous models of crowdfunding in these regions, or do we simply encounter exogenous models that reinforce Western capitalist logics?
Research Context
All the chapters in this book are the result of research carried out within the framework of the Collab research project, financed by the French National Research Agency (ANR) and directed by Vincent Rouzé (2015–18). Quantitative and qualitative data produced and compiled within this programme informs each chapter. As a part of this research program, we carried out fieldwork with numerous players connected to these platforms in France, in Europe (UK, Benelux, Spain), and in various countries in the Global South (sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America). Bringing together qualitative data collected as part of the ANR Collab and FDLEC8 research programmess, the corpus is made up of more than 80 qualitative interviews with these players and with project creators in Europe (20), Ethiopia (8), South Africa (8), Senegal (9), Burkina Faso (5), Colombia (4), Brazil (16), Mexico (7), and Argentina (7).
We also use data collected through questionnaires, based on a representative sample of the population. The beta phase of the questionnaire was administered in three languages (English, Spanish and French) and received 260 responses in French (from countries including Tunisia, Senegal and Canada) and around 50 in English and Spanish. Owing to concerns about the representativeness of the sample, and faced with dificulties related to mode of administration, we limited our initial processing to the French responses. On the basis of this beta phase, we were able to develop a questionnaire centred on a solely French representative sample. This was self-administered online (over the Internet using the CAWI method). The final sample was made up of responses then categorised into three groups totalling 1,182 in all. These responses were from people aged between 18 and 66 residing in metropolitan France, from all socioprofessional categories. The sample breaks down as follows:
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Cultural Crowdfunding: Platform Capitalism, Labour and Globalization