{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"171eb612-d523-4536-900d-5453dce83960","title":"Cultural Crowdfunding Platform Capitalism, Labour And Globalization","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":null,"requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"171eb612-d523-4536-900d-5453dce83960","id":"171eb612-d523-4536-900d-5453dce83960","uuid":"171eb612-d523-4536-900d-5453dce83960","title":"Cultural Crowdfunding Platform Capitalism, Labour And Globalization","normalized_title":"culturalcrowdfundingplatformcapitalismlabourandglobalization","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":null,"isbns":[],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":128,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/171eb612-d523-4536-900d-5453dce83960","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Cultural%20Crowdfunding%20Platform%20Capitalism%2C%20Labour%20And%20Globalization","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/171eb612-d523-4536-900d-5453dce83960/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/171eb612-d523-4536-900d-5453dce83960/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/171eb612-d523-4536-900d-5453dce83960","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/171eb612-d523-4536-900d-5453dce83960/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/171eb612-d523-4536-900d-5453dce83960/search"},"page":{"printed_page":96,"pdf_page":104,"physical_index":104,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"8c7936fbadad211f24e0d36c227d0b1dcce936e2e64a2779a79ed127d169ff92"},"chapter":"Cultural Crowdfunding: Platform Capitalism, Labour and Globalization","content":"Secondly, these discourses rest upon an axiom that represents crowdfunding as an ‘organic’ component of a creative/digital/collaborative economy that serves the empowerment of populations ‘naturally’ disposed to entrepreneurship. We can see this ideology condensed in the following extract from another report on crowdfunding in Africa, which uses the term ‘narrative’ in a revelatory fashion:\n\nCrowdfunding is a major vector of African self-empowerment. Through crowdfunding, Africans have the power in their hands. The power to choose and fund social causes and economic initiatives they care about. The power to set and drive their own social and economic agenda. The power to be active and direct participants of the ‘African rising’ narrative. (Afrikstart 2017: 62)\n\nThese two ideological registers are obviously linked, and cannot be deployed without contradictions or without taking into account local specificities. Although a certain indiference or ‘oblique attention’ seems characteristic of many social actors we met during our fieldwork in sub-Saharan Africa, and who have little relation to the processes in question, a certain peculiarity of the Latin American region seems at first sight to be linked to political developments on this continent over the course of the last fifty years. Here, a version of the second discourse emerges in the form of a vision of the ‘collaborative’ economy as a hopeful prospect in the face of economic and political corruption—a belief in a new spirit of sharing, but one still subject to the obligation to accept ‘economic realities’.\n\nUltimately, however, our research ofered few convincing answers to the question of forms of resistance or alternatives to dominant Western logics. We met a few dissenting voices: for instance, Rodrigo Maia, cofounder of the platform Catarse, says he wants to destroy the dominant perception of how crowdfunding campaigns have to work, and to contribute to a financial transfer from the rich centres to the margins, the favelas, with the aim of ‘building a more diverse country’. But this kind of discourse can also be read as ultimately opening up the platform to a more lucrative market, and remains wholly compatible with the harmonious vision of globalization advocated by the voices praising fintech.\n\nSimilarly, as in the West, we have seen micro-local projects that aim to reconnect with a more community-based spirit. Other players say they want to build bridges between so-called ‘traditional’ practices and tools that facilitate development. And then, among the most ‘metropolitan’ segments of the urban population, we can identify the expression of a desire for more authentic ‘lifestyles’, as illustrated by Gerhard Maree, founder of the South African platform Citysoirée, in his description of the social and cultural context in which his project first emerged:\n\nThere was a very strong sense of a changing shift in how people wanted to consume art […] and I think we’ve seen that subsequently with a move back to organic foods and, you know, supporting local economies. That people wanted to go back to the absence of corporate involvement and branded involvement. And I think that’s what crowdfunding brought.\n\n96\n\nCultural Crowdfunding: Platform Capitalism, Labour and Globalization","previous_page":95,"next_page":97}