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This has not however prevented the central government from supporting and funding a training programme on the use of social financing platforms, as discussed in the next section. In response to our question about support for projects that may benefit from social financing, a representative of the Ethiopian tourism ministry (which is responsible for culture) mentioned two businesses that export craft goods to the North American and European markets, one financed by the World Bank, the other by bilateral agreements under the aegis of UNESCO. But he noted that, unfortunately, once this support ended such activity would decline through a ‘lack of strategy’ on the part of the cultural producers. By his own admission, an absence of any coordinated policy in this domain has resulted from a lack of statistics and applicable indicators on cultural production: ‘Without that, we can’t produce data to connect to other economic indicators’, he told us, avoiding the question. This elliptical response shows how little interest such issues still provoke in most sub-Saharan African countries. In Senegal, the position of political decision makers remains just as confused, despite the optimism of one of our interviewees, the entrepreneur Christian Palouki:

The Senegalese state has begun to get involved in the digital and the cultural sector. They have launched a program called PSE (Plan Sénégal Émergent) whose objective is to allow Senegal to enter the digital era. They’re currently developing various mechanisms that will allow us to develop digital, to get us on board.

In Latin America, the discourse of political decision-makers is also marked by a certain enthusiasm, and in certain cases is based on public policies of support or legitimation, recognizing for example that the region is ‘fertile soil for the implantation of crowdfunding, since systems of community and collaborative financing already exist’, as suggested in the report Economia colaborativa en América latina mentioned above. Thus, we see local and national initiatives to extend the practice toward less well-of segments of the population: Argentina’s ‘mercado de industrias creativas’ (MICA–’creative industries market’) programme, which uses public support to help potential and current project creators; the ‘día del crowdfunding’ (‘crowdfunding day’) in Mexico; and the ‘semana del crowdfunding’ (‘crowdfunding week’) in Chile which, in particular, has provided training for project leaders in partnership with the platform Ideame. All of these initiatives are characterized by a marked political desire to leave behind the ‘European’ style public management of cultural financing, instead making space for individual initiatives. Paradoxically, we observe a displacement (also seen in Europe) of public funds towards events that supposedly herald the aforementioned ‘creative economy’, with the aim of avoiding a model felt to be too top-down, and at the same time we observe a prominent discourse advocating the greater autonomy and responsibility for cultural workers. In Brazil, a system of tax credits has been established which allows companies to reallocate a percentage of their income to intermediary bodies which then finance social and cultural projects—precisely one of the niches occupied by the social financing platform Benfeitoria.

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‘Pedagogical’ Guidance and Workforce Education

Earlier, we noted our desire to carefully consider the antagonisms and resistances this process encounters. We must therefore call attention to a term that cropped up regularly during our interviews on both continents: ‘challenge’. For instance, Christian Palouki, founder of Paydunya, explained that ‘the biggest challenge’ was to ‘try and replicate what was already done, but also to provide education behind that’.

In fact, our studies show clearly that a significant part of the economic players’ time and energy is dedicated to addressing this challenge, firstly through educational methods, and even something like agitation of those populations seen as likely to take part in crowdfunding projects. Our interviewees described the importance and frequency of workshops, online training and, above all, media presence. As the founder of Brazilian platform Catarse, Rodrigo Maia, told us: ‘Public talks, presence at events: it’s very good, but you have to know what you’re doing.’ Thameur Hemdane, co-president of the association Crowdfunding en Méditerranée, mentioned that he had taken part in various trade fairs in Africa, and explained his goal: ‘We go into these spaces to preach the good news […]. Here are the ingredients, now we’ll make the recipe together.’ Analogously, representatives of the ACfA claimed that, for them, it was not so much a matter of training as of educational awareness:

This is the kind of advice I gave people in Nigeria: if you can identify people with influence who lead campaigns that touch many peoples’ lives, then that’s the way you can move toward a crowdfunding mentality, taking advantage of technology […]. I don’t want to wait, even though it will certainly take time, but it calls for many proactive steps.

As emphasized above, public authorities increasingly approve of this work of increasing educational awareness and agitation, even in some countries where at the moment only a minority of the population are involved in crowdfunding, and in particular the crowdfunding of cultural production. Thundafund, for example, received a two-year bursary from the South African government with the specific objective of building awareness. According to a manager of the website, the operation was beneficial insofar as ‘more and more people understand the term, and each workshop received pitches from between ten and twenty people’.

On a second level, we can identify traces of more practical—more material— training activities involving diferent categories of players who occupy diferent positions in the crowdfunding production cycle. These include donors, platform managers, developers, marketers (who are more or less self-taught), and of course the multi-tasking project creators. Some of this activity may seem to go without saying, as if it constituted a normal or even ‘natural’ component of crowdfunding sites; but in fact it calls for an internal organization of labour that allows platforms to train their workforce. As an example, the ‘project area’ of Brazilian platform Benfeitoria is described as follows by its founder and manager: ‘It’s for project creators; they speak to one another and look for the best ways to direct projects, to make images, video, etc.’ As illustrated in the previous chapter, in South Africa, the managers of Backabuddy, Thundafund and Citysoirée take the same approach.

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Finally, there are many examples where this practical training is deployed on a more ambitious scale. These give an idea of what is strategically at stake in this ‘mission’, particularly in Africa. Alphabet (Google) dedicates a significant budget to regular competitions on the model of the platform Africa Connected. It aims to associate the brand and its services with the entrepreneurial projects evaluated and, in some cases, funded—with the support of international organizations like the United Nations Program for Development (UNPD) and the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD). In one such contest, the founders of the Brazilian platform Catarse received a prize from the Mountain View firm in recognition of the ‘social impact’ of their work (along with one million reals, according to the journalist Felipe Caruso, who has collaborated with many campaigns hosted by the platform). In the countries we studied, American ambassadors are also active in this domain. For example, they ofer free or heavily discounted training to journalists and other cultural workers. Commenting on the US Embassy’s use of social media, a representative of the French Embassy in Addis Ababa wrote with admiration:

The Americans are great here. They’ve done some excellent work; they use Facebook all the time. Take a look, they put on courses, MOOCs, you know, open courses online, and workshops for journalists [...]. So a ballet took place and you see them talking about it. What do they do there? Workshops. Like ‘Ethiopian Filmmaker’—you get training in films, in the film industry.

But it is undeniably the French ex-telecoms operator Orange that deploys the greatest efort (and the most capital) in workforce training. The following interview extract shows clearly how they put their ‘pedagogy’ into practice, emphasizing the supposed autonomy of the schemes financed in this way. This confirms that these strategies operate more by way of suggestion than command:

We have a whole policy of creating incubators and accelerators […]. The two peculiarities that make them hybrid objects, to some extent, are their governance, which is a combination of public/private/civil society […]. We ask these incubators to act like startups, and to go from a pure subsidy model to a service model in five years—that is, in the end, to construct a viable business model […] So we’ve done all these experiments with Orange’s money and support, but not only that, because we feel that, for the legitimacy of all of these structures, we have to open them up to others—and then that they eventually escape our control.

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Similarly, in sub-Saharan Africa, Orange has invested in building and running training centres, describing them in a way that similarly foregrounds its regional legitimacy and responsibility. In the case mentioned above, in Senegal, the ‘practical’ pedagogy involves materially implementing the ‘great discourse’ of the growth of the middle-class in Africa, a mission that is clearly presented as a prerogative of this great French conglomerate (albeit not an exclusive one):

We have an educational focus: we’re fairly legitimate, for example, with our coding schools, and we work with players in France [...]. Today there is a shortage of talent and skills. And our responsibility is to put in place the tools that will enable this ecosystem to be nourished. Qualified labour, the middle class, that’s all of interest to us.

Conclusion

Our research charts the emergence and extension of the use of both endogenous and exogenous social financing platforms. It illustrates the eforts made to supposedly guarantee the growth of endogenous initiatives in this domain (and beyond) when this has proved impossible through existing financial players. It also explains the proliferation of public and para-public apparatuses that ofer ‘flexible’ guidance and support. These processes, along with ‘great discourses’, and a set of strategic actions, allow not only the difusion of ideological productions (and to a certain extent their adaptation to diferent national contexts), but the training and organization of the various workers of the intermediation platforms.

These ‘grand discourses’ themselves are principally of two orders. Firstly, they promote a process of economic homogenization which depends on the emergence of what the Orange representative called the ‘solvent middle class’, and on its integration into an ideal globalization made possible by increased bank usage by local populations, ‘good governance’ and a new model of economic development in which public power takes a back seat to ‘ecosystem building’, within which crowdfunding must be fully integrated. The following passage gives a good summary of this discourse, all the more so if we replace the term ‘firm’ with ‘player’, so including all of the diferent participants mentioned above:

Firms that successfully access the monetary and non-monetary benefits of crowdfunding are found to be more competitive and more sustainable, which would be a boon for African and emerging market startup ecosystems. (InfoDev 2015: 15)

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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:

Crowdfunding 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)

These 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’.

Ultimately, 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.

Similarly, 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:

There 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.

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This claim associates social financing with the quest for an existence that is more ethical. But we might also ask how far this desire to short-circuit the omnipresent industrialization and commodification is, in fact, ‘recuperated’ by crowdfunding and its standardized processes of economic value extraction. For, as the interviewee admits: ‘because of our obstinacy in remaining independent and not associating ourselves with sponsors, we haven’t really made any money out of these concerts.’ Tired of such paltry revenues, Gerhard Maree eventually adapted his business model, integrating the fundraising tool into a more general strategy of data collection and trading, and organization of labour—a strategy characteristic of digital intermediation platforms, as we have seen in previous chapters.

Finally we should consider a remark by Ken Aicha Sy, founder of the collective Wakh’Art de Dakar. We asked him whether the Western model of crowdfunding platforms was applicable to Africa:

I don’t think so. If it was, companies would have set up here long ago. Google is in Senegal, YouTube is in Senegal, so why not?—but I think they don’t really know the market. They don’t understand how the young people live, how they talk, and the same is true in Benin, Ivory Coast [...]. Even with Orange it’s like that: they prefer to finance a concert by [Belgian pop musician] Stromae for €70,000 rather than three concerts a year for 10,000 CFA francs, even though that would be more popular. But Orange is a monster, and there’s competition between its diferent departments; there’s no global vision.

These comments remind us quite clearly of the limits of strategies which can indeed boast significant material power, but whose ideological efectivity remains limited due to cultural specificities—even though this phenomenon doesn’t seem as yet to contribute to the emergence of clearly alternative models to Western norms.

Notes

1 InfoDev is describes as a ‘World Bank Group program to promote entrepreneurship and innovation’ http://www.infodev.org/about Accessed 5 April 2019.

2 West African Economic and Monetary Union.

3 Central Bank of West African States.

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References

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General Conclusion

Vincent Rouzé

Crowdfunding platforms are not just ‘trendy’ phenomena. They are symptomatic of broader ideological forms inherent to technological innovation, economic change and the emerging ‘new capitalism’. As we’ve made clear in our second chapter, the logics of crowdfunding find their origins in a more distant and plural past, which to some extent serves to legitimize the presence and activities of contemporary platforms. The digital ‘renewal’ of these practices integrates somewhat diverse ideological values and conceptions. For instance, these play upon the ‘gift-counter-gift’ logic in order to ensure new forms of financialization of both contents and lived experiences. These same logics of outsourcing and transfer toward citizen/consumers operate indirectly in the case of crowdsourcing and far more directly with its financial variation, crowdfunding. However, citizen and consumer participation is far from homogeneous and in this respect derides the very notion of a ‘crowd’, given the unequal usages among social classes in the countries where these platforms currently operate.

Our third chapter shows that, despite efectively giving visibility and economic valorisation to cultural projects that were formerly left in the shadows, these platforms must also be questioned in regard to the true alternative potential they ofer. Having become new intermediaries in the cultural and creative industries, they seek to integrate and create ‘ecosystems’ using the might of their political, economical and technical apparatuses, which contribute to a normalization of practices. Far from being the very alternatives that dominant discourses suggest, they efectively preempt concepts stemming from alternative theory and practice without engaging with its finalities. Thus, they become mere relays of broader mainstream communication and marketing logics (content individualization, self-branding, B2B and B2C match-making, personal data-mining, etc.). Beyond their apparent heterogeneity, these platforms now clearly tend toward normalization, both in terms of the rationalization of business models and externally, with regard to forms of editing, skills and actions required from project carriers and funders, as well as in terms of visibility of selected projects.

CHAPTER 6

How to cite this book chapter: Rouzé, V. 2019. General Conclusion. In: Rouzé, V. (ed.) Cultural Crowdfunding: Platform Capitalism, Labour and Globalization. Pp. 99–105. London: University of Westminster Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16997/book38.f. License: CC‐BY‐NC‐ND 4.0

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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Criticism of these Innovations

Most of those who have such experiences respond with enthusiasm in the initial phases, and remain positive about them, because they met expectations which were fixed in time. But forms of discontent also become visible.

Firstly, constant involvement in the valorization process requires skills far removed from those required to launch the project. This demands time, energy and above all the possession or construction of a ‘community’ to support the project. Our research shows that, while people are initially very willing to use these platforms to fund their projects, those who have done so once are often hesitant to renew their project. While 83% of project creators state that they would like to use these platforms for funding, only 33% would do so for a second time.

The second concern involves the way the platforms work. MyMajorCompany and Indiegogo, for instance, have been attacked both by project creators and funders, who complain that their financial management and editorial decisions were opaque. Given the business models used, it may be that the argument that such platforms provide an alternative to the cultural industries is invalid. More recently, Patreon received heavy criticism for abruptly revising its methods for charging fees and transferring money. This is the same sort of asymmetric relationship imposed by the Big Five. It is a class relationship which favours the owners of the means of communication: the terms of service can be modified without consultation overnight.

There is also criticism of the platforms’ lack of interest in providing assistance, or in ofering help when litigation arises. The terms of service state clearly that these platforms are not liable in such disputes. Project creators alone are responsible. These disputes are much more frequent for technology projects. Unlike cultural projects, which are often funded by family members, technology projects attract a wider audience, without ofering any guarantee of success. If a project is funded but is not completed then, regardless of the misfortunes encountered during production, the project creator will have to deal with a complaint—and do so without any hope of support from the platform.

Participation in the digital era is described as opening up a wider field of possibilities. But the tensions and contradictions noted so far raise questions about the weaknesses of such evangelism. The first of these questions is about actual citizen participation, which is often more fantasy than reality. Such participation is far from homogeneous. As with Wikipedia (Levrel 2006) or information production (Rebillard 2007), online participation is very uneven, and often follows the 1–10–100 rule: for each person active full-time, ten work only sporadically, and a further hundred merely consult what has been done by those eleven. Referring to this rule, Dominique Cardon (2010) argues that participation establishes a hierarchy between those who are very active, those who are occasionally active, and the vast majority who consult the services or content produced. Financial participation through crowdfunding follows a similar logic. Beyond a few very active funders, who the platforms emphasize and who are even recognized by the ministry of culture as ‘cultural donors’, financial involvement varies greatly, and is not related solely to projects.

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