The politics of contraband - The honor economies of the warez scene

• Lodged within the Internet's increasingly commercialized webs there exists a thriving subculture that has developed an economy all its own. Specifically, a modern gift economy, a consistent and internally rational structure of actively anti-economic behavior that presents an interesting juxtaposition to our contemporary notions of economy. Based on an extended ethnography, this subculture is analyzed as a society ordered by agonistic play and gift-giving as economy. The contribution can best be described as adding ethnographic data from the post-industrial phase in Western economic development to the discussion of gift economies, a discourse that has usually dealt only with archaic communities.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Ekonomi och näringsliv -- Nationalekonomi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Economics and Business -- Economics (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Gift economy

Gifts

Potlatch

Software piracy

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

art (ämneskategori)