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Understanding Representation Jen Webb

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International Journal of Cultural Studies
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Beating them at their Own Game

The Cultural Politics of the Open Software Movement and the Gift Economy

Kirsty Best

University of Ottawa, Canada, kbest{at}uottawa.ca

This article interrogates the validity of claims that the open software movement provides a substantial alternative to intellectual property and a challenge to the encroaching commodification of digital space. The open software movement is participating in ongoing language wars of the new communication technologies; it is attempting to redefine the social and economic value of information and computer networking, and as such does present a challenge to digital commodification. However, this challenge is not mounted through traditional and public-oriented modes of cultural politics but instead through personal and bodily re-imaginings and a direct engagement with the new technologies. Indeed, similarities exist between discourses of the open software movement and capitalist discourses of flexible work and the reinvention of labour as temporary, transient and empowered. In sum, the open software movement can be considered to enable forms of visceral democracy, and its political potential is capacitated but also restricted by this form of cultural politics.

Key Words: computer-networked communication • cultural politics • digital commodification • flexible work discourse • gift economy • language wars • open software movement • visceral democracy

International Journal of Cultural Studies, Vol. 6, No. 4, 449-470 (2003)
DOI: 10.1177/136787790364004
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