Anthropology of/in Circulation

From Free Software to Open Access Anthropology

MMJF: Chris, you've just published what should be an important book, Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software (Duke University Press, 2008), on the history of open source software. One of the agendas that you trace is the way in which this software has the potential for changing how publishing happens, or rather the way in which a battle is happening over control. Can you say a bit about the origins of this research and how it relates to your concerns with open access, scholarly societies, and public sphere theory?

CK: Two Bits is book about the cultural significance of Free Software, not just the lives and ideas of hackers. As such, its proper object is (and my expertise concerns) the circulation of information after the Internet. In the book I claim that by looking at the case of Free Software in detail, as a response to changing conditions of knowledge production, one can understand a much broader problematic of the circulation and authorization of knowledge of all kinds—whether that means traditional book publishing, Wikipedia entries, scientific data, or remixing and mashups in film and video. The core concern of the book is demonstrating how the circulation of knowledge is related to the desire for and possibility of authentic public spheres (or an authentic civil society) constituted independently of conventional forms of power such as that of governments and corporations. The people creating Free Software are not a social movement with particular ideals that they air in public, but a loose affiliation of people focused on the technical and legal basis of public discourse, whatever that may be. So, in an era when the legitimacy of scientific and political knowledge has become frighteningly unstable (such as in the cases of global climate change, weapons of mass destruction or claims about pharmaceutical efficacy and harms), I think Free Software is “good to think with” in classic anthropological terms; it demonstrates how an alternative system of knowledge circulation and legitimation might be constructed out of the systems and structures of the contemporary world. Open Access is a direct outgrowth of Free Software, and so I am (and many of the others assembled here are) naturally familiar with the basic outlines of both movements. At a deep level both respond to the same changed conditions of practice, and aim at similar ideals of creating authentic publics or civil societies that are both independent and powerful.

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MMJF: It seems clear that the American Anthropological Association (AAA), and academic publishing in general, has gotten caught in the middle of this. Last year, in a controversial, quick, and not entirely transparent process, the AAA chose, to the surprise of many in and beyond the association (especially libraries), not to renew its print-publication contract with the University of California Press, and, instead, awarded the new contract to Wiley-Blackwell (WB). There are many issues involved in this negotiation, especially the central one of how we balance dissemination of our work while keeping our budgets in the black. Could you lay out the key structural issues as you see them across the publishing spectrum, including what is specific to anthropology and the AAA, as well as more generally in the scholarly world?

CK: There are two key structural issues that are intimately related: (1) governance of scholarly societies and (2) the changed conditions of publishing. Both of these concerns the AAA directly, because the AAA's business model has depended on publication sales, and any changes to our budget affect the AAA all the way up the line, including issues of governance. My work on Free Software certainly taught me a great deal about the intersection of governance and new technologies—indeed I argue that Free Software wouldn't exist if it weren't for some key historical changes in the possibilities for distribution of software via the Internet combined with tools and practices for governing and coordinating its production. Scholarly work is obviously different—it isn't created in exactly the same fashion as software and it serves different purposes, but the changed conditions are the same: new tools for production and distribution on the Internet. What Free Software effectively did for people was to allow them to ask the question: what do these new conditions make possible that were not possible before? How will the ease of distribution change the meaning of publication?

KC: And not only issues of publication and dissemination: the Free Software movement demonstrated the power of collaboration. It provided anthropologists with a new way to imagine the possibilities of collaboration—beyond collaboration with “informants”—toward a model of collaboration in terms of the creation and distribution of knowledge involving many constituencies. Sites like Flickr allow photo sharing, Wikipedia has altered the mode of knowledge production and Facebook and MySpace have demonstrated the power of social networking through the Internet. These may not immediately seem like tools that have altered anthropology. But think about the idea of uploading your photos from a field site, tagging them, mapping them on Google maps and then allowing others—a range of others—to comment on them. It shifts the way that anthropologists process information, manage data, form arguments, and circulate the materials that they have collected in the field. Not only that, most such sites allow users to define which groups can see what—to define the publics with which they engage. Eric Kansa's project for archaeologists, Open Context (http://www.opencontext.org), is an excellent example.

CK: A key difference between Free Software and scholarly societies, however, is that Free Software did not start inside a 100-year-old organization—it emerged from the voluntary association of individuals interested in achieving similar goals and building technologies in common, standardized and easily modifiable ways. This was an advantage—it's much easier to adapt, change rules and structures at a small scale with no history, than it is for a large-scale organization with firmly set practices.

ARG: I'm not so sure about this point. Free Software was largely started in U.S. research universities and units within them like MIT's Artificial Intelligence Lab and much of the organizational structure of Free Software was inspired by the informal networks of scholarship that are academics' bread and butter. Also, much of the idealism of Free Software was inspired by academic ideals of universal education and freedom of speech and research. So I think we have to understand that when we look at Free Software we are looking into a mirror, and seeing our own values and ideals reflected back at us in a transformed and, I'd say, purified form.

CK: Absolutely. Except that the successful Free Software projects succeeded precisely by discovering that idealism and then reinventing new modes of organizations that were parasitic on or symbiotic with the University (like the Free Software Foundation and the AI lab).

ARG: In a way what Free Software created was a “world without deans” or administrations. The ideals and norms should be familiar to academics even if they don't code software.

CK: Yes, they should! My point is only that publishers and scholarly societies have become large, bureaucratic organizations sedimented in their modes of doing things, sometimes for good reasons (stability, reliability), sometimes for bad (tradition, fear, self-interest). Free Software is a reminder of why these organizations were started in the first place and I think they (and the Open Access movements as well) force us to ask once more, and in detailed ways, what are scholarly societies for? Why did we create them? What do they do for us as scholars and as citizens, and what reasons do they have for existing? These are not rhetorical questions—I sincerely think that most academics and most scholarly society administrative staff cannot really answer these questions because these institutions have become so naturalized—it's like asking what universities are for, it seems to many to be a stupid question.

JJ: Exactly. This point is crucial and it shows up in many domains—in Bowling Alone (2000), for instance, Robert Putnam argued that there has been a general decline of participation in civic associations in the United States. Scholarly societies are graying, the demographics are shifting rapidly upward with fewer young scholars participating actively. Many of these younger scholars are using social networking and collaboration tools instead. This is the context in which debates about AAA governance should be understood. I recently overheard a senior scholar and active AAA leader complaining angrily about all the damn chatter on “these blog things.” Chris is asking the right questions—from my point of view, we are at an inflection point that is proving quite painful for some and quite confusing for many.

CK: My worry is that the AAA will just hole up and ignore discussions like this one, or the debate about anthropology in the military, rather than aggressively engaging in them. These changes are painful—they are rapid, expensive, and seemingly capricious or at least unfair, but the AAA has to deal with them. It cannot continue to perceive its role as the representative and chief communicator on behalf of anthropologists—but rather with them. Whatever model the AAA has for doing that doesn't seem to connect with the changed conditions of our scholarly life right now.

KC: I can't underscore enough how changed those conditions have become. We're talking about Open Access, for instance, as something that affects the AAA publication program. But it is about our modes and practices of circulation on a much wider level. Some people suggest that the “open” in OA is taken to mean free for all in the sense of costless or chaotic (or both!). When you view it that way, of course it will seem at odds with the older institutional structures we know well. Another misunderstanding (often pushed by OA enthusiasts themselves) is that Open Access is synonymous with an “information wants to be free” paradigm—one that fetishizes ‘access’ as an all or nothing proposition. But such a position ignores the nuances of various alternative modes of distribution and circulation that emerge from different valuations of knowledge/information. Working on the Mukurtu project (http://www.mukurtuarchive.org) reinforced for me that there is a continuum of choices between totally open and totally closed and we need to focus on the entire spectrum.

ARG: I've argued this in the past as well—when I mention “Open Access,” people think I'm some sort of utopian with no business sense. In fact, I've argued that the AAA can create quite fine-grained approaches to opening, closing, and charging for content.

KC: True. But before we slip into a discussion of the mechanics of the AAA business model, or debates about legal licenses, I want to insist on how wide-ranging the insights of the Open Access movement are. In fact, it seems odd that anthropologists who routinely study and write about a wide range of systems of cultural circulation and forms of “information management” (broadly conceived) are not at the forefront of these OA debates.

JJ: Indeed, Open Access has special moral relevance for anthropology and related disciplines because we have “source communities” that we are responsible to; eagerly so in cases such as those where Kim and I work (Aboriginal Australia and Native North America), but equally amongst the kinds of people Chris describes in his book.1 The AAA's provision of access to tribal and historically black colleges is a worthy gesture, but it does almost nothing to actually make our work accessible to the incredible diversity of source communities that anthropologists work with. A gold Open Access journal or a robust repository effort would get much closer to solving the “obligation to those we study” problem.

TB: I agree with Kim that the idea of Open Access “questions modes and practices of circulation.” As a journal editor one of the most interesting points I've seen in the debates over Open Access is the one Chris has made about the crucial importance of peer review and editorial input in forging high-quality scholarship. In terms of value creation (and thus where money should be paid), Open Access can take the emphasis off the “product” (completed journal articles) and put it on the “process”—it shows that the real value of journals lies in the work contributed by peer reviewers and editors, not the printers who make the physical copies. At the same time this makes us examine how peer review and editing is getting done, which is to say that “openness” is socially constituted and contingent; it is not in a pregiven relationship with the technology. It may turn out that “Open Access” can, in some cases, lead to relatively closed networks!

KC: And there is no pregiven relationship between openness, anthropologists, and our many collaborators either. We tend to assume that technology is always the most important factor in these debates, that it affects everyone the same way (and is often ascribed agency). But it is important that we slow down and break apart the many nodes that shape the Open Access network including the connections and commitments we may have to collaborators, universities, and other institutions and entities.

CK: In some ways what Tom points to here is the issue of accountability, in the precise sense of having clear and explicit norms for which a person or an entity is obligated to take responsibility. Simply making the process of peer review into an explicit value component provided by an editor, an editorial board, and a community of scholars goes a long way toward clarifying what those anthropologists do, as opposed toward what the AAA or WB does. Disaggregating these functions and being a bit more explicit about what value they have, and what cost they bear, is an enormous step toward thinking clearly about new models of publication after the Internet.