Profit and Gift in the Digital Economy

Our economy is neither overwhelmingly capitalist, as Marxist political economists argue, nor overwhelmingly a market economy, as mainstream economists assume. Both approaches ignore vast swathes of the economy, including the gift, collaborative and hybrid forms that coexist with more conventional capitalism in the new digital economy. Drawing on economic sociology, anthropology of the gift and heterodox economics, this book proposes a groundbreaking framework for analysing diverse economic systems: a political economy of practices. The framework is used to analyse Apple, Wikipedia, Google, YouTube and Facebook, showing how different complexes of appropriative practices bring about radically different economic outcomes. Innovative and topical, Profit and Gift in the Digital Economy focusses on an area of rapid social change while developing a theoretically and politically radical framework that will be of continuing long-term relevance. It will appeal to students, activists and academics in the social sciences.

• Provides deep insight into the workings of some of the highest profile sites on the Internet, enabling readers to understand digital phenomena that are becoming increasingly central to our lives and to courses across the social sciences
• Shows how interacting complexes of practices produce a variety of different economic forms, and therefore the possibility of there being many different ways of organising our economy
• Features analyses of Apple, Wikipedia, Google, YouTube and Facebook