A Maussian bargain: Accumulation by gift in the digital economy

The harvesting of data about people, organizations, and things and their transformation into a form of capital is often described as a process of “accumulation by dispossession,” a pervasive loss of rights buttressed by predatory practices and legal violence. Yet this argument does not square well with the fact that enrollment into digital systems is often experienced (and presented by companies) as a much more benign process: signing up for a “free” service, responding to a “friend’s” invitation, or being encouraged to “share” content. In this paper, we focus on the centrality of gifting and reciprocity to the business model and cultural imagination of digital capitalism. Relying on historical narratives and in-depth interviews with the designers and critics of digital systems, we explain the cultural genesis of these “give-to-get” relationships and analyze the socio-technical channels that structure them in practice. We suggest that the economic relation that develops as a result of a digital gift offering not only masks the structural asymmetry between giver and gifted but also permits the creation of the new commodity of personal data, obfuscates its true value, and naturalizes its private appropriation. We call this unique regime “accumulation by gift.”

Marine biodiversity and ecosystem functioning: what’s known and what’s next?

Marine ecosystems are experiencing rapid and pervasive loss of species. Understanding the consequences of species loss is critical to effectively managing these systems. Over the last several years, numerous experimental manipulations of species richness have been performed, yet existing quantitative syntheses have focused on a just a subset of processes measured in experiments and, as such, have not summarized the full data available from marine systems. Here, we present the results of a meta-analysis of 174 marine experiments from 42 studies that have manipulated the species richness of organisms across a range of taxa and trophic levels and analysed the consequences for various ecosystem processes (categorised as production, consumption or biogeochemical fluxes). Our results show that, generally, mixtures of species tend to enhance levels of ecosystem function relative to the average component species in monoculture, but have no or negative effect on functioning relative to the ‘highest-performing' species. These results are largely consistent with those from other syntheses, and extend conclusions to ecological functions that are most commonly measured in the marine realm (e.g. nutrient release from sediment bioturbation). For experiments that manipulated three or more levels of richness, we attempted to discern the functional form of the BEF relationship. We found that, for response variables categorised as consumption, a power-function best described the relationship, which is also consistent with previous findings. However, we identified a linear relationship between richness and production. Combined, our results suggest that losses of species will, on average, tend to alter the functioning of marine ecosystems. We outline several research frontiers that will allow us to more fully understand how, why, and when diversity may drive the functioning of marine ecosystems.

Marine biodiversity and ecosystem functioning: what’s known and what’s next?

Marine ecosystems are experiencing rapid and pervasive loss of species. Understanding the consequences of species loss is critical to effectively managing these systems. Over the last several years, numerous experimental manipulations of species richness have been performed, yet existing quantitative syntheses have focused on a just a subset of processes measured in experiments and, as such, have not summarized the full data available from marine systems. Here, we present the results of a meta-analysis of 174 marine experiments from 42 studies that have manipulated the species richness of organisms across a range of taxa and trophic levels and analysed the consequences for various ecosystem processes (categorised as production, consumption or biogeochemical fluxes). Our results show that, generally, mixtures of species tend to enhance levels of ecosystem function relative to the average component species in monoculture, but have no or negative effect on functioning relative to the ‘highest-performing' species. These results are largely consistent with those from other syntheses, and extend conclusions to ecological functions that are most commonly measured in the marine realm (e.g. nutrient release from sediment bioturbation). For experiments that manipulated three or more levels of richness, we attempted to discern the functional form of the BEF relationship. We found that, for response variables categorised as consumption, a power-function best described the relationship, which is also consistent with previous findings. However, we identified a linear relationship between richness and production. Combined, our results suggest that losses of species will, on average, tend to alter the functioning of marine ecosystems. We outline several research frontiers that will allow us to more fully understand how, why, and when diversity may drive the functioning of marine ecosystems.

Sin, Despair, and the Other: The Works of Soren Kierkegaard

Soren Kierkegaard, the mystic existentialist, questions the role of despairing human life in his celebrated text, <em><span style="font-family: mceinline;">The <span style="font-family: mceinline;">Sickness Unto Death</span></span></em>. In a disquitision both persuasive and troubling, he insists that despair, far from being a state of consciousness which should be avoided, is in fact a spiritual mood that brings the individual dialectically closer to the divine. But how can we accept the paradoxes of faith that cause such terrible despair? Our inability to come to terms with the elements of Christianity that Kierkegaard himself calls offensive, such as original sin and God's total authority over man, lead to a pervasive loss of self-consciousness that Kierkegaard sees as the epidemic of modern civilization. Like a physician, Kierkegaard diagnoses our sickness, and his prescription for recovery is paradoxical and provoking.