Parallel visions of peer production

Abstract

The ‘parallel visions' proposed by the contributing authors to this issue are intended to challenge the dominant themes of capitalist organisation and production through an in-depth look at peer-to-peer production and the development of software and sharing - a movement which, the authors argue, is based on new visions for value systems, ethics and governance. We have organised their contributions into sections based on the relevant aspects of these economies in order to look into the politics of how these networks are governed, the likelihood of new avenues for worker organisation, and the possibilities for entirely new models of economies that can be classified outside the hegemony of contemporary neoliberal capitalism.