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through the framework of cultural production may benefit practitioners. In particular, it may help practitioners think through the problem of gender and racial inequality that endanger open source communities and Wikipedia by alienating new participants, in particular women. As many critics have argued and various researchers have shown, these projects often fail when it comes to living up to their professed liberal value of equality: seen in the framework offered here, what is happening is a classic dynamic of fields, namely a conservatism that favors existing power structures, including existing class and gender inequalities. As Bourdieu argues, determinations of cultural capital (i.e., what constitutes valuable traits, knowledge, or skills within a particular social context) and symbolic capital (i.e., acts of recognizing valuable work or contributions) are never neutral, and often serve to reproduce the power of a dominant class. This can be seen at the level of peer production projects as well, where for example Wikipedia’s culture – wrapped up as it is in the social norm of fiery debate, the celebration of technical skill and the lack of patience for new participants who don’t know or understand all the rules and policies in place – is incredibly unwelcoming for newcomers and in particular women.
Much the same can be said of many FOSS communities. These tendencies were notably nurtured in the early, male‐dominated development of these projects, and by naturalizing such “culture” and demanding that new volunteers adapt to it, these projects are now justifiably facing harsh criticism. The most critical voices would likely argue that the cultures of open source software and Wikipedia are rotten at the core, and this may be true. Despite this, seen in the framework of field theory, I would argue that we should also see some ambivalence here: peer production projects tend to have an inspired, passionate group who codify their shared identity and sense of autonomy in various cultural norms, guidelines, and practices. These projects, like any other form of social action, are not immune to hierarchy and the cultures of these projects will tend to favor those who are in power. However, the conservatism of upholding a project’s original values can arguably also be progressive, such as when Spanish Wikipedians forked the project in response to co‐founder Larry Sanger suggesting that Wikipedia would take on advertising (Tkacz, 2014). In doing so, these Wikipedians demonstrated how such a move would destroy the integrity of the project (both in the sense of its authenticity and unity), and thus successfully argued against it in line with a shared sense of the project’s purpose. Perhaps the question facing these communities is not how to replace their liberal values, social structures, and norms wholesale, but how to renew their sense of project autonomy as well as their corresponding cultures in line with an ethic of inclusivity and open‐mindedness.
Acknowledgments
Research for this chapter was supported by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) as part of the research program Innovational Research Incentives Scheme Veni in connection with the project “The Web that Was” (275‐45‐006).
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