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This article provides a history of the treatment of consumer collectives in the social sciences literature. It highlights some of the insights derived from recent work in consumer research ...

This article draws on fieldwork form Delhi’s garment and electronics bazaars to articulate an alternative perspective on the role of brands in the global bazaar economy. Knockoffs and counterfeit brands have mostly been viewed as problematic manifestations of counterfeiting and piracy, or framed in terms of authenticity or marginal practices of imitation. In this article, we suggest that bazaar brands also function as central to a growing popular innovation system able to provide material goods as well as immaterial experiences to the world’s poorer consumers in ways that stay in close contacts with the mediated fluctuations of popular affects. Bazaar brands develop a unique relationship with consumers based on an ability to seize the moment rather than the creation of enduring loyalties. We suggest that bazaar brands can be understood as central to an emerging postcapitalist consumer economy that has been substantially empowered by the spread of digital technologies.

Acidity is considered a key factor in zeotype-based catalysts. Here, the effect of acidity in the methanol-to-DME reaction is investigated using first-principles calculations and microkinetic modeling, thereby establishing a connection between acididity and kinetics. The CHA, MFI, and BEA frameworks are investigated, and the acidity of the Bronsted hydroxyl group is varied by exchanging a T-site Si with Al, B, Ga, and Fe in the zeolites, along with SAPO-34, Mg-AlPO-34, Zn-AlPO-34, and Ti-AlPO-34 zeotypes with the CHA structure, and as a result, the Bronsted hydroxyl group spans a wide range of acidity. Clear trends in adsorption and transition-state energies are found and by means of linear regression, we obtain scaling relations of relevant energies that are later used as input in a mean-field steady-state microkinetic model. This study confirms that both the shift in frequency of the Bronsted hydroxyl stretch, ΔfOH, caused by adsorption of CO and the ammonia adsorption energy, ΔEammonia, on the Bronsted site are equivalent descriptors for the acidity of the Bronsted acid site and the reactivity of the different zeotypes relevant for the methanol-to-DME reaction. It further shows that a full microkinetic model is needed to accurately describe the reaction over the whole range of temperatures. However, if focusing on low temperatures, where the associative mechanism is dominating the reaction, a simple rate-determining step model is actually able to describe the results with satisfying agreement (deviation of the rate by less than a factor of two).

Desorption products from zeolites with medium (MFI) and small (CHA) pores and with and without ion-exchanged copper were studied during linear heating after the pre-adsorption of methanol using a chemical flow reactor with a gas phase Fourier transform infrared spectrometer. The methanol desorption profiles were deconvoluted and compared with those predicted from first-principles calculations. In situ diffuse reflectance infrared Fourier transform spectroscopy was used to study the samples during methanol desorption following a step-wise increase of the sample temperature. It is shown that well-dispersed copper species in the Cu-zeolite samples interact more strongly with methanol and its derivatives as compared to the bare zeolites, resulting in methanol desorption at higher temperatures. Moreover, the introduction of Cu leads to CO formation and desorption in larger amounts at lower temperatures compared to the bare zeolites. The formation and desorption of dimethyl ether (DME) from pre-adsorbed methanol takes place at different temperatures depending on both the influence of Cu and the zeolite topology. The Cu sites in zeolites lead to higher DME formation/desorption temperatures, while a small shift of DME desorption towards higher temperatures is observed for the CHA framework structure compared to the MFI framework structure.

A large fraction of the global natural gas reserves is in the form of sour gas, i.e. contains hydrogen sulfide (H2S) and carbon dioxide (CO2), and needs to be sweetened before utilization. The traditional amine-based separation process is energy-intensive, thereby lowering the value of the sour gas. Thus, there is a need to find alternative processes to remove, e.g., hydrogen sulfide. Mo6S8 clusters are promising candidates for transforming methane (CH4) and hydrogen sulfide into methanethiol (CH3SH) and dimethyl sulfide (CH3SCH3), which are high-value sulfur-containing products that can be further used in the chemical industry. Here first-principles microkinetics is used to investigate the activity and selectivity of bare and promoted (K, Ni, Cl) Mo6S8. The results show that methanethiol is produced via two different pathways (direct and stepwise), while dimethyl sulfide is formed via a competing pathway in the stepwise formation of methanethiol. Moreover, there is an increase in activity and a decrease in selectivity when adding an electropositive promoter (K), whereas the reverse behaviour is observed when adding an electronegative promoter (Cl). When adding Ni there is also a decrease in activity and an increase in selectivity; however, Ni is acting as an electron donor. The results provide insights and guidance as to what catalyst formulation is preferred for the removal of hydrogen sulfide in sour gas.

Climate change is perhaps the greatest challenges that human civilization now faces. To a large extent, attempts at mitigating or addressing climate change are performed by Changemaker ventures: small scale, entrepreneurial ventures that attempt to combine market orientation with social or ecological value-creation. The Changemaker phenomenon is particularly prevalent in the new food economy, where it is driving a fundamental restructuring of rural economies in Europe as well as in Asia and the Americas. But how do market oriented entrepreneurial ventures respond to climate change? Based on six years of interviews and participant observation with Italian rural Changemakers this article suggests that in the absence of collective organization, the Changemaker response to climate change is market by a paralysing perplexity, similar to that of resource-poorer peasants in the South. Without a strong forms of collective solidarity and deliberation the experience of climate change cannot be incorporated within a coherent view of the future. The results can be understood as a ‘weak signal’ that has implications for the study of peasant responses to climate change as well as for theoretical reflexions on the viability of changemaker-style social enterprises in promoting coherent strategies for survival in the Anthropocene.

To better understand the state of community research in other disciplines, and to consider how the contexts of contemporary market societies are changing both com- munities, and knowledge making in respect of communities

Critical accounts suggest that the ‘sharing economy’ is mainly an ideological entity, bringing together a wide range of diverse empirical phenomena that have little in common, apart from their common adherence to an ideology of ‘sharing’. This article suggests that the sharing economy can be empirically understood as instances of peer production attempting to ‘come to market’ via the use of a common ‘sharing fiction’. Analysing the origins and present functions of this fiction, the author suggests that we can conceptualize differentials in economic power within the sharing economy in terms of the work that goes into the reproduction of this sharing fiction and the ability to capitalize on it in terms of price differentials.

The dynamic interaction of methanol and its derivatives with Cu-exchanged ZSM-5 during methanol temperature-programmed desorption from 30 to 450 °C has been investigated using in situ diffuse reflectance infrared Fourier transform spectroscopy and first-principles calculations. The results emphasize that defects in the framework structure of the zeolite and Bronsted acid sites constitute ion-exchange sites for Cu ions. The Cu sites introduced in ZSM-5 actively interact with methanol adsorbed at moderate temperature, i.e., below 250 °C, and take roles in further oxidation of the adsorbed species to formate and CO. Moreover, spectra recorded at higher temperatures, i.e., above 300 °C, after adsorption of methanol show strong interaction between methoxy groups and the zeolite framework, suggesting that, under mild conditions, proton extraction for methanol production during direct partial oxidation of methane to methanol over Cu-ZSM-5 is necessary.

The idea to dedicate a Special Issue to the ethnography of algorithms follows from the need to unfold the potential of ethnography in studying how algorithms are imbued with culture, and to collect some empirical examples of the possible ways this connection may be retraced. On the one side, algorithms can be conceived as cultural objects because are laden of beliefs, values, visions, and the background knowledge of their designers; on the other side, algorithms can be regarded as cultural objects because they are also part of users’ daily practices. The different ways of entangling algorithms and culture may require different research strategies that we could name “ethnography of algorithms in the making» and «ethnography of algorithms in use». They are not properly two distinctive research strategies, but they may be seen as two end points of the same continuum, where various intermediate forms of ethnography may be placed.

Direct processing of sour, e.g. containing large amounts of acidic H2S and/or CO2 molecules, natural gas is of direct interest as vast amounts of it are available and accessible but are underutilized. While sour natural gas is still treated using energy-intensive amine absorption/desorption, here we propose and describe a first step in catalytically producing a value added chemical and energy carrier, CH3SH and H-2, respectively. For this purpose, we performed Density Functional Theory (DFT) and microkinetic modelling of CH4 and H2S reaction pathways to form CH3SH and H-2 as a first step in elucidating complex yet not explored pathways in oxygen-free sour gas reforming. For this purpose, we utilized bare unpromoted and K-or Nipromoted Mo6S8 clusters. CH4 dissociation was found to be the rate-determining step above 1100 K on Ni-promoted Mo6S8 while H-2 formation was the rate-determining step on the bare and K-promoted Mo6S8. At lower reaction temperatures between 800 and 1100 K, CH3SH formation becomes an important step, especially on Ni-Mo6S8. This method presents an interesting route of direct catalytic sour natural gas processing which potentially leads to high-value hydrocarbons, such as ethylene, using CH3SH as a reactive intermediate.

Direct methane-to-methanol conversion is a desired process whereby natural gas is transformed into an energy-rich liquid. It has been realised at ambient pressure and temperature in metal ion-exchanged zeolites, where especially copper-exchanged ZSM-5 has shown promising results. The nature of the active sites in these systems is, however, still under debate. The activity has been assigned to a [Cu-O-Cu]2+ motif. One remaining question is whether this motif is general and also active in other metal-exchanged zeolites. Herein, we use first-principles microkinetic modelling to analyse the methane-to-methanol reaction on the [Cu-O-Cu]2+ motif, for Cu and other metals. First, we identify the cluster model size needed to accurately describe the dimer motif. Starting from the [Cu-O-Cu]2+ site, the metal ions are then systematically substituted with Ni, Co, Fe, Ag and Au. The results show that activation of Ag and Au dimer sites with oxygen is endothermic and therefore unlikely, whereas for Cu, Ni, Co and Fe, the activation is possible under realistic conditions. According to the kinetic simulations, however, the dimer motif is a plausible candidate for the active site for Cu only. For Ni, Co and Fe, close-to-infinite reaction times or unreasonably high temperatures are required for sufficient methane conversion. As Ni-, Co- and Fe-exchanged ZSM-5 are known to convert methane to methanol, these results indicate that the Cu-based dimer motif is not an appropriate model system for these metals.

As transportation continues to increase world-wide, there is a need for more efficient utilization of fossil fuel. One possibility is direct conversion of the solution gas bi-product CH4 into an energy-rich, easily usable liquid fuel such as CH3OH. However, new catalytic materials to facilitate the methane-to-methanol reaction are needed. Using density functional calculations, the partial oxidation of methane is investigated over the small-pore copper-exchanged zeolite SSZ-13. The reaction pathway is identified and the energy landscape elucidated over the proposed motifs Z2[Cu2O] and Z2[Cu2OH]. It is shown that the Z2[Cu2O] motif has an exergonic reaction path, provided water is added as a solvent for the desorption step. However, a micro-kinetic model shows that neither Z2[Cu2O] nor Z2[Cu2OH] has any notable activity under the reaction conditions. These findings highlight the importance of the detailed structure of the active site and that the most stable motif is not necessarily the most active.

This article investigates the potential role of the commons in the future transformation of digital capitalism by comparing it to the role of the commons in the transition to capitalism. In medieval and early modern Europe the commons supported gradual social and technological innovation as well as a new civil society organized around the combination of commons-based petty production and new ideals of freedom and equality. Today the new commons generated by the global real subsumption of ordinary life processes are supporting similar forms of commons-based petty production. After positioning the new petty producers within the framework of the crisis of digital capitalism, the article concludes by extrapolating a number of hypothetical scenarios for their role in its future transformation.

Sociologists and political scientists suggest that community is increasingly lacking in contemporary life. At the same time, consumer researchers have long suggested that brands and commodities can act as a source of community and ethics. In recent years a number of communitarian productive networks have emerged in sectors like food, software, fashion, design and social enterprise. Such communities of commons-based peer production have transformed the role of consumer communities by making communitarian relations count also in the material production of goods and services. In this paper we examine the ‘neorural’ communitarian networks located in Southern Italy. We suggest that the creation of community around high quality, ‘authentic’ agricultural produce serves a dual role. On the one hand such communities singularise agricultural products and enable them to acquire market value as goods. At the same time, communities provide space for a new politics of things oriented towards pragmatic social tr...

The becoming productive of consumer culture has been an important theme for social research. Within neoliberal discourse, the link between consumer culture and new forms of immaterial production has been conceptualized as “creativity.” This paper uses the experience of Bangkok's fashion markets to begin to articulate an alternative understanding of the relation between consumer culture and immaterial production, a different kind of “creativity.” We suggest that Bangkok's fashion markets manifest a kind of creativity where innovation is highly socialized, as opposed to being oriented around the notion of individual genius and individual intellectual property; where participation is popular as opposed to elite-based and where the ambiguous relation between creation and commercial success that is intrinsic to Western notions of creativity is replaced by an embrace of markets and commerce as vehicles for self-expression. Bangkok's fashion markets represent an example of a market-based commons centered innovat...

John Lie is an accomplished sociologist and a renowned expert on Korean national identity and the Korean Diaspora. He is also a prolific writer on social theory. His book on K-pop, is an exhaustive...

This paper investigates political homophily on Twitter. Using a combination of machine learning and social network analysis we classify users as Democrats or as Republicans based on the political content shared. We then investigate political homophily both in the network of reciprocated and nonreciprocated ties. We find that structures of political homophily differ strongly between Democrats and Republicans. In general, Democrats exhibit higher levels of political homophily. But Republicans who follow official Republican accounts exhibit higher levels of homophily than Democrats. In addition, levels of homophily are higher in the network of reciprocated followers than in the nonreciprocated network. We suggest that research on political homophily on the Internet should take the political culture and practices of users seriously.

International audience; This paper addresses crowd-based dynamics of value creation in participatory culture. Based on a corpus of 114,931 tweets associated with One Direction and similar boy bands, we draw on recent theories of crowd-based organization in digital media as well as classical crowd theory to build a theoretical model of collective value creation. In our model, the achievement of value in the form of trending and individual microcelebrity is based on affectively driven processes of imitation, rather than on rational evaluation and deliberation. We contrast this model with established accounts of microcelebrity and draw out implications for theories of crowd-based organization in digital media and for theories of participatory culture and collaborative value creation in general.

This article uses the case of social entrepreneurs or “Changemakers” to investigate the phenomenon of self-branding among knowledge workers. We argue that self-branding is not only the effect of a neoliberal regime of governmentality, but that this phenomenon could also represent the seed of a new and more rational value regime that could provide the basis for a more adequate institutional framework for an emerging economy of immaterial labor. We explore the political and ethical implications of this suggestion.

This article will make one argument and one suggestion. The first part will argue that practices of customer co-production raise a serious challenge to established theories of value. The second part will suggest that these new practices, although widely disparate in nature, do move according to a common logic of value, and that this new value logic can be fruitfully organized around the concept of ‘ethics’. Let me clarify already here that I intend ‘ethics’ in the sense of the ability to create the values that ‘make a multitude into a community’ (Marazzi, 2008: 66). As I will further elaborate below, this concept of ethics is closer to the original Aristotelian sense of that term, than to the Kantian ethics that has been central to modern, enlightenment discourse. My use of ‘ethics’, in this, Aristotelian sense, is not taken out of the blue. Rather, I propose that a notion of value based on ethics is already emerging within a range of cutting-edge economic practices involving aspects of customer co-production — from corporate social responsibility (CSR) to Open Source production and brand valuation. In other words, I am not proposing a new notion of value as I would like it to be, but I am pointing at actually existing trends and developments. However, since these developments are emergent they cannot be grasped as fully formed facts. My ambition in the second part of this paper is thus limited to suggesting a theoretical framework within which these emergent tendencies can be read in a novel way; and from which a more definite shape can be discerned.

This article analyses labour conditions among creative workers in the Milan fashion industry. Employing both qualitative and quantitative methods, the article shows how workers in the Milan fashion industry are generally underpaid and overworked. Despite such dire conditions, fashion work is generally considered gratifying and workers express high levels of satisfaction. The second part of the article attempts to unravel this paradox, departing from McRobbie’s conception of passionate work. It suggests that the promotion of creativity as a desired form of life in the contemporary metropolis has shaped new forms of identity related to symbolic remuneration for work.

Social production has risen on the agenda of the social sciences. Ye t most observers have been reluctant to confront the question of the value of these practices. Instead they have mostly been characterised as ‘free’, ‘common’ or beyond value. This article argues that far from being free, social production abides to a particular value logic, an ‘ethical economy’ where value is related not to the input of labour time, but to the ability to give productive organisation to a diffuse connectivity or, which is the same thing, to transform weak ties into affectively significant strong ones. The article concludes that progressive politics should work with this new emerging value logic.

In this article, the author argues that customer coproduction should be understood as an expression of a large-scale trend toward the increasing power and relevance of social production. Social production consists in the self-organized systems of (mostly immaterial) production that have evolved around the diffusion of networked information and communication technologies. An analysis of the genealogy of social production is shared; this includes tracing it to the process of re-mediation of social relations put in motion by the expansion of the capitalist economy into the fields of culture and consciousness and the concomitant socialization of production relations. The author then argues that social production, including customer coproduction, follows a very particular economic logic—that is, an ethical economy where value is related to social impact rather than monetary accumulation. A detailed analysis of the logic of this ethical economy is offered; it draws out some implications for the successful management of ever more customer-centric brands, whereby the consumers are directly involved in the processes that add value.

The concept of brand community has been used to understand how consumers create value around brands online. Recently consumer researchers have begun to debate the relevance of this concept for understanding brand-related communication on social media. Based on a data set of 8949 tweets about Louis Vuitton gathered on Italian Twitter in 2013, this article addresses these discussions by developing the alternative concept of brand publics that differ from brand communities in three important ways. First, brand publics are social formations that are not based on interaction but on a continuous focus of interest and mediation. Second, participation in brand publics is not structured by discussion or deliberation but by individual or collective affect. Third, in brand publics consumers do not develop a collective identity around the focal brand; rather the brand is valuable as a medium that can offer publicity to a multitude of diverse situations of identity. The conclusion suggests that brand publics might be part of a social media–based consumer culture where publicity rather than identity has become a core value.

This article suggests that Facebook embodies a new logic of capitalist governance, what has been termed the ‘social logic of the derivative’. The logic of the derivative is rooted in the now dominant financial level of the capitalist economy, and is mediated by social media and the algorithmic processing of large digital data sets. This article makes three precise claims: First, that the modus operandi of Facebook mirrors the operations of derivative financial instruments. Second, that the algorithms that Facebook uses share a genealogy with those of derivative financial instruments – both are outcomes of the influence of the ‘cyber sciences’ on managerial practice in the post-war years. Third, that the future potential of Facebook lies in its ability to apply the logic of derivatives to the financial valuation of ordinary social relations, thus further extending the process of financialization of everyday life.