Why Would You Ever Give Money Through Kickstarter ? - NYTimes.com
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/magazine/why-would-you-ever-give-money-through-kickstarter.html?pagewanted=all
Kickstarter et la culture du cadeau (via @ou_pas sur Twitter)
In his book “Debt: The First 5,000 Years,” the anthropologist David Graeber examines our history of debt and money, concluding, in part, that humans do not naturally tend toward impersonal, reciprocal exchange. Instead, exchange usually develops in cultures first as a part of a larger social and cultural ritual. One of the most compelling cultures Graeber profiles is the Tiv of West Africa, who have very particular rules about exchange. For starters, they believe that bringing an economic transaction to full completion is essentially immoral, or at least frowned upon, because it implies that one party doesn’t want anything to do with the other in the future. If a Tiv man or woman gives you a gift, you are supposed to respond with another gift of slightly greater or lesser value. The outstanding debt between the two of you is a signal that your relationship is going to continue. To respond with a gift of equal value would be to say implicitly that you wish to even things out and draw your relationship to a close.
Kickstarter is run according to a similar form of gift logic. The artists create a short video, explaining themselves and conveying their personality. People contribute to them because they’re friends who know the artist personally; they’re fans engaged in a highly personal if unidirectional relationship with the artist; or simply because they’re intrigued by the project and want some sense of participation in it. (Though it has been estimated that only 10 to 20 percent of contributors find projects this way, through the Kickstarter site rather than through the artists’ own social-media promotions — and on average, these people donate less money.)
#Kickstarter #cadeau #Tiv #crowdfunding #anthropologie