Piracy and Cybernetic Society

• In Event: Studying Piracy: Methods and Challenges

Abstract

In academic work, digital pirates and hackers typically fall under the gaze of researchers looking for evidence of social or psychological deviance from socially sanctioned practices of consumerism. The premise of deviance is clearly understandable from the standpoint of structural functionalism or even post-structuralist sociology, as symptomatic of deeper conflicts. There is also a counter-discourse to the symptomatic reading, which seeks out the transformational potentials of pirated media and culture in the identities of new audiences. But what if piracy were instead considered a quintessential expression of cultural reproduction in economies running increasingly on copyright royalties (or promises of future royalties)? The particular exercises and practices of piracy, uncovered and made relatable and understandable in scholarship in popular communication and ethnographic anthropology, provide ample opportunities for a second-order analysis of piracy.

Patrick Burkart is a Professor of Communication at Texas A&M University and Editor-in-Chief of Popular Communication: The International Journal of Media and Culture. His last book was Pirate Politics: The New Information Policy Contests (MIT Press, 2014).

Author

• Patrick Burkart, Texas A&M U