What’s Next? Peer Production Studies?

Peer production is commons-based and commons-oriented voluntary labor with participatory and transparent coordination. It decentralizes both goal setting and execution to networks of individuals. This chapter revisits the dual contribution of peer production to productive efficiency and to social justice. It then reflexively evaluates peer production as an object of study by mapping an online network of peer production researchers and activists and considers whether a field of “peer production studies” has emerged, and should emerge. Peer production principles have also cross-pollinated with collective action, contributing to the renovation of participation in social movements. The activist sector of the field of peer production also features heterogenous clusters of peer production practitioners: software hackers, hardware hackers, biohackers, data justice activists, makers, Wikipedians, or feminist activists.