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- ♻️ What are prosumers?
♻️ What are prosumers?
& are they making economies more collaborative?
Today’s newsletter is about the curious concept of the “prosumer.”
On the surface, it’s a simple idea:
Prosumers are essentially individuals who actively participate in producing what they consume.
One of the best examples of prosumers are people who participate in renewable energy grids by having solar panels on their roofs.
They provide energy for themselves and others on the same grid, helping to reduce costs and reliance on burning fossil fuels to power their homes.
But the prosumer idea is more than just that.
It can also be about building self-sustaining networks that produce knowledge, with groups organizing based on common interests or goals.
These groups enable members to share or gain specialized knowledge and expertise about the products or services they consume.
Some diverse examples are:
content creators & influencers 🎥
online knowledge platform contributors (i.e. Wikipedia) 📚
sharing economy participants 🚗
open-source software contributors 👨💻
All of these prosumer networks leverage digital technology & online platforms to boost their socio-economic influence.
This influence blurs the traditional line between consumers and producers in modern economies.
Sociologist George Ritzer said that prosumption involves:
“the interrelationship of production and consumption where it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish one from the other.”
What impact do prosumers have?
The idea of prosumption undermines traditional assumptions about the relationship between companies (producers) and individuals (consumers).
Prosumers impact the modern world by influencing the behavior of companies and reshaping how members of the public relate to corporate entities — and each other.
Prosumer influence is generally believed to increase the agency of individuals by counteracting “consumer culture.”
Some would argue that consumer culture dumbs us down by manipulating us into “desiring” the things that companies advertise to us.
Prosumers can provide a counterweight to this by pressuring businesses to be more collaborative and to emphasize customizability.
As social scientist Paul Willis said:
“Prosumers are known for finding meanings and identities never meant to be there and defying simple nostrums that bewail the manipulation or passivity of consumers.”
This has encouraged many companies to shift their business models away from selling finished products and toward building ecosystems and platforms.
Prosumers have also played major roles in social initiatives focused on transparency and consumer rights, such as the right-to-repair movement. (see below)
In the digital space, prosumers help maintain technologies that foster participatory cultures based on freely accessible knowledge and public discourse. (see a guide to building knowledge networks below)
Where did prosumers come from?
For most of human history, individuals lived subsistence lifestyles that required communities to work together to survive.
Individuals, households, and agricultural communities produced almost all the food, clothes, and basic tools they consumed.
The rise in urbanization and mass production during the Industrial Revolution created sharper distinctions between producers and consumers.
As law professor Jane K. Winn said,
“Under the conditions of the Industrial Revolution, society could be divided into “consumers” and “producers” because the activities of consuming and producing could be clearly distinguished.”
Is prosumer culture a good thing?
Prosumer culture has become more popular in the U.S. as people become disillusioned with big companies & social media platforms.
Instead of being passive consumers of corporate culture or slaves to social media’s content algorithms, people are creating new networks of self-reliant individuals to satisfy their needs for goods, services, and companionship.
The prosumer concept is also intimately related to new economic ideas like the circular economy.
The circular economy is a model of production & consumption that involves sharing, leasing, reusing, repairing, refurbishing, and recycling existing materials and products as long as possible.
Prosumer culture combines sustainability, community organizing, and self-sufficiency — values that have been with us for all of human history.
It shouldn’t be surprising that we are rediscovering some of these values in prosumerism as we attempt to navigate life in a world that is dominated by major corporations and media companies.
ART OF THE DAY
Cooperative Planning and Developing, Wauseon, Ohio by Jack Greitzer. 1974.
