Amateurization, Prosumerization, Shareology, and DIY: Challenges and Risks in a New Economy

Zum Vortrag:

The professional/amateur divide, along with many other axial oppositions inherited from the XIX century was paramount in the definition of modernity and the social fields that studied it. However, the last decades have made it clear that the distinction is becoming less operative, contributing to some degree of confusion, trust decline and challenges to the legitimacy of some highly reputed social actors. The dynamic between amateurs and professionals is similar to a traditional opposition between incumbents and challengers. Professionals react to the threat posed by amateurs by the adoption of strict deontological codes that guarantee new forms of socialization aimed at creating common voices and unison positions, but mostly at the cost of rigidity, isomorphism and incapacity to face social and economic changes. In the same vein, amateurization is challenging one of the cornerstones of the capitalist society – property rights.

Even at the level of highly educated professionals such as university teachers or doctors, their positioning is becoming more defensive in nature because of the double threat they face. Challenged by ignored facts or new knowledge, they have either to admit that an amateur knows more or is better informed than they are (thus recognizing a certain degree of inferiority), or to claim that they know fully well what is being presented (running the risk to fell prey to clever hoaxers or "provocateurs"). Navigating between the Scylla of assuming ignorance and the Charybdis of pretending to know what does not exist, professionals start losing the reputation they once enjoyed.

Zum Vortragenden:

RAFAEL JORGE MARQUES is assistant Professor at the School of Economics and Management of the University of Lisbon (ISEG-UL). He has a PhD in Economic Sociology (2002), a MBA (1994) and is a sociology graduate (1985). His main areas of research are Moral Sociology, Economic Sociology, Sociological Theories, Business Ethics and Political Sociology. He has a long experience of teaching at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels which started in 1985. He is one of the members of the coordinating team of the PhD in Economic Sociology at ISEG. During his career he was responsible for more than a dozen of different courses at all levels of training and education.

Among his publishing contributions in recent years, we may refer:

Garcia, J. L., J. C. Graca, H. M. Jeronimo, R. Marques, "Portuguese Sociology: a non-cesurial perspective", in Routledge Handbook of European Sociology, Koniordos, Sokratis; Kyrtsis, Alexandros-Andreas (Eds), Routledge, 2014, chap. 23, pp. 357-375.