The political imaginaries of blockchain projects: discerning the expressions of an emerging ecosystem

Syed Omer Husain; Alex Franklin; Dirk Roep

doi:10.1007/s11625-020-00786-x

The political imaginaries of blockchain projects: discerning the expressions of an emerging ecosystem

Syed Omer Husain, Alex Franklin, Dirk Roep

Wageningen University and Research Centre

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

34 Citations (Scopus)

101 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

There is a wealth of information, hype around, and research into blockchain’s ‘disruptive’ and ‘transformative’ potential concerning every industry. However, there is an absence of scholarly attention given to identifying and analyzing the political premises and consequences of blockchain projects. Through digital ethnography and participatory action research, this article shows how blockchain experiments personify ‘prefigurative politics’ by design: they embody the politics and power structures which they want to enable in society. By showing how these prefigurative embodiments are informed and determined by the underlying political imaginaries, the article proposes a basic typology of blockchain projects. Furthermore, it outlines a frame to question, cluster, and analyze the expressions of political imaginaries intrinsic to the design and operationalization of blockchain projects on three analytic levels: users, intermediaries, and institutions.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	379–394
Number of pages	16
Journal	Sustainability Science
Volume	15
Issue number	2
Early online date	26 Feb 2020
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-020-00786-x
Publication status	Published - Mar 2020

Bibliographical note

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not
permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Funder

European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Grant Agreement No. 674962

Funding

Funders	Funder number
H2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions	674962

Keywords

Blockchain
Political imaginaries
Prefigurative politics
Decentralization
Technopolitics

Access to Document

10.1007/s11625-020-00786-xLicence: CC BY

PublishedFinal published version, 944 KBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

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The political imaginaries of blockchain projects: discerning the expressions of an emerging ecosystem

Abstract

Bibliographical note

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Keywords

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