Материал: disser_arhipov

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objects – coins, banknotes, etc. or information – information about the state of a bank account, electronic wallet, etc.), although their meaning is symbolic, and other generalized symbolic intermediaries, in order to be communicated or expressed, need some form. In today’s information culture and in the light of the objectives of this study which is partly disclosed in this paper, these are, above all, information in digital form. And just as money, in the sense of a generalized symbolic media, can take on a variety of forms – not necessarily legitimatized coins and banknotes, but also obligations expressed in the free wording of the treaty – so too can power and, for example, influence be expressed in a very specific subject of the relationship – say, in a satirical cartoon. It follows from all this that not every such subject, object or form has “socio-currency value”.

Thus, the subject matters of relations, not the relations themselves, may or may not have “socio-currency value”, i.e. they may represent a way of expressing a generalized symbolic media and act as an external referent of value. If an object has “socio-currency value”, it should be considered as “serious”, and if not, as “not serious”. This predetermines one of the two criteria for the semantic limits of law, which, by way of example, can be explained as follows If the subject is “not serious” – i.e. it does not express any money, power, influence, obligation, or any other generalized symbolic media

– while interpreting the relevant legal norms we need to enter the area of “penumbra”, and if at the same time, as will be shown later in this study, the structure of the subject is “of fantasy nature”, we move on and, crossing the area of “penumbra” we face absurdity, where the application of law is impossible, because it is contrary to common sense, it destroys the (social) legal reality and breaks the rules of the language game called “law”.

The “test” for socio-currency value itself consists of two mandatory elements applied consequently. Firstly, it is the object’s communicative meaning, defined by the context of social interaction. Secondly, it is the convertibility of this communicative value into an arbitrary generalized symbolic medium. In theoretical sociology and political science, only two such symbolic media have been developed with sufficient clarity: money and political power. The others are somewhat vague, but this is not of fundamental importance for the efficiency of this test. Actually, it is not even necessary to qualify the initial subject of public relations from the point of view of a certain type of generalized symbolic media, it is enough to prove its convertibility. If, for example, a statement contained in a game chat room, by its objective qualities, corresponds to the features of a civil law offer (or a proto-offer, taking into account the discussion of the issue of the possibility of making deals related to virtual property),469 then the content of the statement

469 “Proto” (not “quasi”, for example), as such a message may or may not be an offer from the perspective of particular civil law approaches. For example, user agreements generally prohibit users from participating in the circulation of virtual property for real money. However, this position is not unambiguous, as such user interactions can be seen as examples of agreements for the provision of services on a payment-for-services basis (for acts involving the information system – games), which may in turn be considered to be outside the possible jurisdiction of the user agreement. The relevant provisions of such agreements may in such situations be regarded as limiting the civil capacity of users and therefore null and void. However, for the present study it is not important to do so, but that the very fact of such reasoning means that the law is applied to these relations, since the original statement has money (a generalized symbolic medium) as a reference. Therefore, the resolution of the situation by private instruments of civil law is a subject of legal argumentation proper, and it is no longer absurd to address them in a game context due to the “currency value” of the subject of the relations under consideration, which in this case directly refers to money as a generalized symbolic medium.

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or the statement itself may be regarded as a subject of social relations, which has a communicative meaning correlated with a generalized symbolic media.

Equally clear in this approach now is the situation with other symbolic media, not as “straightforward” as money, for example, with the political power. A statement that calls for participation in an unsanctioned demonstration, even if it is contained in a game chat room, breaks the “magic circle” on the first criterion – the seriousness of the object – precisely because it has a socio-currency value. A more subtle example in the context in question, however, implies a statement that does not in itself refer to the obvious – money or a demonstration – but is an example of something less obvious. Influence is probably a good example. For instance, in a game chat room, there may be communication involving the creation of an institution of virtual social reality, such as a clan or guild. From the perspective of theoretical sociology, this case is an example of the use of influence as part of the social capital of the organizer(-s). Potentially, the influence of the leader of a wellfunctioning game clan can be converted into both money (e.g., to keep the clan functioning as a compensation for the organizer’s time or expenses) and political power (e.g., if the clan leader uses his or her influence to engage clan members in some political activity).

Applying the law in such cases would no longer be exclusively absurd, as would be the case with an ordinary “sale and purchase” of virtual property under the rules and/or using game mechanics to meet the in-game needs of a game character. In such situations, it is necessary to take into account the second criterion – fantasy nature of the structure of the object (at the later stage of the research we have dismissed the idea of fantasy nature of the structure in favor of the fantasy nature of the function – V.A.), which is discussed later in this study. If the this criterion is satisfied, then the process of weighing values or similar actions is necessary to assess the possibility of applying real law to such relationships. If the subject, being serious, is also structurally and functionally adequate rather than fantasized, then the law can be applied without the implementation of intellectual processes of “weighing” values – then it will be a classic, common case of application of the law, fully consistent with the notions of common sense».470

This approach overlaps with the approach of J. Huizinga himself (who was working on the topic well before the emergence of digital games and the peak of the development of the concept of generalized symbolic media in theoretical sociology, but coming slightly ahead of T. Parsons in his work “Homo Ludens”) and his subsequent interpretations in the works of key authors in the field of game studies. For example, E. Castronova writes:

470 See: Arkhipov V.V. Computer Games, «Magic Circle» and Semantic Limits of Law // International Journal of Cultural Research. 2019. 1 (34). P. 73–87. It should also be noted with interest that the concept of “social and currency value” in the presented interpretation organically corresponds to the actual market of tokens used in the tools of cryptocurrencies and ICO. Moreover, the borrowed term “token” itself, which is already used in the modern sense of the word, is a natural metaphor of the subject of relations having “currency value” in the sense of a generalized symbolic media, because that is where the purpose of the token is expressed. This example is extremely important to justify the relevance of the approach proposed in this study in the context of the medial turn.

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«Games are hard to define, but game scholars such as Johan Huizinga and Roger Caillois identify them using the notion of irrelevance (emphasis added – V.A.). For Huizinga, by definition, a game cannot lead to consequences which would be significant from moral standpoint (emphasis added – V.A.). Whatever is happening, if it really matters in an ethical or moral sense, cannot be a game. Rather, he believes that games are places where we only act as if471 something matters. Indeed, play-acting seriousness can be one of the most important functions in a given game. According to Huizinga, if some consequence really does matter in the end, the game is over. In fact, the only act of moral consequence that can happen within a game is the act of ending the game, denying its as-if character, spoiling the fantasy, and thereby breaking the collective illusion that the game matters».472 Correspondingly, the main thing now is that the “moral consequences” to which E. Castronova draws attention, therefore, imply the connection to certain generalized symbolic media and external referents of value. As an accompanying comment, what E. Castronova says about games, implying first of all a narrow example of multiplayer online role-playing games, can also be applied to cases where the subject of social relationships is another (in the sense of § 5 of Chapter 1 of this study).

By the way, “seriousness” is also quite correlated with the notion of public danger

– another “deceptive commonplace” of legal dogmatics, which is presented as self-evident, although studies of the meaning of this term show the opposite. This term, which is focused on socially negative phenomena, is also not applicable by definition to positive examples of the implementation of law in relation to virtual space.

471There is an obvious connection with the H. Veihinger’s philosophy of “als ob”, on whose works L. Fuller, already mentioned in the pages of this work, relied many times, at least in his works on legal fictions.

472Castronova E. The Right to Play // New York Law School Law Review. – 2004. – Vol. 49. – No. 1. – PP. 188–189.

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§ 3. Modeling of commodification as a methodology for calculating convertible sociocurrency value

The concept of generalized symbolic intermediaries implies the possibility of “conversion” or “symbolic exchange”. The meaning of these terms, which are synonymous in the context of this study, can be explained as follows. From the perspective of theoretical sociology, there are several institutional fields – “economies” in P. Bourdieu's terminology, each of which is characterized by its own generalized symbolic medium. It is expressed (or expresses value) in an external referent of value. External referents of value, in turn, express the symbolic capital of a social actor. Social actors can acquire symbolic capital in one institutional domain through generalized symbolic media and external referents of value belonging to another institutional field, where they already have symbolic capital. Thus, “conversion” is the acquisition of symbolic capital in one institutional domain through the generalized symbolic media that are characteristic of another institutional domain. As J. Turner notes:

«Generalized symbolic media are not only used in discourse and distributed by corporate units and resources; they are also exchanged by actors within and between domains. Intrainstitutional exchanges are typically conducted with the generalized symbolic media of a domain. For example, teachers talk and exchange learning within the educational institutional domain; across domains, economic actors pay money for those who are certified (with diplomas) to have learning, thereby consummating an exchange of the money for learning exchange across institutional domains. Thus, one of the ways that generalized symbolic media circulate across domains is via exchanges; and, the more generalized symbolic media of powerful actors in dominant domains spend their resources

– resources like money from economy and power as franchised authority from polity – for the resources of other domains – say, learning (from education), health (from medicine), and verified knowledge (from science) – the more will all of these media circulate across institutional domains in a society”.473

473 Turner J.H. Emotions and Societal Stratification // Handbook of the Sociology of Emotion: Volume II / Ed. by Stets J.E., Turner J.H. – Heidelberg, New York, London: Springer, 2014. – P. 180.