Order, Conflict, And Change

Hackers have been considered as the main threats to Internet security.Many people regard hacker groups as strongholds of illegal activities,crimes and subversive beliefs or activities.These problems have increasingly aroused people's concerns.However,until now,people's understandings of hackers are still quite limited."What is the definition of a hacker?""What do hackers want to do?" These questions still remain controversial and conflicting.Despite the considerable number of researchers in this research field,at present, a strong research tendency is that those who are concerned with this research seek the answers to the above questions only by superficial investigation.In fact,it is those who are very familiar with hackers and their life that can find the correct answers.To overcome such a research tendency,the only way for the researchers is to be involved in the hacker groups,and to investigate effectively into their daily life. Only in this way,can we understand their culture and behavior patters,and further understand their daily practice,and interpret their behavior appropriately.To achieve this purpose,I adopt the concept of "normative order" as a theoretical framework to describe and explain the hacker culture and daily practice. This concept is proposed by Parsons,and Herbert re-interprets it by absorbing some of the latest sociological theories,which will allow us to take into a good account the order,conflict and change of the hacker groups.My study is conducted by participating in five hacker Forums and two hacker QQ groups and by carrying out a thorough field investigation.In addition,I have interviewed 10 of the hackers who are willing to do the in-depth interview.On this basis,three types of data can be triangulated.According to the results of this study,the daily world of hackers is shaped by six normative orders:technology,learning,sharing,freedom,scarification,and law. These normative orders provide hackers different series of rules and practice patterns, so that hackers can define their own situations and decide how to respond.At the same time,they also make a hacker's action full of meaning.The six normative orders are interrelated,of which the technology is the most important factor.They work together to establish an order for the hacker groups and form the special boundary for them.The order of the hacker groups is not as Parsons has pointed out, "a cohesive superorganic",but as Herbert has described,is "full of conflict".In the third chapter of this paper,I mainly describe the conflict of the normative orders of hackers,which has had a tremendous impact on reality.Further,by using the dominant normative order and the corresponding normative order system,this paper describes and explains the categorization of hackers,such as "hackers, crackers,Honkers","white hat,black hat,gray hat".The result of the categorization of hackers is that the possibility of conflicts of the normative orders can be greatly reduced internally in the same type,but the conflicts between different types will be intensified.It also reminds us of being concerned about the change rising in hackers.In the fourth chapter of this paper,I examine the changing trend of hackers by combining the normative orders of hackers and their conflict.In view of a practical situation,these changes are caused by hackers' liminal status among the whole social structure and the conflict of normative orders.Hackers' normative orders indicate hackers' liminal status among the whole social structure,which makes the non-hacker members of society unable to interpret the meaning of hackers correctly according to a greater social order,which also makes hackers who have two identities(both Hacker as a society actor,and the social actor as a hacker) fail to get "accountability" and significance for their action in the social structure.At the same time,as a result of conflict,hacker groups are lack of adequate internal cohesion. Therefore,changes occur.From a practical perspective,those normative order systems or types of hackers in line with the evaluation of greater social order might make some hackers gradually do something good or positive to the society and start returning to the social structure:many hackers gradually choose to become white hat hackers or black hat hackers,and thus two kinds of trend of returning to the social structure will appear:"Meliorating"(or "accepting amnesty and serving the ruler") and "pursuing interests(being criminally inclined)".Overall,because those hackers who are pursuing interests have more advantages in terms of accountability,the trend of pursuing interests is more obvious.But we also can see that hackers are struggling and resisting within these two changing trends.The hacker actors with their own unique culture are always making efforts for their "renewal order".They are attempting to restore their existing order as much as possible,so that their actions can have a complete accountability and can be of significance.Above all,what we can see is that there is a dynamic social order within the hacker groups,which is relatively stable but continued conflicting or changing.It is because of this quality of these groups that hackers can be accountable and granted significance.This is a very special group type:it's loose,free and open,lack of a three-dimensional social structure,which the general groups normally have.The maintenance of its order mainly relies on the self-discipline and group pressure.In such a group,in terms of its order,the power of culture,apparently,is of the most importance.Therefore,the implication of the research of this paper reveals that cultural intervention and cultural guide to hacker group is highly important.The future research should focus on how to take measures to accelerate hackers to transform into white hat hackers so as to return the society as positive contributors,, and how to prevent hackers being transformed into black hat hackers,to play a negative role in the social structure.