Every once in a while someone is foolish enough to ask about my interests in grad school and eventual dissertation plans. Usually I try to dance around the topic, unleashing vague but catchy and altruistic sounding statements like "computers mashed up with social work" or something to this effect. Sometimes, though, the exorbitant amounts of hot air filling my Hindenburg ego get spewed out at the poor innocent bloke who thought to inquire. I figured this was poor form, so I created this dandy page to compensate, a bit.
PhD students who talk too much aside, occasionally people actually really do wish to know what it is I hope/plan/want/yearn/have to do for a degree. I’ve done my best to compress a lot of information into a small area here: anything linked leads to more explanation about that item. Okay, here’s the elevator conversation version, ready, steady, go:
I want to critically and creatively study community informatics in an international context that is simultaneously contentious and full of opportunity: the island nation of São Tomé. A few years ago our university established a partnership with several groups on the island and I would like to continue this collaboration by committing my dissertation research. GSLIS specifically has been dedicated to helping São Tomé through several on-going information science efforts. I would like to investigate the feasibility of three major dissertation topics as preliminary research in the fall of 2010:
- During the summer of 2009 a small group of students deployed 100 XO laptops on behalf of the One Laptop per Child nonprofit group to a local primary school. The teachers and community organizers have only just begun to learn to use the laptops in the classroom and students are learning to take the computers home to learn with them outside of school. To date there is very little information about the use and meaning of these kinds of personal mobile technologies in an African setting, especially one as closely knit as Sao Tome. What can we learn about teaching digital literacy across cultures and community networks by understanding the XO from a variety of perspectives?
- Key concepts: symbolic interaction and cultural studies, digital inequality and capitalism in the information society, the politics and social construction of objects, informal learning and pedagogy and digital literacy
- When the Portuguese removed their formal colonial presence in the 1970’s a great deal of infrastructure was left unattended and without informed caretakers. As a result the country lacks many western-style civic systems but may have need for such services in the future. What sorts of development needs can be met with spatial data infrastructure? How can the knowledge gained from GIS systems be positioned to empower everyday people politically and economically?
- Key concepts: social services and civic engagement, spatial data infrastructure development, crowd-sourcing and collaborative data processing techniques, information access
- São Tomé has a very poor (modem speed) internet connection but there is a possibility for locally-based (digital) information networks. If one were to create a sort of island intranet dedicated to São Tomé local knowledge and information pertinent to their culture what would it look like? What would make such a system successful and how might this information provision model be applied in other contexts?
- Key concepts: information provision and relevancy, knowledge management, user-centered/participatory design and HCI, construction of local and cultural knowledge
But Wait…
Questions? Of course! I’ve tried to answer some of the more important and common ones here.
Why São Tomé instead of say, Rantoul, a nearby semi-rural town that is also in desperate need? What makes the international context important?
As a global society we have entered into what is referred to in everyday language as the Information Age, an all encompassing era where individuals have the ability to transfer information freely and have instant access to knowledge that would have been difficult or impossible to find previously. It is worth taking a moment and considering what this meta-narrative really assumes. Determining just how and when information rose up into the contemporary picture is no easy task, nor is all of the so-called “global village” on equal or even coherent footing. There is considerable dispute over the unit of analysis in conceptualizing the information age in terms of power, be it embedded individuals or nations, information flows or forms of labor. The revolutionary point at which manual or industrial era labor ends and the knowledge economy begins might be held to be a “violent abstraction” as Daniel Bell (1979) put it, structuring the ways in which we see ourselves as engaged in political economies. The disappearance of the 3rd world of non-alignment (Schiller 1981) and appearance of a network society (Castells 1997) with new forms of power relationships present alternative models for humanity, but also possible variations on a theme of evolving capitalism. In talking about the state of the world identifying the social and historical discontinuities that signify dramatic or revolutionary change is often left as an unmentionable given, we simply state that technologies have driven us to do more and do it faster, or that the aspects of information as a commodity that can be produced make it unique (Porat 1976). Indeed the character of the rhetoric becomes reminiscent of the technological determinism of the post World War II industrial complex saga in US history, thought leaders like Nicholas Negroponte, the man behind the One Laptop per Child, suggest that “the change from atoms to bits is irrevocable and unstoppable” (Negroponte 1995) in reference to turning everything in the physical world into information. This vision of information society has been an enduring concept ever since the late 70’s and yet continues to be reiterated over and over as a kind of unending revolution. First it was microchips (Large 1980), then it was personal computers (Negroponte 1995), then it was the internet (Warf and Grimes 1997), and now it’s Web2.0.
Regardless of one’s interpretation of information society, we stand in a time of global issues and concerns. I think working with São Tomé would be beneficial for a few reasons:
- São Tomé presents a unique and powerful setting. With the main island containing only around 165,000 people it becomes possible to have a closely-knit community that doesn’t exist in the same form in the United States. In passing the people of São Tomé refer to one another as family, regardless of blood ties, and they have cultural norms that would otherwise be impossible in the US, like an alternative understanding of possession and property (things are shared differently there). Other social constructs more familiar to western nations also appear, like inequalities between men and women, but ultimately São Tomé’s community is very much unlike those I might find around Illinois. I think I have a lot to learn about community personally, as I’ve lived in Illinois my entire life and think that more exposure in the global theater could do me a lot of good. Beyond this community informatics as a method or ideology may or may not be something that can be adopted universally, São Tomé is perhaps one of the best places to see if it can not only hold up, but succeed dramatically.
- Our department and school has established an obligation to the community in a way that we haven’t in other areas like Rantoul or East St. Louis. By consistently sending students over to engage in technology deployment and training we’ve invested ourselves and made a statement of support. As the Community Informatics Initiative changes form in the future I want to make sure we continue work with one of our most interesting and opportunity-filled projects.
- International involvement is a contentious subject. It requires solutions that go beyond contemplation. A great deal of effort has been spent in the worlds of sociology and anthropology flushing out the insidious forms of control and power related to international politics, information flows and digital capitalism. São Tomé is no exception in its tumble through global restructuration and it therefore becomes imperative to understand if development connected to technology and social change is beneficial and empowering. Shifting institutional dependencies or affiliations to alternative sets of power relations is as much of a danger as other issues like digital literacy or depreciative infrastructure. Frankly, a lot of technologies come with western politics attached, be they embedded in the design, like language, content or interface limitations, or associated ideologies like copyright or consumerism. In many ways I approach São Tomé critically, and hope to make the best of my research as a way to help the people there be able to create in response: new uses and social shaping of technology, new systems and methods of learning, new social relations and consciousness in a global context, social and civic service possibilities, and informed ideologies. The people of São Tomé have had a past full of Portuguese domination and subjugating to western culture and many automatically assume development of any kind must be for the better. It is not for me to judge what is right, but instead do my best to provide the information, technology tools and educational systems to empower them to effectively make good decisions. I want to make a measurable impact in a place of need, but have the definition of both impact and need determined largely by the community.
Who will you work with on this project in the future?
Two post-graduate students, Serra Jackman and Beth Santos, are possible collaborators for my work in the future. In addition Professors Chip Bruce and Jon Gant might be potential faculty sponsors. I will have a better idea of which community leaders I will work with upon visiting, but at this time would suggest James and Elves Neves as well as Henrique Pinto Da Costa, Jorge Coelho and Ned Seligman.
Beth Santos has been working with the teachers and the XO laptops for some time now and is an outstanding instructor, quick learner, realistic idealist/activist and budding leader. She has not only proven to be able to quickly adapt to the culture there but also maintain a complicated and organized agenda of work. She has plans to return in the fall of 2010.
Serra Jackman visited São Tomé for the summer of 2009 and collected maps and information for GIS analysis. She also helped to setup computers and met many of the local leaders and people involved in social services on the island. She’s considering enrolling in the GSLIS Certificate of Advanced Study (CAS) to prolong her time in school and would like to continue her work with São Tomé.
Chip Bruce is my current advisor in community informatics and has an outstanding background in community engagement, youth informatics, informal education, digital literacy and more. He is soon to retire, but may be able to see me off on this.
Jon Gant works with GIS and issues related to knowledge and spatial data as well as information systems and organizational management. He began work with São Tomé with MLIS students Serra Jackman and Jeanie Austin during the summer of 2009.
- James and Elves Neves, Henrique Pinto Da Costa, Jorge Coelho and Ned Seligman are all community leaders our university has worked with in the past. Some of them lead technical training and are involved in education, others are on a development task force, and still others help to run the NGO STeP up, one of the main local aid organizations.
What can you tell me about the history of São Tomé?
One of the interesting and unusual aspects of São Tomé’s past is that it has no native population, the pair of islands is volcanic in origin and not considered to be continental. They were first discovered and settled around the turn of the 15th century and quickly became a slave-driven cash-crop economy, starting with sugar and then later moving to variety of exports, including coffee and cocoa. The fertile volcanic soil enabled São Tomé to become the world’s largest producer of Cocao by 1908 (Chabal 2002) and was largely divided up into districts based on roças (plantations) run by Portuguese companies and power property owners. Though slavery was abolished slavery formally in 1876 the practice of forced paid labor continued well into 1900’s, culminating in riots and the 1953 Batepá Massacre, where several hundred workers were killed. The move for independence spurred the Movement for the Liberation of São Tomé and Principe (MLSTP), which was established in Gabon and waited for the overthrow of the Caetano dictatorship in Portugal in April of 1974. By November the new regime had met with the MLSTP and transitioned the government, leaving São Tomé and Principe as sovereign nations on July 12 of 1975.
The Portuguese were not particularly concerned with creating a sustainability plan for São Tomé’s stability and well-being after their departure. A great deal of infrastructure was abandoned, from hospitals to railways. Other artifacts of the Portuguese occupation were disassembled or left to find new purposes, over the years plantations crumbled, street names were forgotten and old government buildings and places like the local theater were given new purposes. The population was small enough that it did not require a complicated civic infrastructure planning, the government was generally preoccupied with dealing with keeping their nation afloat amidst accumulating debt. In 1990 they adopted a democratic government with oppositional political parties and transparent peaceful elections. Today São Tomé stands as one of the more developed and stable countries in Africa but still faces many very real challenges related to population growth, civic and economic development, migration and expansion, environmentalism, health and more.
Do you have a backup plan if this falls through?
Yes. If São Tomé doesn’t work out I have a very promising project based around Classroom2.0, one of the larger specialized social networking service websites based around a community of practice: teachers understanding and employing collaborative and web2.0 information/multimedia technologies. I’m not exactly sure what would be most fruitful to investigate, but I suspect I could learn a lot about the possibilities for virtual community support of pedagogy development and how this relates to meaning and/or participatory culture.
