Visions of community and mobility: the community networking movement in the USA

Abstract

Different visions of community and mobility may influence the ability of community computer network organizations to promote social change. Community networks successfully generate instrumental mobility, the literal movement of information across space, but have difficulty creating successful online spaces that promote communicative mobility, the metaphorical movement of people towards common understandings of a shared situation. Interviews with community networking activists explore the ways that community networks generate instrumental mobility online as well as barriers that community networks face in creating online spaces for communicative mobility. Ironically, given their technological focus, community networks have little difficulty generating communicative mobility in face-to-face situations. Differentiating between instrumental and communicative mobility allows this research to move beyond a simple discussion of the geography of the conduits of communication to consider the geography of communication itself. It therefore contributes a more detailed understanding of the role of electronic communication in social and political change.

Des visions de la communauté et de la mobilité: le mouvement du réseautage communautaire aux États-Unis

Diverses visions de la communauté et de la mobilité peuvent influer sur la disposition des organisations communautaires en réseau informatisé d'agir en faveur du changement social. Les réseaux communautaires parviennent avec succès à engendrer de la mobilité instrumentale qui, au sens propre, réfère au mouvement de l'information à travers l'espace. Ils ont pourtant de la peine à concevoir des espaces en ligne propices à la mobilité communicative qui, au sens figuré, est le mouvement d'individus vers des conceptions communes d'un cadre de vie collectif. Des entrevues auprès de militants en faveur du réseautage communautaire permettent d'étudier, d'une part, les moyens dont disposent les réseaux communautaires pour engendrer de la mobilité instrumentale en ligne et, d'autre part, les obstacles que rencontrent les réseaux communautaires quand à la conception d'espaces en ligne pour la mobilité communicative. Compte tenu de leur accent technologique, il est ironique de constater que les réseaux communautaires ont peu de misère à engendrer de la mobilité communicative à l'intérieur de rapports personnels. En distinguant entre la mobilité instrumentale et communicative, cette recherche permet de dépasser le stade élémentaire de la discussion sur la géographie des canaux de communication et d'examiner la géographie de la communication en elle-même. La recherche présente une conception plus nette du rôle des communications électroniques dans le changement social et politique.

Visiones de comunidad y movilidad: el movimiento de redes comunitarias en los Estados Unidos

Las diferentes visiones de comunidad y movilidad pueden afectar la capacidad de organizaciones de redes comunitarias de ordenadores a promover cambios sociales. Las redes comunitarias generan satisfactoriamente movilidad instrumental, el movimiento literal de información por el espacio, pero tienen dificultad en crear espacios exitosos online que promocionan movilidad comunicativa, el movimiento metafórico de personas hacia un entendimiento común de una situación compartida. Entrevistas con activistas de redes comunitarias exploran las maneras en que las redes comunitarias generan movilidad instrumental online, tanto como las barreras enfrentadas por redes comunitarias al crear espacios online para movilidad comunicativa. Dado su enfoque tecnológico, resulta irónico que las redes comunitarias tengan pocas dificultades en generar movilidad comunicativa en situaciones cara a cara. El diferenciar entre la movilidad instrumental y comunicativa nos permite ir más allá de una simple discusión de la geografía de los conductos de comunicación para considerar la geografía de la misma comunicación. Por lo tanto contribuye a un entendimiento más detallado del papel de las comunicaciones electrónicas en los cambios sociales y políticos.

Keywords:

• community
• place
• cyberspace
• community network
• mobility
• digital divide
• communauté
• lieu
• cyberespace
• réseau communautaire
• mobilité
• fracture numérique
• comunidad
• lugar
• ciberespacio
• red comunitaria
• movilidad
• línea divisoria digital

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Lynn Staehelli, Mark Bjelland, Kevin Hoffman, my Fall 2004 Communication and Geography class and the anonymous reviewers for commenting on various drafts of this article. This research was funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation (SBR-9811142).

Notes

1 A third, less-prevalent response about people's fascination with technology driving the movement was recorded, but is not discussed to limit the scope of the article.

2 Habermas (1984) emphasizes the contrast between strategic and communicative action. For the sake of conceptual clarity and space I do not discuss strategic forms of action in this article. However, Wittel (2001) captures a notion of strategic community with the concept of ‘network sociality’, relationships that are based upon the mutual exchange of data rather than mutual experience.

3 Other shared circumstances and events may provide the basis for instrumental community (e.g. the African-American community).

4 The notions of communicative and instrumental mobility are implied in Cox's (1997) theories of scale politics. Cox differentiates between ‘spaces of dependence’ and ‘spaces of engagement’. Spaces of dependence are defined by local social relations while spaces of engagement represent links to more global scales. People move from local spaces of dependence by creating a ‘network of associations’ with those who can exercise political power. I suggest here that networks of association are produced through communicative mobility, but that instrumental mobility only produces and maintains spaces of dependence.

5 The Boulder Community Network was the site of a pilot study used to test interview questions and analysis techniques. The following are the addresses for the websites of the networks: SCN, http://www.scn.org; MAIN, http://www.main.org; AFN, http://www.austinfree.net; BEV, http://www.bev.org; Charlotte's Web, http://www.charweb.org; BCN, http://bcn.boulder.co.us/. Since the interviews Charlotte's Web has shut down because of a lack of funds. Obtaining funds to maintain telephone lines and computer equipment is perhaps one of the biggest challenges that community networks face.

6 As of this writing, SCN appears to have dropped its local newsgroups altogether in favour of hosting e-mail lists.

7 For more information on the implications of tax laws for Internet advocacy, see Kingsley, Harmon, Pomeranz and Guinane (2000). Specific implications for community networks are discussed in Nerad (1998).