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Abstract
Community informatics (CI) is a form of activism that involves the application of information and communication technologies in pursuit of community development within localities. This article draws on discourse theory (DT) to re-evaluate activists’ self-interpretations that rely on community, and to make sense of the political struggles at the heart of CI. It is argued that activists’ community discourse constructs, through articulation, locally “resistant” collective identities and an associated collective agency capable of appropriating technology in pursuit of unfulfilled social demands. However DT also suggests that the socially progressive nature of CI is not guaranteed by recourse to the social ideal of community.
Acknowledgements
He would like to thank Greg Wise and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments, and would like to express his gratitude to Sean Phelan for his constructive appraisal of an earlier draft of this essay.
Notes
1. For an overview of CI as both an emerging discipline and a field of study see Michael B. Gurstein, “Editorial: Welcome to the Journal of Community Informatics,” Journal of Community Informatics 1, no. 1 (2004): http://www.ci-journal.net/index.php/ciej/issue/view/10; and What is Community Informatics (and Why Does it Matter)? (Milan: Polimetrica, 2007).
2. Barry Wellman, “An Electronic Group is Virtually a Social Network,” in Culture of the Internet, ed. Sara Kiesler (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1997), 179–205; and “Physical Place and Cyberplace: The Rise of Personalized Networking,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 25, no. 2 (2001): 227–52.
3. Jan Fernback, “Beyond the Diluted Community Concept: A Symbolic Interactionist Perspective on Online Social Relations,” New Media and Society 9, no. 1 (2007): 49–69.
4. John Postill, “Localizing the Internet beyond Communities and Networks,” New Media and Society 10, no. 3 (2008): 413–31.
5. Peter Day and Doug Schuler, “Community Practice in the Network Society: Pathways Toward Civic Intelligence,” in Networked Neighbourhoods: The Connected Community in Context, ed. Patrick Purcell (London: Springer, 2006), 25.
6. Randy Stoecker, “Is Community Informatics Good for Communities? Questions Confronting an Emerging Field,” The Journal of Community Informatics 1, no. 3 (2005): 13–26, http://www.ci-journal.net/index.php/ciej/article/viewFile/183/130.
7. Ernesto Laclau, Emancipation(s) (London: Verso, 1996); On Populist Reason (London: Verso, 2005); Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics (London: Verso, 1985); and “Post-Marxism without Apologies,” New Left Review 166, (November–December 1987): 79–106.
8. See, for instance, Ellen Balka and Brian J. Peterson, “Citizenship and Public Access Internet Use: Beyond the Field of Dreams,” in Community Practice in the Network Society: Local Action/Global Interaction, ed. Peter Day and Doug Schuler (London: Routledge, 2004), 139–54; Morten Falch, “Community Impact of Telebased Information Centres,” in Community Informatics: Enabling Communities with Information and Communication Technologies, ed. Michael B. Gurstein (London: Idea Group Publishing, 2000), 298–318; and Craig Hayden and Sandra Ball-Rokeach, “Maintaining the Digital Hub: Locating the Community Technology Center in a Communication Infrastructure,” New Media and Society 9, no. 2 (2007): 235–57.
9. See, for instance, William Gaver and Jacob Beaver, “The Presence Project: Helping Older People Engage with Their Local Communities,” in Networked Neighbourhoods, ed. Patrick Purcell, 345–72; Michael A. Horning, “Putting the Community back into Community Networks: A Content Analysis,” Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society 27, no. 5 (2007): 417–26; and Sonia Liff and Fred Steward, “Communities and Community E-Gateways: Networking for Social Inclusion,” in Community Informatics: Shaping Computer-Mediated Social Relations, ed. Leigh Keeble and Brian D. Loader (London: Routledge, 2001), 324–41.
10. See, for instance, Jo Pierson, “Community Informatics for Electronic Democracy: Social Shaping of the Digital City in Antwerp (DMA),” in Community Informatics, ed. Michael B. Gurstein, 251–74; and Andy Williamson, “Disruptive Spaces and Transformative Praxis: Reclaiming Community Voices Through Electronic Democracy,” (Paper, Community Informatics Research Network Conference, Prato, Italy, October 7–11, 2006).
11. See, for instance, Gunilla Bradley, Social and Community Informatics: Humans on the Net (London: Routledge, 2006); and Faustin Kamuzora, “Fostering Local Economic Development through Community Informatics: A Soft Systems Approach Case Study,” The Journal of Language, Technology & Entrepreneurship in Africa 2, no. 1, (2010): 166–81, http://ajol.info/index.php/jolte/article/view/51997.
12. See, for instance, Audrey Marshall, “ICTs for Health Promotion in the Community: A Participative Approach,” in Community Practice in the Network Society, ed. Peter Day and Doug Schuler, 79–91.
13. Hanna Hye-Na Cho, “Towards Place-Peer Community and Civic Bandwidth: A Case Study in Community Wireless Networking,” The Journal of Community Informatics 4, no. 1 (2008): http://www.ci-journal.net/index.php/ciej/article/view/428/396.
14. Ann Peterson Bishop and Bertram C. Bruce, “Community Inquiry and Collaborative Practice: The iLabs of Paseo Boricua,” The Journal of Community Informatics 5, no. 1 (2009): http://www.ci-journal.net/index.php/ciej/article/view/312/435.
15. Ann Peterson Bishop and Bertram C. Bruce, “Community Inquiry and Collaborative Practice: The iLabs of Paseo Boricua,” The Journal of Community Informatics 5, no. 1 (2009): http://www.ci-journal.net/index.php/ciej/article/view/312/435.
16. Gurstein, “Welcome to the Journal of Community Informatics,” 2.
17. Gurstein, “Welcome to the Journal of Community Informatics,” 2; and Gurstein, What is Community Informatics?
18. Gurstein, What is Community Informatics?, 12.
19. Gurstein, What is Community Informatics?, 11.
20. Gurstein, What is Community Informatics?, 11.
21. Gurstein, What is Community Informatics?, 16.
22. See Day and Schuler, “Community Practice in the Network Society”; and Gurstein, What is Community Informatics?
23. See Manuel Castells, The Power of Identity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997); “Materials for an Explanatory Theory of the Network Society,” British Journal of Sociology 51, no. 1 (2000): 5–24; “Communication, Power and Counter-Power in the Network Society,” International Journal of Communication 1 (2007): 238–66, http://ijoc.org/ojs/index.php/ijoc/article/view/46/35; and Communication Power (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).
24. Castells, The Power of Identity, 1.
25. Castells, “Communication, Power and Counter-Power.”
26. Wellman, “An Electronic Group is Virtually a Social Network”; and “Physical Place and Cyberplace.”
27. Gurstein, What is Community Informatics?, 19, original emphasis.
28.Gurstein, What is Community Informatics?, 20, original emphasis.
29. Gurstein, What is Community Informatics?, 39, original emphasis.
30. George A. Hillery, “Definitions of Community: Areas of Agreement,” Rural Sociology 20, no. 2 (1955): 111–23.
31. See, for example, Colin Bell and Howard Newby, Community Studies (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1971); Graham Crow and Graham Allan, Community Life: An Introduction to Local Social Relations (Hemel Hempstead, UK: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994); Raymond Plant, “Community: Concept, Conception, and Ideology,” Politics and Society 8, no. 1 (1978): 79–107; and Steven Brint, “Gemeinshaft Revisited: A Critique and Reconstruction of the Community Concept,” Sociological Theory 19, no. 1 (2001): 1–23.
32. See, for example, Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (Glasgow: Fontana, 1976); Plant, “Community”; and Zygmunt Bauman, Community: Seeking Safety in an Insecure World (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001).
33. Williams, Keywords, 6.
34. Ruth Glass, “Conflict in Cities,” in Conflict in Society, ed. Anthony de Reuck and Julie Knight (London: Churchill, 1966), 148.
35. Margaret Stacey, “The Myth of Community Studies,” British Journal of Sociology 20, no. 2 (1969): 137.
36. Gordon Marshall, ed., “Community Studies,” in Oxford Dictionary of Sociology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 100.
37. Cynthia Cockburn, The Local State (London: Pluto, 1977), 159.
38. See, for instance, Robyn Baterman Driskell and Larry Lyon, “Are Virtual Communities True Communities? Examining the Environments and Elements of Community,” City and Community 1, no. 4 (2002): 373–90; Fernback, “Beyond the Diluted Community Concept”; and Joseph Lockard, “Progressive Politics, Electronic Individualism, and the Myth of Virtual Community,” in Internet Culture, ed. David Porter (London: Routledge, 1997), 219–32.
39. Postill, “Localizing the Internet.”
40. Postill, “Localizing the Internet.”, 415.
41.Postill, “Localizing the Internet.”, 415.
42. Postill, “Localizing the Internet.”, 416.
43. Laclau, Emancipation(s); On Populist Reason; Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy; and “Post-Marxism without Apologies.”
44. Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy.
45. David Howarth and Yannis Stavrakakis, “Introducing Discourse Theory and Political Analysis,” in Discourse Theory and Political Analysis: Identities, Hegemonies and Social Change, ed. David Howarth, Aletta. J. Norval, and Yannis Stavrakakis (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), 3.
46. Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, 105, original emphases.
47. Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, 112, original emphasis.
48. Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, 112, original emphasis.
49. Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, 112, original emphasis.
50. Laclau, Emancipation(s), 36.
51. Jacob Torfing, New Theories of Discourse: Laclau, Mouffe, and Žižek (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), 98–9.
52. Howarth and Stavrakakis, “Introducing Discourse Theory,” 8.
53. Laclau, Emancipation(s), 44.
54. Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, 115.
55. Marianne W. Jørgensen and Louise Phillips, Discourse Analysis as Theory and Method (London: Sage, 2002), 46.
56. Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy.
57. Jørgensen and Phillips, Discourse Analysis as Theory and Method, 48, 47.
58. Jørgensen and Phillips, Discourse Analysis as Theory and Method, 48.
59. Castells, “Communication, Power and Counter-Power.”
60. Gurstein, What is Community Informatics?, 20.
61. Laclau, Emancipation(s); Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy; and “Post-Marxism without Apologies.”
62. Howarth and Stavrakakis, “Introducing Discourse Theory,” 3.
63. Laclau and Mouffe, “Post-Marxism without Apologies,” 89.
64. Gurstein, What is Community Informatics?
65. Wellman, “An Electronic Group is Virtually a Social Network”; “Physical Place and Cyberplace”; and “What is the Internet Doing to Community—and Vice Versa?” in The New Urbanism and Beyond: Designing Cities for the Future, ed. Tigran Hass. (New York: Rizzeli, 2008): 221–4.
66. Keith Hampton and Barry Wellman, “Neighboring in Netville: How the Internet Supports Community in a Wired Suburb,” City and Community 2, no. 4 (2003): 277–311.
67. Barry Wellman, “The Community Question: The Intimate Networks of East Yorkers,” American Journal of Sociology 84, no. 5 (1979): 1201–31.
68. Wellman, “Physical Place and Cyberplace,” 227.
69. Wellman, “Physical Place and Cyberplace,” 227.
70. Barry Wellman, Anabel Quan-Haase, Jeffrey Boase, Wenhong Chen, Keith Hampton, Isabel Isla de Diaz, and Kakuko Miyata, “The Social Affordances of the Internet for Networked Individualism,” Journal of Computer Mediated Communication 8, no. 3 (2003): http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol8/issue3/wellman.html.
71. Barry Wellman, Anabel Quan-Haase, Jeffrey Boase, Wenhong Chen, Keith Hampton, Isabel Isla de Diaz, and Kakuko Miyata, “The Social Affordances of the Internet for Networked Individualism,” Journal of Computer Mediated Communication 8, no. 3 (2003): http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol8/issue3/wellman.html.
72. Wellman, “Physical Place and Cyberplace,” 227.
73. In the current global system it is worth recalling that some people are far more place-bound than others. Indeed, Harm de Blij argues we are currently witnessing a rapid increase in the number of “locals (those who are poorest, least mobile, and most susceptible to the impress of place).” The Power of Place: Geography, Destiny, and Globalization's Rough Landscape (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 5, original emphasis.
74. Castells, The Power of Identity.
75. Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy.
76. Gurstein, What is Community Informatics?
77. Laclau, On Populist Reason.
78. Steven Griggs and David Howarth, “Populism, Localism and Environmental Politics: The Logic and Rhetoric of the Stop Stansted Expansion Campaign,” Planning Theory 7, no. 2 (2008): 129.
79. Laclau, On Populist Reason.
80. Andrew Feenberg, Questioning Technology (London: Routledge, 1999), 79.
81. Castells, The Power of Identity.
82. Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, 89.
83. Ian Goodwin, “Community Informatics, Local Community and Conflict: Investigating Under-Researched Elements of a Developing Field of Study,” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 14, no. 4 (2008): 419–37.
84. Larry Stillman and Graeme Johanson, ed., Constructing and Sharing Memory: Community Informatics, Identity and Empowerment (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholar Publishing, 2007).
85. Wiebe E. Bijker, Of Bicycles, Bakelites, and Bulbs: Toward a Theory of Sociotechnical Change (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995).
86. See, for example, Hans K. Klein and Daniel L. Kleinman, “The Social Construction of Technology: Structural Considerations,” Science, Technology, and Human Values 27, no. 1 (2002): 28–52.