Community informatics is the academic term for using technology to help build local communities ... which is, of course, a Good Thing. However, as I've written before, while it may be jolly good for academics carving out a new field, I'm not sure it always develops in ways that help the locals.
I'm grateful therefore to David Brake for alerting me to an excellent article "Is Community Informatics good for communities" by Randy Stoecker in the Journal of Community Informatics in which he reflects very honestly on his own qualms as a teacher in the field and as someone involved in non-tech community development.
Randy, who is is Professor of Sociology and Research Associate in Urban Affairs at the University of Toledo, asks:
If the goal, ultimately, is to develop strong communities, does creating a field devoted only to the application of information technology in community settings really serve that goal? The fields of Social Work, Community Development, and Public Health have, for some time now, been focusing much more comprehensively on building strong communities and building up weak ones. Should we assume that information and communication technology is such a central part of that process that it deserves a place as a separate field?
Or, are our efforts better placed in bringing Community Informatics into those other fields—to make sure that the community goals drive the technology goals rather than vice versa? In a small rural community, for example, does the technology plan need to be integrated with the sustainable agricultural plan, and the local business development plan, and the family support system plan, and the regional medical care plan, and all the other plans that are needed to lift up disinvested rural communities? And does that make the technology plan just a member of the supporting cast under the rubric of broader fields of practice and study?
... and after exploring the field, addresses the issue of who may benefit from community informatics
The most cynical analysis, then, would argue that Community Informatics, through an emphasis on job training, social capital, and community commerce portals, serves elites in three ways. First, it quiets discontent by integrating poor people into the system, making them slightly less marginal, and reducing their energy to organize against the system (Cloward and Piven, 1993). Second, it encourages communities to give up their unique characteristics to appeal to mass markets, reducing community-based resistance to global capitalism. I remember a conference on the west coast of Australia a few years ago where community folks expressed concerns that community portals would force them to market themselves according to rules set by outsiders, disrupting the unique cottage economy they were trying so hard to preserve. Third, by implication, the model on which these activities are based make it the individual’s, and then the community’s, responsibility to pick themselves by the bootstraps and fit in. When ICTs are provided for people, it is expected people will make use of them to get jobs and develop their economies, not to try and change the system. And if they don’t better themselves, it is their own fault, not the fault of a political economic system organized by and for elites. This is the classic victim-blaming switcheroo, where the poor are blamed for their poverty even when it is clear that the economy cannot provide adequate jobs, equitable education, and comparable justice (Ryan, 1976).
There is a lot of rhetoric about involving the community as well as serving the community, but what's it like on the ground?
And the more we academics talk to each other, the more we feel like we know something, and the more we try and take leadership in Community Informatics projects. While the participatory design emphasis in Community Informatics is quite strong, it is still quite interesting how many telecentres, or community technology centers as we call them in the United States, look so much the same. Community participation is promoted, but only rarely practiced in ways that can make us all look proud. When was the last time anyone had even 100 community people turn out to plan a telecenter? It’s easy to say, “well, they’re not really interested” when the reality is that we professionals are simply not good at getting people to a meeting. And besides, we (erroneously) believe that we know what they need anyway.
Randy says he isn't ready to give up on community informatics yet, and there is a way forward if community empowerment is guiding principle. It should be part of the supporting cast and not in the lead.
What would Community Informatics look like if it were participatory in a popular education sense? First, the participation would occur in a community development context, as people studied their own community and began to identify local community development issues. Second, as part of this popular education process, people would identify a set of information issues—things they needed to know or information they needed to better manage—to support specific community development projects. Then, and only then, they could consider particular ICT applications that provided some potential for helping with those information issues.
This sounds very sensible to me. I think community informatics can be really helpful if it gives us a more profound analysis of how technology is changing how and where we live, and what tools may be useful or not in achieving various community-building objectives. In doing that it should re-awaken discussion on old issues of who benefits, who pays, who controls. A great window, but not the only lens.
Previously:
Ten conversations starters on community tech
How academics can help - or hinder - community technology
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