Developmental hackspaces: Fostering a meta-participatory ethos for Information and Communication Technologies for Development

Hani Morsi

The program for the International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies for Development Conference includes a paper session titled “Expanding Participation”, which invokes thinking about the clearly rising convergence of many conceptual and practical repertoires of development research, practice and emerging information and communications technologies (ICTs). The sustained interest in participation (as a large and diverse set of methodologies, practices and frameworks) and how it continues to inform the general developmental zeitgeist is paralleled by the steady evolution in technologies and technological practices that have their own embedded manifestations of the participatory ethos. Technically-focused communities such as the open source movement and technologies such as crowdsourcing, with characteristics of openness, social collaboration, and unrestricted information flows mirror the inclusiveness inherent in participatory processes in development work.

With such a similitude in the participative and increasingly democratized cultures characterizing the current evolution in development and technical communities, an important question arises: Are we, as development researchers and practitioners, adequately capitalizing on the potential opportunities created (as a result for such a convergence of shared values) for collaboration with our technical counterparts? Are we able to reimagine development within a context of the accelerating rate of change that the increasingly rapid rate of technological advancement brings about? How are we able to reconceive our ‘traditional’ ways of thinking about the global developmental priorities in a world characterized by such an accelerating rate of change?

The purpose of this blog post is not to offer any adequate answers to these questions, but to present a call to action on an issue with direct bearing on formulating these answers. How can development practitioners and technology professionals capitalize on shared values, more effectively collaborate on solving complex developmental issues and foster a reciprocal cross-pollination of ideas that is mutually valuable in finding practical and sustainable solutions in an increasingly dynamic global environment?  The collaborative spaces already exist, considering the multitude of cross-disciplinary conferences, research programs and development interventions that combine input from and invite partnership between those working in both realms of development practice and technological innovation, as well as local stakeholders and institutions. That is, the attention to inclusiveness and participation as central notions of collaborative efforts across joint undertakings between the development and technology domains is already extant and arguably on the rise. What needs more attention is factors affecting the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of collaboration between those working in development practice and their opposite numbers in the technology and innovation world, and this is what is meant by ‘meta-participatory’ in the title of this post.

Many of the attributes that both groups have in common have already been discussed. What about divergences? What stands in the way of a more vibrant alliance between development and technology? In many cases, it all about finding the right balance. Here are two key observations:

• Disparate views on the role of technology for development: this is an elementary – even obvious – observation, but remains fundamental to bridging gaps in conception of technological tools and processes for development. Without risking treading into territory mined with multifarious and often polarized debates on the subject, and for the purpose of the main thrust of this post, it would suffice to say that development practitioners need to adopt a little more techno-fetishism, while technologists would probably do well to accept an additional degree of practical conservatism. In other words, we need to balance long-term, futuristic outlooks on the possibilities of what technology can (or cannot) do for development with short-term, pragmatic focuses on specific interventions. An equilibrium of far-sighted vision and effective action cannot exist otherwise.
• Conflicting working ‘tempos’: technologists often have a ‘keyed-up’ working pace. Prototypes are built, deployed, tested and improved upon in a cycle that is analogous to but much faster than the slow-paced, deliberative, power-sensitive process that lies at the core of participatory methodologies. In collaborative projects, finding a practical balance of pace is difficult, but achievable.

The late Steve Jobs, one of the technological icons of present times, once said “…innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways or calling each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea, or because they realized something that shoots holes in how we’ve been thinking about a problem”. Sudden moments of clarity and late night phone calls aside, if we are to truly co-construct knowledge about how find technologically-catalyzed solutions for global development challenges, we need to break out of our respective disciplinary silos and start reciprocally but constructively shooting holes in our preconceived notions about how to find these solutions. We need to open source development by building upon the shared values of participation and inclusiveness and promoting a joint discourse of ideas at the intersection of practical intervention, technological innovation and ethical considerations.

Hani Morsi is a PhD candidate within the Participation, Power and Social Change research team at IDS.

Digital activism in post-revolution Egypt: How relevant is online dissidence in the marathon for democracy?

Hani Morsi

The metaphorical use of the word ‘marathon’ in the title is intended to contrast the situation in Egypt during the January 25^th 2011 uprising with the present state of affairs in the country. To continue the metaphor, revolutions are akin to sprints; they utilize the powerful energy of sudden mass mobilizations to amplify popular dissidence and drive for (what can appear to be) immediate change. However, the problem with sprints is that they are not meant for running very far. The energy in popular uprisings cannot be sustained on the long haul, and social change that is both desirable and lasting is a matter of long-term endurance against intransigent and anti-democratic forces. The Egyptian revolution is far from finished, and the drive for true democracy will take a lot longer than the 18 days it took to topple Mubarak’s regime.  Considering the key role new communications technologies played in the Egyptian revolution, it is important to question how sustainable this role is in the drawn-out struggle for true democratic reform.

The Egyptian uprising did not happen in a sociopolitical vacuum where the only driving force is what could be instantly observed in a shallow analysis: the fundamental desire for revolt against oppression, which is a universal human imperative. For such a revolt to result in a sustainable drive for change, it needs to be preceded by and rooted in a rich social dialogue. It also needs to be channeled into challenging the status quo through focused activism. In a society where active political participation was stifled in the conventional spaces where power is contested and challenged (what I call here ‘real’space), a vibrant social discourse on change was transplanted in ‘virtual space’ by politically active and tech-savvy Egyptian youth (a demographic minority in Egypt). The ‘boots on the ground’ manifestation of such virtual form of activism came to being on January 25^th 2011 in Tahrir Square. Creating a false dichotomy between social interactions in virtual space and popular confrontational action in real space hinders our understanding of the dynamic between both. It could be argued that the only new thing about ‘digital social media’ is the ‘digital’ part. The means for fueling the popular drive for social justice have not changed much historically. Conversely, the forms these means take that have changed.

The comparison in the first paragraph between revolutionary and post-revolutionary contexts frames the analysis of the role of digital activism in an enduring drive for genuine democratic reform. I use the term ‘digital activism’ as opposed to ‘social media’ because the later is not necessarily descriptive of the use of digital social networks for activism. Social networks existed long before the internet. Political activism aided by digital social networks is what is we are concerned with herein. Digital social media is a term that describes a set of different yet related tools that, in the context of grassroots political activism, have disparate sub-roles in subverting political coercion. These roles alternated between helping reanimate a grassroots-level debate on change, to popular mobilization and organization for taking the fight from the networks to the streets.   During the early days of the revolution, one of the most important roles of digital social networks was acting as a distributed truth engine (an analogical term to distributed systems in computing, where multiple machines communicate with each other over a network to achieve a common goal), providing real-time information validated and confirmed by individuals at the epicenter of events, in effect providing a robust alternative to the propaganda presented by the largely state-controlled media. Once this umbilical cord of reliable news was severed (when Egypt went offline on orders from Mubarak’s government on January 27^th 2011,), the streets were flooded with even more people seeking out the truth and bolstering the revolutionaries’ stance in Tahrir Square.

Presently, all indicators evince that if any kind of change came about in the year since Mubarak was ousted, it is arguably a relapse. There is outrageous military persecution of dissent, freedom of expression and association is heavily stifled, until last week emergency laws remained in place and the use of disproportionate violence and torture against activists and protesters continue by the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF). Amidst all of this, online social networks still provide the spaces where the now-sentient discourse on democracy is revitalized, and activism is channeled from the virtual to the real. This is far from claiming that this is still a medium where the regime is out of its element. The SCAF frequently arrests and intimidates activists with loud online voices. Even Mubarak’s regime Gestapo, the now defunct State Security, used European digital infiltration technology that was used against bloggers and online activists. What is important to keep in mind, however, is that such coercive countermeasures have a diminishing effect in a post-revolutionary society. The real-time and distributed characteristics of digital social network technologies make complete control of information activism impossible. Scare tactics only add fuel to the revolutionary fire as news of  the violations are transmitted through the networks with unprecedented rapidness.

It would be naive, even condescending, to reduce the Arab Spring uprisings to the face value of the technological tools that catalyzed them. By the same token, it would be equally unwise to downplay the true role of digital activism tools in all stages of the popular quest for change. It is important to think of technologically-driven political dissidence as taking place on a continuum of activism that traverses through real and virtual spaces of power contestation. The digital in ‘digital activism’ necessitates both going beyond the boundaries of conventional paradigms of conceptualizing political unruliness, and a more thorough understanding of the different forms of emerging digital communication technologies and how they influence social interactions that lead to cultivating indigenous discourses on change.

Hani Morsi is a PhD candidate within the Participation, Power and Social Change research team at IDS.

Reflecting back upon the PPSC team’s activities in 2011

Danny Burns

As 2012 begins, I want to take this opportunity to wish you a happy (and stress free) New Year. In this blog I want to talk offer a few flavours of things that members of the team have been working on; others you will see from recent contributions to the blog; more will follow over the next weeks…

An increasing area of interest for development actors at all levels, from grassroots movements to major donors, is how to better understand the complex, shifting and multi-layered social and political environments in which development and change occur. Many organisations are searching for more relevant tools of context analysis. Jethro Pettit and others have been working on new tools for power and political economy analysis. Popular frameworks like the Powercube (developed by John Gaventa) are being adapted and combined with other approaches. Recent learning partnerships on power have included Oxfam, Novib, Hivos, Christian Aid, the Swedish Cooperative Centre, and Trocaire. Work has also been carried out within the UK voluntary and philanthropic sector with the Joseph Rowntree Foundation,  Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, and the Carnegie UK Trust, Trust for London. This work has included three, year-long action learning processes with dozens of participants from these foundations and more than 20 of their partner organisations Training modules on power have adapted into Spanish and French and facilitated by IDS staff in universities and workshops in Spain, West Africa and Latin America.

The team’s work around “unruly politics” has been growing steadily through the “Summer of Unruly Reading” group facilitated by Akshay Khanna. We have been building a collective conceptual analysis within the team, and growing a work programme with Hivos and their partners.  We have also been building connections with people in the Occupy movement. Mariz Tadros continues to be closely engaged with the emerging situation in Egypt and other parts of North Africa.

PPSC has been contracted to engage in a number of new programmes this year. These include:

• a three year programme on gender and sexuality funded by SIDA (Sweden)
• a three year programme with SDC (Switzerland) –on  participatory methodologies and developing the resource centre as a hub for materials on participatory methodologies
• a three  year programme with SDC working with the IDS Governance team to support the work of their Decentralisation and Local Governance Network
• an extension of Gates Foundation funding for our Community Led Total Sanitation Hub

The PPSC team played a major role in designing and delivering the Bellagio initiative on the future of international development and philanthropy in pursuit of human well being which comprised a series of global dialogues, commissioned papers and a major international summit. PPSC fellows – Danny Burns (Delhi and Kinna, Kenya), Patta Scott-Villiers (Kinna, Kenya), Alex Shankland (Sao Paulo) and Mariz Tadros (Cairo) – facilitated four of the global dialogues. Georgina Powell Stevens co-ordinated the summit participation of around 200 participants.   In June of this year Alex Shankland and I, will be facilitating another Bellagio conference on Indigenous health with colleagues from KIT (Royal Tropical Institute, Amsterdam).

Rosemary McGee has recently carried out a major review of accountability and transparency initiatives with John Gaventa. Naomi Hossain continues her longitudinal work with Oxfam and others on food price volatility; Joanna Wheeler, Peter Clarke and I are working on a six country action research programme with VSO and the international volunteering network FORUM on the impact of volunteering on poverty; Joanna Wheeler and Tessa Lewin have been working on a range of participatory video initiatives; Marzia Fontana has been working with the Ministry of Industry and Commerce of Lao PDR on a project which has brought Lao-based women’s groups and international organisations into dialogue with each other. Rosalind Eyben has been organising The Big Push Forward – an international initiative that links practitioners and researchers to identify and share strategies and approaches for fair assessment and evaluation. Patta Scott Villiers is leading a programme of action research in Karamoja Northern Uganda funded by Irish Aid. Alex Shankland is opening up new areas of work on the role of emerging powers in reshaping development especially through civil society.

Pathways to Women‘s Empowerment in the Middle East hosted a UN Women organized conference on “Pathways for Women in Democratic Transitions: International Experiences and Lessons Learned” in Cairo. The meeting featured Michele Bachelet and others discussing legal reform, women’s movements and gender-responsive accountability systems. Mariz Tadros was a speaker on the panel “Building Strong Women’s Movements in Democratic Transitions”.

The team has recently published a number of IDS working papers and bulletins and will publish a bulletin on Action Research in International Development this spring.

Finally I want to say a huge thank you and good luck to John Gaventa and Kate Hawkins. John has been an inspiration to the PPSC team for more than a decade. He has joined the Coady Institute in Canada as their new Director. Kate Hawkins our sexuality programme convenor who has initiated and developed a great deal of exciting work within the team will be leaving IDS (but will continue to work with us as a free lancer). I would also like to welcome to the team  Research Fellow Jerker Edstrom and Jas Vaghadia who will be working on our gender, masculinities and sexuality programmes. Welcome also to Naomi Vernon who is joining our CLTS team.

As I say, just a few flavours of the many different things that are happening. If you want to find out more, follow the links, or contact us directly.

Danny Burns is the Team Leader for the Participation, Power and Social Change research team at IDS and will be publishing IDS Bulletin 43.3 ”Action Research in Development” in May 2012