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Rika Resilience: Informing Sustainability in the Age of Social Media

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Rika Resilience: Informing Sustainability in the Age of Social Media ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: RIKA RESILIENCE: INFORMING SUSTAINABILITY IN THE AGE OF SOCIAL MEDIA Elizabeth Muthoni Warrick, Doctor of Philosophy, 2020 Dissertation directed by: Professor and Dean Emeritus Jennifer Preece, College of Information Studies The consensus in systems science is that environmental sustainability ensues from resilience, i.e., underlying capacity for preservation of core functions through adaptation in changed circumstances; and resilience itself is only sustainable when built from internal attributes of the system. Impalpability of internal resilience to external agents contributes to failures of global development in Africa, calling for analysis informed from within. This work proposes that African resilience is founded in Rika. Within Rika, ecological stewardship is integrated with noncompetitive elected representative governance and achieved through scaled modulation of systemic diversities. Eroded at macro level, Rika continues to drive grassroots enterprise. Causal attributes are, therefore, key to understanding sustainability and effecting structural reform of governance at all levels in Africa. Documented international usage of Rika concepts and terminologies has significance for research linking global expansion of Homo sapiens to the development of conceptual thinking in East Africa. Findings are based in research with the Mbeere of Kenya, East Africa, a community of 195,000, whose name Mbeere, means First Peoples. Data extracted regionally from 750,000 social media users informs context. From an indigenist method-as-theory stance (Indigenist Maths), we leverage qualitative and quantitative tools, bolstering capacity of research and practice to serve indigenous goals at the intersection of social media and Place. A dynamic indigenous information world (iWorld) ensues through community interactions interconnecting local knowledge with global information to foster economic enterprise and social ecological stewardship. We term this iWorld, Rikamedia. Examples of resilience attributes emerging from the data include: the Rika ideal of non-competitive governance, potentially impactful of conflicting democratic ideals centered in competitive governance; transcendence of natural hierarchies through unambiguous reciprocated interactions from micro to macro levels of society; design for participatory diversity, equality and inclusion with impacts on systemic divides of gender, age, and access, etc.; and lastly, a learning modality aligns governance with participatory process, emboldens risk tolerance; nurtures diversities and fosters innovation. An entrepreneurial micropilot Bamboo project ensues from community-researcher interactions, with recommendations for agroforestry citizen science, technology, funding, and diaspora capacitation. Findings are scalable in Africa South of the Sahara, and may have significance for resilience when projects incorporate Rika attributes in sustainability planning. RIKA RESILIENCE: INFORMING SUSTAINABILITY IN THE AGE OF SOCIAL MEDIA By Elizabeth Muthoni Warrick Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2020 Advisory Committee: Professor Jenny Preece, Dissertation Chair Professor Tammy Clegg Professor Paul Jaeger Professor Joseph Richardson, Jr., Dean's Representative Professor Katie Shilton RIKA RESILIENCE © Copyright by Elizabeth Muthoni Warrick 2020 Dedication To my children Glory and Ben. ii Acknowledgements In reflection of the indigenist viewpoint advanced in this work, I break with scholastic tradition to acknowledge my indebtedness to the community first and foremost, for without the remarkable people of Mbeere and Embu there would have been nothing to write about: I am grateful to my maternal cousin, the renowned Architect Bedan Nyaga Githae, for the groundbreaking role he played in facilitating the transcendent encounters of 2015 in Mbeere North; and for opportunities to observe integration of indigenous knowledge with digital tools for ecological accounting on his exceptional farms in Embu and Mbeere. Our relationship is a living testament to the strength of our shared heritage and the Rika tradition to which we all belong. I could not have done this work without my fellow research team members, Jedidah Kibuttu, Munene Njeru Stephen, and Lawrence Njoroge Chuka; and by extension, our valued partners in research based practice at Ishiara CitSci (iCitSci), Caroline Wawira Njeru, and Margaret Nyambura Wanjiru. To Tony Chirah and his remarkable Pathfinders Team on UVA and to Ndagara Neche who spearheads a Melia Volkensin project on Rikamedia, for willingness to open their work to inquiry. I am much obliged to our Elders especially Akũrũ A Kīrīra, knowledge and instruction experts to whom we returned many times for consultation on all things Mbeere. A note of gratitude goes to my Mom the Reverend Mary Mercy who was my sounding board on translations; and to my late Dad, Mwalimu Benson Kibuttu, for teaching me to appreciate Mbeere in its fullness. On the scholastic front, I am beholden to my Advisor Dr. Jennifer Preece and my entire dissertation committee, Drs. Shilton, Jaeger, and Clegg at the iSchool; and Dr. Joseph Richardson Jr., the Joel and Kim Feller Endowed Professor of African American Studies and Anthropology. Thank you all for reading the various iterations of this work since 2016, and for your incisive feedback. Additionally, I have been privileged to participate in projects, publications, classes, lectures, conferences, and insightful conversations with each one of you, to great benefit for the theoretical development of this work. Family and friends housed, fed, transported, and bolstered me with long and useful conversations about the history of Mbeere, the EC peoples, and the nation of Kenya: my children, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins; Aunt Faith Rose and the Njagis in Kĩambeere; friends of my youth Annemarie Kemp and Jaki Wasike-Sihanya; My Late Grandmother Elizabeth M'Njaria, who welcomed me on her farm in Kĩamũringa, and my co-parent Drake Warrick, who looked after our son in Maryland while I carried out field research in Mbeere. Lastly and equally importantly, several grants and fellowships went towards supporting fieldwork and data collection in Mbeere: The iSchool Dean’s Fellowship, The iSchool RIGGS Grant, The Rotman Foundation, The iSchool Alumni Association, The Simmona Simmons Award, and the Wylie Dissertation Fellowship, among others. My thanks to the iSchool Deans, the Doctoral Program Director, and the various committees that deemed me a worthy recipient of these and other honors. Thank you. iii Table of Contents Dedication ........................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................ iii Table of Contents ............................................................................................................... iv List of Figures .................................................................................................................... vi List of Tables .................................................................................................................... vii List of Abbreviations ....................................................................................................... viii Mīgambithia yīa Kīmbeere (Vowel Sounds). .................................................................... ix 1 Chapter 1: The Big Picture ......................................................................................... 1 1.1 Introduction.......................................................................................................................................... 1 1.2 Why a study on Rika............................................................................................................................ 4 1.3 Significance for Research, Participatory Projects, and Policy ............................................................ 5 1.4 Research Design ................................................................................................................................ 28 1.5 Quantifying Traditional Properties of Mbeere. ................................................................................. 38 1.6 Organization of the Work .................................................................................................................. 43 2 Chapter 2: Literature Search ..................................................................................... 45 2.1 Chapter Overview .............................................................................................................................. 45 2.2 Theoretical Roots in Science and Information Technology .............................................................. 46 2.3 Toward Indigenist Theory ................................................................................................................. 56 2.4 Other Pertinent Literature .................................................................................................................. 65 2.5 Coeval Gender Diversity in Rika ....................................................................................................... 80 3 Chapter 3: Methods ................................................................................................
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