Visions of Community AVERWEG, LEANING Research Report Visions of Community: Community Informatics and the Contested Nature of a Polysemic Term for a Progressive Discipline Udo R. Averweg Abstract1 [email protected] Community Informatics (CI) is an academic ªeld of study that seeks to examine Information Technology Project how information and communication technologies (ICT) such as Web 2.0 so- Manager eThekwini Municipality and cial media and mobile technologies can be deployed for the beneªt of com- University of KwaZulu-Natal munities. Community is, however, a problematic and polysemic term, meaning 8th Floor Rennie House different things to different people, and it has inherently political overtones. P.O. Box 828 This article aims to bring to the attention of practitioners in the ªeld of CI the Durban, 4000 contested nature of the term community, and to examine the historical origin South Africa of the term and the multiple ways in which it has been and can be used. In 00 27 31 311-4935 exploring this term, we make use of more literary, historical, and sociological approaches. Such approaches can offer new insights on the topic for audi- Marcus A. Leaning ences from more technical academic disciplines. With such discussion to assist [email protected]. practitioners of CI of the problematic ways in which community has been and uk can be used, we offer the following recommendations: (1) Use of the term Senior Lecturer and Programme Leader for Media community remains largely unproblematized, and we ought to be more mind- Studies ful of its history; (2) community should be recognized as a locally contingent University of Winchester position; (3) as a term of reference, its use should be carefully considered Sparkford Road within speciªc contexts; (4) a fuller exploration of the term in the CI discipline Winchester, HANTS is needed; and (5) practitioners in the ªeld of CI will require greater reºection SO22 4NR on the term community when addressing ICT practice issues. We hope that UK these recommendations may lead to more reºexive practice in the progressive 44 (0)1962 826470 discipline of CI. 1. Introduction Community Informatics (CI) offers a coherent, persuasive, useful, and interesting model for understanding, analyzing, and facilitating the use of ICT for particular purposes. While it is primarily a practitioner ªeld, atten- tion has been paid to how particular terms of reference are conceptual- ized, with some explored in depth (Goodwin, 2008). However, the core concept of community presents a range of problems. While concepts such as ICT may be regarded as “ªxed” (and to a degree, easily deªnable), community is a more problematic term. How community is understood and conceptualized in CI is of key interest, since, in many other disci- plines, community has been a widely disputed and contested area. The study of community has a long history with an accompanying 1. An earlier version of this article was presented at the 3rd International IDIA Development Informatics Conference, Berg-en-Dal, Kruger National Park, South Africa, October 23–30, 2009. © 2011 USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism. Published under Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. All rights not granted thereunder to the public are reserved to the publisher and may not be exercised without its express written permission. Volume 7, Number 2, Summer 2011, 17–30 17 VISIONS OF COMMUNITY body of literature. Community is possibly one of the with one drawn from a more analytic tradition most used and polysemic terms in popular dis- (wherein there is a greater claim to objectivity from course. Indeed, as Miller, Coleman, Connolly et al. the interests of the subject/s of study). With this sec- (1991, p. 8) note, community has a “high level of ond approach, we explore the ways in which com- use but a low level of meaning.” Inherently nebu- munity has been understood in certain social lous, community is nevertheless one of the key theories and political narratives, and we make use means by which we experience and understand the of a more qualitative literary, historical, and socio- social world. It is a category through which we can logical approach than is usually deployed within interpret events, discerning their meaningfulness to information studies or computer science disciplines. us by their effect upon our community. In short, It is hoped that the ideas raised here may offer new community is a tool, a means by which we can avenues of interest to more positivist and quantita- understand and “live” in the world. However, tive researchers in the progressive CI discipline. despite its importance, community remains a term We commence with a brief discussion of CI and that has suffered widespread misuse—or at least a its history, and speciªcally of its construction as an laxness in speciªcity of use. academic and practitioner ªeld concerning the The term community, like numerous other con- deployment of ICT for the beneªt of communities. cepts taken from commonsense usage, has been We then move to a critical examination of the term used with an abandon reminiscent of poetic license community, looking at its historical origin and a (Wirth, 1964). Community is polysemic; it signiªes number of key interpretations and readings that different things in different contexts and means dif- have been made of the term. We conclude with a ferent things to different people at different times number of cautionary recommendations concerning (Crow & Allan, 1994, pp. 3–7). It is a “contested the use of the term community. concept” (Tovey, 2009), used descriptively to depict, portray, or illustrate a particular set of relations, but 2. Community Informatics also normatively to describe how a set of relations 2.1 The Construction of the Academic should be, or, as will be noted below, to align a and Practitioner Field of Community political or economic project with a positive moral Informatics (CI) value. While, as Williams (1976) notes, it is nearly CI is generally understood as an academic discipline always a positive idea, something to be preserved or or ªeld of study concerned with the application of sought, it has been found in some rather shady lin- ICT for community beneªt. We identify ICT in a guistic company, and it has been used to support broad sense to include the technical infrastructure of very unprogressive and dangerous ideas. Indeed, network communication—the hardware and soft- community has been used by, and has served as a ware that make communication possible, the multi- rallying point for, projects from all parts of the politi- plicity of software applications, and the systems of cal spectrum. Community has been deployed by social appropriation of software for localized use— both overtly progressive and deeply conservative for example, the instances in which Web 2.0 social political missions, and it has been used to bolster media and mobile applications have been used, the interests of a wide variety of factions, political adapted, and woven into complex and often pre- parties, and pressure groups. existing social networks of political activism. Regard- This article is concerned with bringing to the ing ICT in this manner allows us to see it not only as attention of academics and practitioners in the ªeld a “neutral” system with solely technical properties, of CI some of the different and contested ways in but as a value-laden component of human commu- which community has been understood. Our inten- nication. As such, CI is distinguishable in its use of tion is to encourage a more measured understand- ICT from those academic and practitioner ªelds ing of the term, and to recognize the multiple ways where the focus is on the use of ICT for primarily in which it has been and can be used. In exploring commercial and enterprise success (Stillman & Lin- this term, we contrast a model of understanding of ger, 2009). community used in a number of “progressive disci- While CI is a fairly recent or “emergent” aca- plines” (academic ªelds of study that seek to demic ªeld of inquiry (Goodwin, 2007; Stillman & address social problems and improve conditions) 18 Information Technologies & International Development AVERWEG, LEANING Linger, 2009), it has a longer history as a ªeld of existing geographical communities—ICTs not only practice. There is some contention as to its origins: offer forms of connection between previously Day (2005, 2006) notes that computers have been unknown people, but they may also facilitate social used to facilitate community activists since at least practices in existing communities that are in physical the early 1980s. Williams and Durrance (2009) proximity (Loader, Hague, & Eagle, 2000). CI exam- argue that certain practical aspects of CI can be ines how communities can use ICT for their own traced back further, at least in the United States, to ends. Second, CI advocates a community-oriented two precursors: various projects in public libraries in approach to the design implementation and use of the 1970s, and the actions of social informatics ICT. CI prioritizes the “social requirements” of ICT activists. The early instances of the “civil” appropria- use in communities—the training, social, and cul- tion of ICT through libraries have been documented tural capital aspects of ICT. It acknowledges a bias several times (Childers, 1984; Durrance, 1984; reºected in valuing “public goods” and the poten- Kochen & Donohue, 1976). Similarly, social informa- tial for human growth and development (Bieber, tics also has a considerable body of publications Civille, Gurstein et al., 2002). De Moor (2006) con- (Kling, 2000; Kling, Rosenbaum, & Sawyer, 2005; tends that CI “concerns (among many other things) Sawyer & Rosenbaum, 2000). However, Loader and the building of the sociotechnical infrastructure (in Keeble (2004) see a slightly different origin for CI, terms of enabling technologies as well as organiza- identifying community networking initiatives in the tions) which is a necessary condition for communi- United States and Scandinavian tele-house experi- ties to thrive.” Third, CI has an overt political stance ments as ancestors.