Goodbye, You Crazy Fool

My major problem with the readings from last week stemmed from the binding theme of the book: interactions with the public. When interacting with the public, some of the writers acted like an astranged wanderer who happened upon unattended egg and was trying to decide if it should hatch it or eat it. In reading some of their pieces, you could hear the author replaying the moment they told their fathers that they are going to spend 4-7 years getting a PhD in Rhetoric. Like voting for Adlai Stevenson wasn't enough to piss off their parents (that was maybe an unfair shot at age, I realize that most of those writers, if they were ever alive at time, were probably not old enough to vote).

What I like about Mathieu is her understanding that we need tactics when interweaving academic work with public discourse, but we also do need to act we discovered fire either. She seems to make that apparent of the first page:

"Writing instruction conceived this way goes beyond notions of academic competence to encompass discursive projects in many areas of community life. This public turn in composition studies more generally asks teachers to connect the writing that students and they themselves do with 'real world' texts, events, or exigencies." (1)

Now, in my time teaching writing I learned two things:

1. I hate teaching writing, and I will hopefully never do it again.

2. Writing instruction is one of the most important commodities in a society.

My contempt for writing instructions begins with people who we read for last week. They always come across as overly Romantic. Like their professors made them read too much Emerson. So when they start talking about the pragmatic side of writing instruction in relationship to public discourse, they act like they are inventing the wheel. In fact, you can make the argument that Emerson, while very romantic in his syntax, had a vivid understanding of the political climate in which his texts were operating. Even he was engaging the public without tripping over his feet.

I never wanted say this because I never wanted to sound like my Father, but this shit is common sense. Of course student are going to apply the communication skills we give them beyond the academy (a very short part of their professional lives). Most of these students are going to be living and working in the public when they leave. Why does the acadamy have to be considered a bubble they step into for 4 years.

I think that is why I am leaving the academy.

As I was reading tactics of hope, I was appalled by what the English professor from the story starting on 122 did. This proves that "when institutional priorities intersect with community needs, people can get hurt. Projects can lead to bitterness and disillusionment" (122). The professor only thought about his own needs and desires and basically USED Jane's organization. I was pisssssed off. This guy just makes academics look like horrible people in general.

This is only one example of a community engagement project gone horribly, horribly wrong, and I'm sure there are others, but I'm glad that Jane did not discount working with a university forever. I wouldn't have blamed her if she did.

However, this, again, reminded me a lot of my experiences with the COE because it seems that we only think of our needs (we meaning the students). We used our "community partners" to fulfill our own needs without even really focusing on what the schools needed. At the same time, there is an institutional problem because we were never taught how to address the schools' needs. We then wrote about these students and "profited" (through good grades) from our work with them. I like to think that I brought something to them, but in the case of my first "service learning" experience, I'm not really sure that they did. Maybe I helped a few kids from getting cuts from the metal edge on the aluminum foil box, but I'm not really sure I made a lasting impact on their academic lives.

Even in my more advanced field work, when I was with a class for an entire year, two to three times a week, I was usually only focused on how this work was going to benefit me, and I admit, as much as I loved the students in that class, I did it to complete an assignment. I think that's a huge problem with service learning programs. Complete the required hours and write a paper and get a good grade. Done. There's no chance to build a relationship with the partners, and those relationships are so important.

I think that the COE (and the University in general) should do a major overhaul of the service learning programs. That way, we can actually bring hope to our community partners instead of just bringing some sort of literacy that we believe is superior to their own literacies.

As I was reading through Tactics of Hope, I began mulling over some thoughts about community literacy and service learning. The main idea/concern that kept running through my mind revolved around questioning why most of what we have read involving community literacy is situated as “us” going out to “them.” Or, as we discussed in class last week, rhetoric as academic discipline—where the scholar is the agent, but acting in a space in which he or she is not native. Then, I began questioning why the majority of scholarship I’ve read on the subject (both in class and on my own) situates community literacy in communities/publics of low socio-economic statuses.

This makes me wonder what community literacy looks like in a more upscale (and possibly) stable community. Like, I’m imagining community literacy enacted to help serve the Potter Park Zoo (where I currently volunteer). Perhaps that type of work simply doesn’t have the same hotness factor as does working with women’s shelters and soup kitchens? Or perhaps working with those we perceive as equals is such a totally different dynamic that it’s considered boring? Or maybe, just maybe, as selfish researchers, we have to do something, anything, that will allow us to perceive ourselves as giving something back?

I’m not being facetious here; this is an actual line of inquiry in my mind. Why is it that the bulk of what we see focuses on “bad” neighborhoods, “unfortunate” circumstances, and on those perceived as somehow “less than?” I suppose if I were to look at this in a less cynical way, I could imagine that, as privileged academics, we may feel the responsibility to use our powers for good and not for evil, and that, for some reason, we feel we can do the most good in areas populated by “underprivileged” people.

My fear, in writing this, is that Jeff will answer this question in, like, one sentence. Interesting, right? Seriously, at the beginning of the semester, I would have wanted Jeff to give a quick and definitive answer. But now? Since my goal in this class has shifted from “getting all the answers” to “generating good questions,” I’ll be seriously disappointed if this line of questioning sucks.

On a side note, I picked up Paul Loeb’s Soul of a Citizen at C’s this year (for only $2.00!!!), and I was thrilled to see Mathieu reference it on page 47. It’s on my summer reading list…

Lots more to say, but not enough time in which to say it…

Outreach=Out There

As a person who works for Outreach and Engagement—obviously we do the type of community outreach work that Mathieu is writing about. And I am sort of offended (in a naïve sort of way) about how she feels about community engagement work through Universities and how she feels that Universities exploit and ultimately do not help the communities they are “serving”. However, I also recognize that she is in fact right about a lot of her views and I have seen first-hand how researchers don’t really care if they help the community they simply want grant money and data to get more grant money.

The University Outreach and Engagement department website says that they “foster a reciprocal and mutually beneficial relationship between the University and the Public.” Then in the next paragraph they say that “outreach and engagement provides university scholars with new information for publications.” Perhaps the extent to which each study or research project is “mutually beneficial” depends on the researcher and the type of project. I like to think that when I am a grant writer or a principal investigator on a community project my work will truly be mutually beneficial (or maybe my view is a little too romantic and I need to acquire a little bit of healthy cynicism). I would think that this type of work HAS TO be mutually beneficial or else we wouldn’t be able to continue doing it.

Looking at the UOE website a little further I think that we do our best. We appear to be helping communities with the projects that we do. Maybe it would be beneficial to do a study on whether or not the community wants us to help 

My brain is convulsing...

I
Jarratt quotes Bruner as saying, “one way we can do the public work of rhetoric is by mapping the distance between history and memory, understanding how far those imaginaries are from historical fact, and with what consequence.” My questions here are partially fueled up by the work I did in Malea’s class last semester and partially by the readings done for this class early on in the semester: First of all, how can we consider history as “fact,” and are “facts” always true. I believe that if we call “facts” into question, then this whole argument becomes upset. Now, from this reading, I see that Bruner is discussing “large-scale public memories of war,” so it seems that we are talking about perception vs. fact. Hmmm…this brings up all sorts of questions and ideas…

II
Reading Cintron’s piece was a bit depressing. (God, I hope he doesn’t happen to stumble upon this blog posting…) As he de-essentializes democracy, and calls into question the very meaning of democracy. When he states “’democracy’” is a concept open to inquiry, a rhetoric whose substance and meaning are opaque until the motives behind its deployment are understood,” my brain kind of shuddered. Not because I disagree with him, or think his ideas evil, but, rather, because being able to use the word “democracy and all its attendant terms as “quintessential topoi that exhibit sufficient malleability to mobilize the most disparate collective desires and actions,” makes things a bit more handleable. On the other hand, if we continue with wrong/faulty assumptions about a situation/challenge/idea/etc., then we can never ask the right questions, thus disallowing valid and workable solutions.

For example, Cintron states: “Perceived need or real need, perceived fear or real fear—when people feel subject to these lacks, they assume that material conditions are the causes of their woe, and from that base rhetors search for the available arguments that have the power to win what is needed or defeat what is feared.” Honestly, this totally freaks me out. Umm…yes, I do assume that material conditions are the causes of my (and others’) woe. It would be so much easier to just blame it on the lack itself…but, I realize that it is much deeper than that. What about the substance (Locke) of that material condition…it cannot be itself, so there is definitely a reason for the material condition. I suppose that is what I’m interested in finding/researching, and then discovering answers to in my own work: what ideologies/assumptions/political philosophies are causing/contributing to that material lack and how can rhetoric be utilized to cause changes.

Rhetoric FTW!

Then and now, the measure of rhetoric’s responsibility to and involvement in public and political life has always been a question of distance. How close do we get to political discourse when it is consumed with violence? How close do we get when solutions to social injustice transcend the limits of scholarly discourse and criticism? How close do we get when the interlocutor is our neighbor, and that neighbor is in trouble? (Coogan and Ackerman, 4)


In the Novella by Joseph Conrad, The Heart of Darkness, a man by the name of Marlow is hired to search for Kurtz, a English captain lost in the African Jungle: the heart of darkness. His dying words: The Horror. The Horror. Kurtz was the standard Victorian hero: running off to savage lands with only a hunting rifle and sweet Handlebar Mustache only to become a god to what ever less-than-holy race he encountered (he was actually considered a god in the novel). What he discovered in the darkness was too much for him to handle, and it eventually claimed his life.

Why does Coogan and Ackerman remind me of Kurtz. Kurtz is to Coogan and Ackerman as the Heart of Darkness is to the public. Why is that every encounter that I have with Rhetoric talking about the public goes something like The Heart of Darkness. Rhetoricians seem to go all Victorian on us and act like were hunting lions on the African steppes. Come on man. Like the public is something that has to be colonized and controlled before it can be helped.

I have to credit where credit is due. Miller at least takes a somewhat sensible approach:


I do not mean here to dismiss rhetoric as a sham art or to reject it in favor of some other, better description of our communicative dilemmas. I mean, rather, to honor the dangers and powers of rhetoric, which the ancients well understood and which our enthusiasm about the revival of rhetoric may sometimes lead us to forget. We cannot, as Garsten says, avoid the “twin dangers” of pandering and manipulation that arise from the nature of rhetoric itself (2).[i] Some theorists have encouraged us to reconceive rhetoric as a cooperative rather than an adversarial art, Booth prominent among them. At the same time, he confesses his own failures and inabilities in attempting to practice the cooperative listening-rhetoric he preaches. (16)

In this case, sensible doen't seem to be helping anyone. I feel like there standing over a glass jar and looking down at something they don't know quite how to deal with but they feel they have to help any way. Coogan and Ackerman seem only to be able to enter that jar under the pretense of some cultural protest. In that sense, I'm starting to see why 1960 and 70s became a resurgent period for Rhetoric studies.

I'm not saying that Rhetoric can't be valuable to the public (Once we find it that is. Dewey's concept never rang so true at it does with Rhetoric's efforts to do so). I think our program is proof of that. But when we approach the public like Cicero addressed the Forum, we are playing a game of power and not a game of agency.

FTW!

Ramblings...

I will be honest, I read the readings this week only one time and I feel that I didn't read them very closely--however I am going got go with my initial impression on this one and hope that it isn't too far off. I feel like these readings were very theoretical.. I feel like it (community based work)shouldn’t be complicated this much. The intro talks about taking rhetorical work "public" and "doing rhetoric" but really what they are doing is complicating things and imposing their views and believes onto everyone else. "communities can benefit" blah. As if we (rhetoricians) have all the answers.

I realize that theoretical interpretations are important---even when the topic is seemingly simple and straight forward---I guess I just didn't like the way this book chose to go about it.

~~Stray thought~~~ Perhaps it is important to pose a theoretical interpretation of community based work at a time like this when the field is so new and people are just starting to pin down exactly what community literacy is and how to do that work or what is considered to be community literacy work? I don't know.

I guess I prefer to see the who, what, why, when, where, and how of the community literacy work (or any work for that matter)rather than the theoretical background and influence of such work. However this has proved to be a weakness of mine---so this is a not always a good thing.

There were a few things I liked about the readings---the Space to Work in Public Life was interesting. Except for the part where they said "Cleary, these communities can benefit from the increased attention of rhetoricians in pursuit of democratic ideals" and then continued to qualify that with "but rhetoric can also benefit from community partnerships premised on negotiated search for the common good." Yes. Because it is that simple.

I apologize for my ramblings... its 5:30 in the morning :)

Use of Rhetoric

While reading the first "On Being Useful: Rhetoric and the Work of Engagement," I thought of my hypothetical community engagement project. The problem I identified is that "it is common to think about community engagement in terms of ourselves—the work that we are doing, the impact that we hope to have, and the way that our presence changes a community (Grabill 1). The way we think of our own work is rhetoric. Our actions reflect this rhetoric.

I like how Grabill made the turn to focusing the "public work of rhetoric" on others, and I think that's exactly how it should be. What if we help develop a new rhetoric? This rhetoric should combine the original rhetoric of the group and the rhetorical tools that we, as scholars engaged in communities, bring to the community.

What I found the most interesting was that Grabill and Hart-Davidson marketed WIDE under the name of Capital Area Community Media Center to argue that it was engaged and needed in the community. Grabill goes onto explain that "Rhetoric is always material, and it is most powerful when it makes things that enable others to perform persuasively" (Grabill 14). This use of rhetoric was designed to make a Thing.

I guess i never thought of using rhetoric in this way before.

Social Media Marketer as Community Organizer

While much of American political organizing caters to particular group
interests and identities, the IAF works to create bridging social capital by
bringing leaders from different faith communities together in what it calls
broad-based organizations. Warren, 32

The reading I did for this week made me think of how communities are organized and how communities function based up that organization. Now, this blog post is going to bridge back to community informatics a little bit, but I think Warren's chapters apply to this post.

Both Starbucks and Toyota are limited in their social media teams; Starbucks has six people on their team, and Toyota has three people on theirs. In addition, I doubt anyone on the Starbucks team can make a Frappuccino or anyone on the Toyota team can explain how the sticking accelerator is being fixed. But each company has employees that are experts in these areas.

So, when Starbucks created MyStarbucksidea.com, the social media team wasn't creating content and responding to ideas posted by customers. Instead, "Starbucks set out to ensure the departments impacted by the site (which includes practically every department) had a representative who was responsible for being the liaison" (from Engagement Database Report found on the website). The Mini-Starbucks Card was actually a customer idea that made its way to Chuck Davidson, an employee at Starbucks. He traced the comments, wrote a proposal, and put it into action.

Toyota has as similar breakdown in roles:

"Take a look at the Twitter account and you’ll see that in addition to DeYager, three public relations specialists from sales, environment/safety, and public affairs/community outreach contribute posts. The Toyota Twitter team uses monitoring software to identify tweets mentioning Toyota, then responds from a respective area of expertise using technology from CoTweet to manage multiple authors on the single Twitter account. This same mode is utilized on Toyota’s Facebook pages — response requests are sent out and come back from around the company, depending on the topic" (from Engagement Database Report found on the website).

What is interesting about social media is that that Warren's dynamic, as explained by Walter, Kretzmann, and McNknight on page 68 of their text, fits into effective organization social media strategies.

Warren i1 963, ix) identities two dimensions of community involving either, relations of units (whether individuals, groups, or organizations). The horizontal dimension involves "the relation of local units to one another"; this is what we think of as the community. The vertical dimension involves "the relation of local units to extracommunity systems" in the larger society and culture. (68)

We can think of employees and internal communications as being on the horizontal axis and consumers and external communications (PR and brand affinity) as being on the vertical axis.

Gang Leader for a Day: A case study

While reading the assigned texts for this week, I was also reading a book I’ve been interested in checking out for quite some time now: Gang Leader for a Day A rogue sociologist takes to the streets by Sudahir Venkatesh. While I was hesitant to read a trade paperback (New York Times Bestseller) with such a wildly dramatic title, the contents basically detail Venkatesh’s methods for doing research, as well as offer an interesting version of Adele Clarke’s (Situational Analysis) project memoing. Basically, the book details Venkatesh’s fieldwork in the Robert Taylor Homes on Chicago’s Southside. He started out wishing to do a simple survey on urban poverty and ended up hanging out with the Black Kings doing research on the underground economy of the urban poor. The book discusses his misconceptions, his mess-ups, and his relationships with the community. It seems to me that it might have been more accurately titled, “A naïve sociologist takes to the streets.”

Interestingly, the readings intersected with the readings we did for class this week. In fact, Gang Leader for a Day (GLFAD) almost seemed an example of what NOT to do when working with communities. Venkatesh worked with a prominent African American sociologist in an attempt to help find solutions to urban poverty. But rather than just accept the status quo, he wanted to understand the people and the situations he studied; he saw and experienced life on the streets and decided that sociology’s attempts to understand the people it studies were far from real. Certainly, Venkatesh’s motives seemed altruistic, but, as he admits in the book, his presence caused great harm to many of his subjects. For example, after granting him interviews, some community members end up on the outs with those in power—even suffering physical violence—because Venkatesh leaked information.

The valuable intersections I recognized while doing these readings in tandem were especially connected to “For Communities to Work” and to “Community Building Practice.” When looking at GLFAD, one can see at play multiple points from the readings. For example, Venkatesh is sometimes invited to sit in on Ms. Bailey’s (building president of the Local Advisory Council) tenant meetings. It is interesting to see that during these meetings, it is apparent that a “public” is definitely at work in the Robert Taylor Homes. In fact, some of them are even “engaged.” They show up at meetings and make suggestions for helping the community. However, where things begin to break down is evident on page 2 of “For Communities to Work:” “the amount of political will available in a community seems to depend on the extent to which people claim responsibility for what happens to them. They have to own their problems rather than blaming them on others.”

In many ways, this quote makes perfect sense: People have to take responsibility for the problems in their community and work to change them. In addition, they must take on the role of agent rather than of victim if they are to work toward changing their communities. But, this smacks suspiciously of what Victor Villanueva refers to as a bootstrap mentality. I wonder how this could work in a community that is so oppressed that it feels it can only embrace its victim status because to do otherwise would seem nonsensical. Ms. Bailey, the LAC president illustrates this point beautifully when reprimanding Venkatesh for asking the wrong questions and focusing on the wrong things in his study. She adeptly uses the Socratic method to show him the error of his thinking. This short excerpt from page 147 of GLFAD illustrates the point:

“You planning on talking with white people in your study?” she snapped, waving her hand at me as if she’d heard my spiel a hundred times already.
I was confused. “This is a study of the Robert Taylor Homes, and I suppose that most of the people I’ll be talking to are black. Unless there are whites who live here that I’m not aware of.”
“If I gave you only one piece of bread to eat each day and asked why you’re starving, what would you say?”
I was thrown off by this seeming non sequitur. I thought for a minute. “I guess I would say I’m starving because I’m not eating enough,” I answered.
“You got a lot to learn, Mr. Professor,” she said. “Again, if I gave you one piece of bread to eat each day and asked why you’re starving, what would you say?”
I was getting even more confused. I took a chance. “Because you’re not feeding me?”
“Yes! Very good!”

So, what is basically going on here is that Ms. Bailey, a force to be reckoned with in the community, wants the researcher to understand that the community is at the mercy of those outside it. I wonder what the Kettering Foundation would do with that.

Creating Citizens, Creating Community?

Governments can't create citizens (Matthews).

For some reason this line sparked a train of thought and personal memories, which I have basically outlined here. While reading the readings for today I am reminded of a TV special on Meth addiction and how it started in Oregon and spread East all across the US in record time, which led me to think about my home town and it's special issue with Meth.

There was a serious meth problem in my hometown (Ovid, not Westphalia)---so much so that a meth house blew up a block away from my house---I was at home when it happened--it felt like an earthquake, or what I assume an earthquake would feel like. No one was at the house that blew up--thank goodness. However, the house was completely destroyed. It just so happened that the firefighters were having a fund raiser that night in the Town Hall and there was drinking involved so none of them were in any condition to fight a fire.

Anyway, more to the point. Why didn't the community come together to fix this meth issue? What would have happened if they did? Knowing what I know now I realize that the meth problem (at least in the schools) was strictly the "stoner kids" it didn't directly effect the jocks, cheerleaders, nerds, or anyone besides those "lost cause, stoner kids." But what would have happened if one of the stoner kids shared with a jock or cheerleader or other student who was higher on the high school hierarchy? I assume that their parents would get involved and then there would have been community action. But since we have a marginalized group of people whom have been deemed unhelpable or whatever, nothing was done.

This is a example of citizenship not taking place. No one stepped up to fix this serious problem. It wasn't addressed in the school. Even after the meth house blew up NO ONE talked about it! At least not to the students, whom it was obviously effecting. Knowing what know now this is rather frustrating and disappointing…

Random Thoughts
People being citizens---doing citizenship---is this always a good thing? The people on the flight that crashed in Pennslyvania on 9/11 were being citizens---practicing citizenship---saving lives.
But what about protesters---standing up for what they believe in ---are they doing citizenship? What about terrorist doing what they believe to be citizenship? Are there right and wrong ways to do citizenship or is it more a matter of moral versus immoral ways of doing citizenship?

Kinda like Martin Luther King Jr. versus Malcolm X (before he went on Hajj) Both were doing work for the black community--trying to change the world--just in different ways.

"Some of the most striking instances of the force of political will come from stories of how people have acted in times of crisis" (Matthews). Reminds me of learning about the Civil War--when so many Westpoint graduates stood out as leaders---changing our country.

“Own their problems rather than blaming them on others” (Matthews)
What if the problems really aren't their fault---I am told repeatedly that "urban youth" are the way that they are because of certain systems that are in place which ultimately keep them there and perpetuate the cycle of poverty…

Perhaps communities wanting to solve an issue may benefit from producing a logic model?

Conceptualizing Community

"How we conceptualize community powerfully influences what we see and do in community practice" (Walter 67).

This quote, although seemingly obvious, really made me start thinking (again) about what community is and how we can define it. I've been constantly thinking about defining community for the last 12 weeks, and each week it seems like my old definition is thrown out the window, and I start all over again. Or maybe I don't. Maybe I build on the fallacies of my previous definitions to create a more concrete (and perhaps "better") definition of community for myself. Because, let's face it, community is a pretty complex thing. There are so many ways to define it, and these definitions, as Walter says, influence our work in the community.

The traditional definition of community (Warren 1963) is a boundaried social or demographic unit (Walter 67), but, as Walter says, it doesn't take into account our work in the community. Our work in the community influences and, in a way, defines the community. And there are also multiple consciousnesses in play here that are not always taken into account. To ignore these consciousnesses issues may be oversimplified (Walter 68). Oversimplifying issues is never a good way to help the community.

This got me thinking about my own work in the community through various institutions. I'll use my service learning for TE 250 as an example. I really think that the issues here were oversimplified, and therefore, did not help the community as was originally intended. In TE 250 it was assumed that urban schools needed our help. Fine. That sounds great. I know that there are usually lower reading scores, etc., in urban schools, and I'm all for raising them. However, I was placed in a science class and was basically just there to help manage the classroom. Sometimes I tutored kids or gave them extra help, but I don't really think it enhanced their learning in any meaningful way. What if all the students in my class had chosen one school to work at, picked an issue with the help of administrators and professors and then did our service learning focused on that? That would've gotten to the heart of the issue and provided real help to the students.

We didn't take into account all the forces and all the relationships that helped to define that school community. So we oversimplified and didn't provide any real help. I just got my hours and my grade. If we're going to go out into the community, we should help the community more than ourselves.

So what do I think a community is this week?? Well, I think that it's basically formed by interactions of people with similar concerns and that there are many factors that come into play when forming a community.

I have three more weeks to come up with a concrete definition... Can I do it?? ;)

Changing Military Invention and Documentation

The way I have been approaching digital media has been through leveraging groups and communities that previously did not exist. They used media to create channels of communication that were previously not there in order to address a matter of concern. The interesting thing about Jeff's Book is that it is focused on how existent communities adopt communal writing (inventing) technologies. And it made me wonder, what other examples can I find out there of communal writing. Shiky, who I have drawing from all semeseter, offers examples about how groups arise out of thin air. What happens when groups adopt new writing technologies.

The Military

The US military recently wikyfied their army field manuals. Soldiers have had problems in Afghanistan and Iraq with enemy combatants adjusting to field procedures. To address this problem the army implemented technology that allowed updates to be made on the fly. Now, field soldiers can update the procedures as they encounter new enemy tactics. This technology turned every member of the military into a writer. The advantage of a wiki is that it allows the community members who experience the problems in the field to post a solution. But it also maintains military hierarchy. Writers, in this case, are still on the low end of the pole. Higher ranking officials still control how this technology is used and who can use it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3aJ3zeAv6g&feature=player_embedded

In this example, there is an existent community that adopted an new technology that changed the way they produced and shared knowledge. This is the way that infrastructures adjust to support invention that ultimately improves the function of a community. As Grabill mentions in his book, Star and Ruhleder believe that infrastructures become invisible as they break down (91). The standard infrastructure that supported the production of field manuals was no longer adequate. If you will, that infrastructure became exposed and open to attack.

One other interesting note that the normal rigid connection between expert and status breaks down. Now the experts on the enemy, the soldiers in the field, can update the manual as needed while still keeping their status as field soldiers.

"People working and writing within communities need help, and they know it. But they do not need certain kinds of help" (63).

Reading this, I thought, "Wow. That seems kind of like common sense." But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this could probably be ignored by people working in communities. To use the example from the book, community member Barbara says that it's helpful when experts present scientific information and facts, but people from universities come out and just want to talk to them (63). What do people hope to accomplish by just talking to community members? Are they trying to give them a voice? Because it seems to me, the people in Harbor already kind of have a voice. They just need more information to make their voice and rhetorical tools more powerful.

This got me thinking about the Cushman piece. What if Cushman had just gone into the community and talked to the residents and then published her findings. I think the piece would've been much less convincing. Instead, the lived in the community and worked with the residents. She helped them navigate the complex social services system. She gave them the kind of help and expertise they needed.

So if experts go into a community like Harbor and interview the residents about the effects of the pollution and then publish their findings, sure it gives the community a voice, in a way. But it also takes their voice away, and makes them less able to write for change.

Communitation, Commodities... and others

Linear Communication
The concept of linear communication was mentioned in the book, and my first thought was in what way is communication every linear? Sure there is face-to-face communication, but in today's world I think communication is hardly linear at all.

In my experience I get a lot of my information that at one point in time would have been communicated by family members to me personally, through facebook or twitter. I see an announcement or a status change or something and I will "Like" it or say congrats, but this is a rather indirect form of communication. When someone becomes engaged there is no longer a phone call letting everyone know, your status changes on facebook and it is assumed that everyone knows.

Information as a commodity
In some ways yes, information is a commodity. It can be bought and sold. However I agree that this analogy is "insuffient because it assumes use." Commodities are used, they are (for the most part) considered useful. In many cases information isn't used. It isn't read, understood, or if it is read or understood then it isn't applied. It is rather dangerous to assume that the information sent out to people in the community via fliers, door to door visits, emails, mailings, or other things are read, understood, and used.

The census is an example of this. We are trying to bring together our entire "imagined community" the United States of America in order to find out just how many of us there are. WE have seen advertisement after advertisements on TV on the internet, in the paper, on the bus. Everywhere. But half of Americans (people in our community) didn't know when the census was coming, what it was used for, what questions are on there, or when it was supposed to be mailed back. The information was presented to them, but it wasn't read, understood, or used.

Community Change

Documents or writing pieces that promote community change or cause change are mundane pieces of work. I don't have much to say about this concept because I feel that it alone says it all. I just felt it was worth mentioning because it is so true.

It reminds me of why I want to be a grant writer. Grant proposals don't get awards. They are read once and filed away. (in some cases they are used later for other things). They are not applauded for the wonderful prose and excellent use of imagery. They will not be found in text books or taught in classrooms. But they MAKE a difference in the world, in the country, in the community in which their plans are implemented. That is why I want to write them. To make a difference. :)

Discussion Paper for this week.

Digital Divide

I apologize for the tardiness--- just another example of the terrible internet connection out in the Boondocks :)

The Digital Divide. Mentioned briefly in the articles we read for this week and it was quite brilliantly described as being “about places left behind.” I never gave the digital divide too much thought, sadly I had the outlook that the internet was everywhere because it was everywhere that I had ever been. But then I moved to Dewitt, or rather I moved to the boondocks, where internet is not available, where streets aren’t plowed, and when a storm hits and takes out power we are the last to get it back. But mostly let’s focus on the internet issue.

As a person who has always had the internet and a cell phone in order to connect me with anyone and everyone at any given time, being without the internet is rather frightening. But then you get over the initial fright, which turns into annoyance. What if I want to work from home? What if I need information? Why should I have to drive all the way to town in order to get a good connection? Why did I take the internet for granted for so long?

Luckily the Federal Broadband Stimulus is working to fix this issue. Go here for more information: http://www.broadbandusa.gov/

Also mentioned in the same article is the fact that though the internet creates new ways of communicating, connecting, organizing etc, It is also creating new inequalities among people. Between those who have the internet and those who don’t and those who know how to use it and those who don’t, those who create web content and those who do not.

This also broadens the divide between those who are literate and those who are not. Those who are literate can use the internet and gain more information---those who are not literate cannot do this and therefore remain even farther divided. The informed get more informed and the ignorant remain ignorant.

Pentalk

I really found the Hagar and Haythorne article interesting because it was a practical, yet uncommon (at least for me), example of the value of technology to communities. I say uncommon because I don't often put agriculture and computing technology together in my mind. This is not to say that I view farmers as less intelligent; it's just something that I really had never thought of before. It seemed to me that Pentalk was well-organized and thought out, and it really brought two types of literacy to the affected community: literacy in computer operation and literacy about (then) current methods of disease prevention. I liked that they provided the computers on a rent or rent-to-own basis. I think it gave the farmers more of a choice, rather than just jamming literacy down their throats. It was also interesting to read about the formation of new communities not based on a shared physical space.

It then got me thinking about different ways that those types of technologies apply to my own life (excluding Facebook, Twitter, etc.). There is/used to be an emergency text message system on campus available to notify students and staff of emergencies on campus through text messages when e-mail wasn't readily accessible. Too bad I never subscribed to this service and will therefore, presumably, be unprepared in the case of an emergency situation on campus. This doesn't really bother me. Otherwise I would have subscribed already.

Back to Pentalk. What if the farmers chose not to subscribe? They could call neighboring farms owned by farmers who had subscribed to get the same information almost verbatim. The neighbor with the service could read from the Pentalk service. Just like my friend could forward an emergency text to me if he or she deemed it necessary.

Then I thought about literacy being violent. The farmers who chose to use the Pentalk system gained a new literacy that made them different from their peers. The relationship is changed because of this new literacy. Maybe resentment becomes a factor. "Why didn't you subscribe and therefore always calling me for information?" So couldn't this resentment, in turn, tear apart the physical community? Does the physical community matter now that the virtual one is in place?

As I read through the articles about community informatics, I was reminded of a series of events that took place several years ago in my old neighborhood (surprise, surprise). As I drove down Damen one day, I encountered a police roadblock. There really was nothing too unusual about this, as the cops frequently terrorized community members. In fact, just the week before, a roadblock had been set up at one of the busiest intersections. Ostensibly, it was to conduct seatbelt checks, but everyone in the neighborhood knew the real reason for the roadblock: the cops were trying to ferret out undocumented residents (more commonly referred to as “illegal aliens”) for deportation.

Anyway, on this particular day, I got angry as I was forced to sit through the backed up traffic in order to deal with Chicago’s version of the Gestapo. As I neared the front of the line, I readied to berate the cop and give him a piece of my mind. However, this time, it was a different story. The cops were handing out flyers that featured a drawing of a man who had just raped two neighborhood middle school girls. I was horrified that something so brutal had occurred just two blocks from my apartment. I was also thankful (for the first time) for the police presence on my street. On the other hand, I was still pissed off because this was the first time in two years that I had seen the cops do anything close to “serve and protect” this community. I remember saying something to the officer along the lines of: “Oh, wow. I didn’t realize you guys actually did anything good for this neighborhood. Usually you just mess with the residents. What a nice deviation from the norm. I hope you catch the guy.”

I suppose I started thinking about this in regard to Community Informatics after I read the piece “Crisis, Framing & Community.” I began thinking about how information in my neighborhood was disseminated and how we could have responded to a crisis. The official response of authorities in the incident above were problematic in several ways. First, it seemed ridiculous that the same institution that had been oppressing the people was now attempting to assist them, and the total lack of trust between the community and the police made this a difficult stretch. To me, this indicates the absolute necessity of good working relationships, which might be why Pentlak was able to assist the farmers as they did. Second, much like the farmers in the article, most of the people in my neighborhood did not own computers. In fact, most of the people in my neighborhood did not speak English. So, while the idea of handing out flyers in a neighborhood in which people were not computer literate seemed a good one, the results were not as good as they could have been because the flyers were printed in English.

Who Defines Citizenship?

I read this article about Ottawa's Indian Act and it reminded me of some of Benhabib's work:

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2010/03/10/native-status.html#ixzz0iG8KVGMe