a quick note from another lurker.<br><br>I meant to intro myself - but stuff keeps coming up - I will do a proper intro later.<br><br>But I did want to say that I actually dont see Nishant as "resisting" colonial definitions per se but as privileging context.<br>
<br>and I do agree with John about the issue of technology - its design and defined "proper" use - based in socio-politically and ideologically situated policy that gets universalized as global values and practices - yet all this is far more layered and complex than we have been able to describe in scholarly work so far - we need lots of close examinations from various local contexts to see how these play out and how the global hides in local practice... <br>
<br>Megan - I so wish I could be there for the panel you are facilitating - but no doubt the list will throw up more discussions....<br><br><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, Sep 3, 2011 at 8:31 AM, Megan Boler <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:megan.boler@gmail.com">megan.boler@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; font-family: verdana,sans-serif;"><font size="2">Dear Nishant,<br>
<br>
I find your Reflection provocaive and productive for many reasons, two of which I will
mention here as prelude to one of my roles at the upcoming Conference. </font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; font-family: verdana,sans-serif;"><font size="2">1. Your description of the "everyday digital
natives" as those who (in contrast to the outcasts?) are "users of
technologies who have a stake in social transformation and political
participation" offers helpful alternatives to the vacuous and
non-vernacular terms such as 'civically engaged youth,' so often used in disciplines
ranging from media education, media literacy, political science, sociology,
youth studies, social movement studies, and/or media studies to understand
youth, social media, and “civic engagement”. </font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; font-family: verdana,sans-serif;"><font size="2">Whether we’re talking about everyday social media practices
of “youth” or “students,” or those engaged in the Arab Spring revolutions, or
more recently those protesting economic and cultural disenfrachisement in the
UK, many of us remain confounded: How best to describe and understand, much
less theorize the practices and/or subjectivities, of those using digital
technologies and social media for purposes of “social transformation and
political participation”?</font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; font-family: verdana,sans-serif;"><font size="2">Though a graduate of the interdisciplinary History of
Consciousness program and mentored by Donna Haraway, I have found myself
turning to mixed-methods studies (semi-structured interviews, etc) since 2003 in
order to better understand the social and political implications of these
everyday media users/practitioners/activists/producers/prosumers. </font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; font-family: verdana,sans-serif;"><font size="2">My research continues to reveal the inadequacy of
traditional vocabulary and conceptions of politics, ‘democracy,’ political
‘engagement’ or ‘apathy’—such concepts no longer accurately capture the
sensibility and approaches of what some scholars are calling “alteractivism” (overall
a conundrum you describe with great nuance!) During my first 3-year funded
study (2005-08) “Rethinking Media Democracy and Citizenship after 9/11” we
studied the motivations of those engaged in digital dissent in North America
after September 11. Even these diverse users contesting the power of
corporate-owned media through indy media practices, rarely describe themselves
as 'activists' or even 'political.' </font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; font-family: verdana,sans-serif;"><font size="2">I am now commencing a three-year funded study “Social
Media in the Hands of Young Citizens: Evolving forms of participatory
democracy.”<span> </span>We are beginning this work
by asking and exploring how those who have a “stake in social transformation and political participation”
describe and express in their **own** terms, their practices, identities,
networks, motivations, etc. </font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; font-family: verdana,sans-serif;"><font size="2">2. Another of your points offers a segue to issues of
“difference” and pedagogy I see as crucial to our conversations across Mobility
Shifts. You note: "The research questioned the age based, geo-politically
marked, gendered notion of the digital native that seems to make oblivious the
traditional axes of discrimination, exclusion and violence." Throughout
the past months of IDC's conversations surrounding education, learning and
technologies, I have felt uncomfortable with the relatively rare attention to
'difference,' and the (relative) absence of nuanced consideration of who are
the different 'learners' whom we study, theorize, offer technologies,
etc. "They" are not homogeneous, of course. And given how
challenging it is to attend to difference in 'traditional' embodied learning
environments, how do the kinds of techno-digital-media practices which are the
focus of Mobility Shifts, present *new* challenges in terms of how we
understand the needs and values, educational aims and desires and lives of
these 'learners’? The learner (the everyday digital native and the digital
outcasts alike) represent diverse geographies, locations, identities,
communities. <span> </span>Of course, 'identity
politics' are seen by many as a vestige of the past.<span> </span>Even “queer” no longer does full justice to the fluidity of
identity experienced by many; likewise, “digital native” even in its most inclusive
sense (as your Reflection makes clear) cannot do justice to the complexity of
new modalities of subjectivities, networked collectives, the blur of on- and
offline practices...A huge topic of course, but all to say, Nishant, I am
excited by what you offer to ground a conversation about difference within
shifting mobilities.<br>
<br>
Regarding these key questions of<span>
</span>“difference” and pedagogies, Trebor invited me to facilitate a
conversation during part of the Saturday Oct 15 panel on <b>Progressive Digital Pedagogy</b>. I am inspired to draw on
your Reflection, Nishant, to help our consideration of the different learners
assumed by the myriad cutting edge projects represented at Mobility Shifts. Trebor
also suggested I attach my essay on “Hypes, hopes and actualities: new digital Cartesianism and bodies in cyberspace” (published in New
Media and Society and recently anthologized in <span>The New Media and Cybercultures <i>Anthology</i>.
Pramod K. Nayar (Editor)</span></font><font size="2">--please find it attached here
as well as linked off my website: publications as a PDF).<span>
</span>In this essay (first presented in 1999) I address identities in
web-based environments and the challenges faced in developing 'radical' pedagogies
suitable for 'blended earning.' I will be very curious how a decade of changes
in technologies and practices render moot or alter the concerns raised in this
essay about the risks of reinscribing traditional mind/body dualisms in many web-based
environments.</font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; font-family: verdana,sans-serif;"><font size="2">I am very excited about the F2F conversations in which we
will all engage in October.</font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; font-family: verdana,sans-serif;"><font size="2">Regards<br></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; font-family: verdana,sans-serif;"><font size="2">Megan Boler, Professor, University of Toronto</font><br><font size="2"><a href="http://www.meganboler.net/" target="_blank">www.meganboler.net</a></font></p>
<font size="2"><span style="font-family: Times;"><br>
<br>
</span></font>
<div class="gmail_quote"><div class="im"><font size="2">On Fri, Sep 2, 2011 at 6:34 AM, Nishant Shah <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:itsnishant@gmail.com" target="_blank">itsnishant@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
</font></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;"><div><div></div><div class="h5">
<font style="font-family: garamond,serif;" size="2">
</font><p style="font-family: garamond,serif;" class="MsoNormal"><font size="2">Dear All,</font></p><p style="font-family: garamond,serif;" class="MsoNormal"><font size="2"><br></font></p><font style="font-family: garamond,serif;" size="2">
</font><p style="font-family: garamond,serif;" class="MsoNormal"><font size="2">I have been following up the discussions on the list with
great interest, even though my status so far has been ‘largely lurking’. I take
this opportunity to throw open some of the questions that I, at the Centre for
Internet and Society Bangalore (<a href="http://www.cis-india.org/" target="_blank">http://www.cis-india.org</a>)
have been working through, especially in relation to this strange thing called
a ‘Digital Native’. In this first of the 3 reflections I am writing for the
group, I want to begin by charting the shift that marked our own understanding
of youth-technology relationships. I shall end today by offering you a
conceptual identity that I am trying to formulate right now and hope that you
will join me in adding to or questioning this idea.</font></p><p style="font-family: garamond,serif;" class="MsoNormal"><font size="2"><br></font></p><font style="font-family: garamond,serif;" size="2">
</font><p style="font-family: garamond,serif;" class="MsoNormal"><font size="2">Let me begin by talking about things that I am more familiar
with – Digital Natives. In the last 3 years, in a research collaboration with
Hivos (Netherlands), through a knowledge programme called “Digital Natives with
a Cause?” we have worked with young(ish) users of technologies who have a stake
in social transformation and political participation, in order to understand
the affective and effective relationships that users have with the
techno-political apparatus they are within. The research has been a huge
learning experience for us as the digital natives (no fixed definition, no
capitals) opened up ways in which they understand and engage with the
information ecologies they are embedded in. <br></font></p><p style="font-family: garamond,serif;" class="MsoNormal"><font size="2"><br></font></p><p style="font-family: garamond,serif;" class="MsoNormal"><font size="2">Hence we conceptualised the idea of
an everyday digital native - somebody whose life has been significantly
restructured by the presence of digital and internet technologies - interested
in effecting change in his/her immediate environments. Especially with these
users located in the Global South (bits of Asia, Africa and Latin America), where
‘digitality’ is not to be taken for granted and remains a privilege contained
to a few, conversations were as much about these technosavvy cybertots as they
were about those who remain flung to the fringes, tentatively on the borders of
the digital and the technological.</font></p><font style="font-family: garamond,serif;" size="2">
</font><p style="font-family: garamond,serif;" class="MsoNormal"><font size="2"><br></font></p><p style="font-family: garamond,serif;" class="MsoNormal"><font size="2">We quickly came to examine the imaginary of a digital native
– the almost Peter Pan like, always young, incessantly connected, globally
networked individual that navigates the intricate paths of information exchange
and knowledge production online – in order to see what were the common sets of
presumptions which were built into, often conflicting and contradictory
approaches and analyses premised on this particular identity. The research
questioned the age based, geo-politically marked, gendered notion of the
digital native that seems to make oblivious the traditional axes of
discrimination, exclusion and violence. There was a call to start thinking of
the binary other of the digital native – most debates would call these digital
immigrants or settlers; or in another context (ICT4D) these would be called the
have-nots or the digitally disempowered. In both these formulations, we found
easy solutions provided within popular discourse: Solutions which thought of
greater infrastructure and access as an answer. </font></p><font style="font-family: garamond,serif;" size="2">
</font><p style="font-family: garamond,serif;" class="MsoNormal"><font size="2"><br></font></p><p style="font-family: garamond,serif;" class="MsoNormal"><font size="2">However, in order to actually understand the digital natives’
problems within the digitally amplified and networked systems within which we
imagine they exist, we searched for a Digital AlterNative and eventually
started working with the idea of a Digital Outcast (Shafika Isaacs) or the
Digital HaveLess (Jack Qui). This particular idea of the digital outcast –
somebody who is within the pervasive technology paradigms but not necessarily
the mainstream prosumer of the Web 2.0 revolutions – was fruitful to escape the
dominant battle-lines within Digital Natives discourse.</font></p><font style="font-family: garamond,serif;" size="2">
</font><p style="font-family: garamond,serif;" class="MsoNormal"><font size="2"><br></font></p><p style="font-family: garamond,serif;" class="MsoNormal"><font size="2"><b>First</b>, it allowed us let go of the age-based idea of a
digital native, discarding the idea of being born a digital native and instead
focusing on processes of becoming a digital native. We stopped talking about
natives, immigrants and settlers and instead looked at this particular identity
that is within the digital circuits, imagined as its recipient beneficiary and
yet persuasively kept at the borders.</font></p><font style="font-family: garamond,serif;" size="2">
</font><p style="font-family: garamond,serif;" class="MsoNormal"><font size="2"><br></font></p><p style="font-family: garamond,serif;" class="MsoNormal"><font size="2"><b>Second,</b> we shifted the conversation about the digital divide
– the dissonant gap between the haves and have-nots of internet technologies –
from questions of infrastructure and access (which appear as the standard
solutions to these questions) to a more nuanced discussion of literacy and
acumen. The digital outcast is not somebody who doesn’t have access to the
technologies; s/he is somebody who, after the access has been granted, fails to
actualise the transformative potentials of technologies for the self or for others.</font></p><font style="font-family: garamond,serif;" size="2">
</font><p style="font-family: garamond,serif;" class="MsoNormal"><font size="2"><br></font></p><p style="font-family: garamond,serif;" class="MsoNormal"><font size="2"><b>Third,</b> it enabled us to short-circuit the idea of digital
users as contained in a technosocial bubble, adrift in alternative realities.
Instead, we focused them within a larger politics of inclusion, rights and engagement.
Looking at other regional specificities of marginalisation, exclusion and
discrimination, in their geopolitical and socio-cultural locations helps understand
the ways in which digital and internet technologies enmesh themselves in the
local.</font></p><font style="font-family: garamond,serif;" size="2">
</font><p style="font-family: garamond,serif;" class="MsoNormal"><font size="2"><br></font></p><p style="font-family: garamond,serif;" class="MsoNormal"><font size="2">The Digital Outcast, then, became a way by which the
outsider insider of the digital worlds can contest the popular perceptions and
discourse around digital native identities and practices. The Digital Outcast
is not simply the have-not who shall be included in the system once we have
enough infrastructure to breach the last mile. The Digital Outcast was not merely
a disenfranchised or disempowered because of lack of access to digital and
technological resources. The Digital Outcast, in many ways, resounded Hannah
Arendt’s formulation of the ‘Stateless’ as somebody who is the beneficiary of
the Rights bestowed by the State but does not know how to exercise his/her ‘right
to having rights’. <br></font></p><p style="font-family: garamond,serif;" class="MsoNormal"><font size="2"><br></font></p><p style="font-family: garamond,serif;" class="MsoNormal"><font size="2">The Digital Outcast began to shape our understanding of how
these bodies at the fringes, even though they are the intended beneficiaries of
the digital development plans, often stay on the fringes of our imagination
when we conceive of the digital divide or the digital native.</font></p><font style="font-family: garamond,serif;" size="2">
</font><p style="font-family: garamond,serif;" class="MsoNormal"><font size="2"><br></font></p><p style="font-family: garamond,serif;" class="MsoNormal"><font size="2">I offer to you the Digital Outcast as a non-actualised but
realised identity, which has been created, accounted for, and resolved by
technological apparatuses, and thus rendered a-political and impotent in the
discourses of digital learning and politics. I am going to stop here today and
tomorrow look at some specific imaginations of technology mediated rights,
justice and learning vis-à-vis digital natives/outcasts in India, specifically
locating them within the higher education systems of university based learning.
In the meantime, it would be really helpful if you can help me think through
this idea of the Digital Outcast and what would be its implications on your
practice and thought.</font></p><font style="font-family: garamond,serif;" size="2">
</font><p style="font-family: garamond,serif;" class="MsoNormal"><font size="2"><br></font></p><p style="font-family: garamond,serif;" class="MsoNormal"><font size="2">Warmly</font></p><font style="font-family: garamond,serif;" size="2">
</font><p style="font-family: garamond,serif;" class="MsoNormal"><font size="2">Nishant</font></p><font style="font-family: garamond,serif;" size="2">
</font><font style="font-family: garamond,serif;" size="2"><br clear="all"><font color="#888888"><br>-- <br>Nishant Shah<br>Director (Research), Centre for Internet and Society,( <a href="http://www.cis-india.org" target="_blank">www.cis-india.org</a> )<br>
Asia Awards Fellow, 2008-09<br># 00-91-9740074884<br><a href="http://www.facebook.com/nishant.shah" target="_blank">http://www.facebook.com/nishant.shah</a><br><a href="http://cis-india.academia.edu/NishantShah" target="_blank">http://cis-india.academia.edu/NishantShah</a><br>
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