Recovering Community: (Re)Centering a Person-Orientation Within Informatics

Wolske, Martin

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/120063 Copy

Description

Title

Recovering Community: (Re)Centering a Person-Orientation Within Informatics

Author(s)

Wolske, Martin

Issue Date

2022-11

Keyword(s)

• Community Networking
• Capability Approach
• Sense-making
• Indigenous Knowledge
• Emergent Strategy
• Community Informatics

Abstract

This speculative document will attempt to use autoethnography to examine the past, present, and future of communities and technology that has shifted my own engaged scholarship since 1995 when I arrived at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science (now the School of Information Sciences), University of Illinois. My research and practice have been deeply informed by the community networking and community inquiry movements, Community Informatics Research Network, Outreach and Engagement Practitioners Network, and the Center for Digital Inclusion. Section one will explore a few transformative community informatics moments which engaged my conscience, challenged my assumptions, and helped redefine the status quo, essential steps in advancing my awareness of and empathy towards communities different from my own with whom I engage as an information professional (Cooke 2017). Section two will briefly present several key conceptual framings that have been introduced in my meetings with, and in subsequent readings of works by, colleagues within the movements, networks, and centres of which I’ve been a part. It was in these often-physical spaces that: key theories and concepts were proposed; research and practice based on these was presented and productively critiqued; and subsequent open, challenging conversations berthing transformation were found that could only happen in that formal/informal room/hallway/sidewalk with the people there. The final section brings to the table for discussion and critique emergent strategy as a possible set of principles, elements, and tools for shaping our human relationship to change (Brown 2017). “Emergence is the way complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions (Obolensky 2014).” For me, CIRN has been a key place sparking “aha” moments awakening new possibilities and social action in relation to community and technology. Section three is framed within these guiding questions: What are some ways community informaticists can engage in, with, and for community to facilitate the systemic, cultural, and psychic information and communication technology (ICT) shifts needed to harness the shocks (acute moments of disruption) and direct the slides (incremental changes) with the greatest equity, resilience, and ecological restoration possible? Given the growing range of community informatics interests and diversity of communities with whom we engage, how can we as a community of inquiry use emergent strategies as part of our sense-making practices to shape effective use of ICT within the multiplicity of relatively simple interactions of which we play a part as we strive to stand in support of various social movements actively shaping change and changing worlds?

Type of Resource

text

Language

en

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