Call - Incommunicado Work Conference June 16-17 2005

I'm forwarding this call that could be of great interest to the people
on this list.
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Incommunicado Work Conference
<http://www.incommunicado.info/events>
Amsterdam, De Balie, June 16-17, 2005

Geert Lovink & Soenke Zehle

Incommunicado is a two-day workshop that intends to approach the growing
'ICT for development' (ICT4D) sector and its conceptual and
organizational idioms from a committed-yet-critical 'insider' perspective.

The Incommunicado gathering wants to explore discourses, concepts and
strategies. It offers neither an esoteric, self-referential 'critique
fest' nor a mere exhibition of best-of-ICT4D-projects. Instead, it aims
to create a space to allow those active mainly in the field of ICT4D to
come together with people from other areas of media activism and criticism.

To facilitate such encounter and exchange, the Incom event will not
follow the standard academic conference format but organize an open
workshop to encourage cooperative work and informal networking.
The call outlines five (overlapping) topic areas, and an editorial
collective will ensure that current information on all topics as well as
moderators and focused presentations are available. A pre-conference
publication will bundle perspectives considered most relevant by
participants and made available online. The conference location itself
supports open exchange and networking and can accommodate
self-organizing groups anywhere between 15 and 200 people
(http://www.debalie.nl). Pre-conference cooperation via the conference
wiki or the incommunicado mailing-list is encouraged (see below).

With this conference the Waag-Sarai exchange platform also intends to
intensify Euro-Asian dialogues.

The event is part of the activities of the Incommunicado network, a
research list and weblog that focus on the reappropriation of ICT across
the 'Global South'. The idea of being (held) incommunicado - to be in a
liminal state vis-a-vis multiple regimes of information as well as human
rights - serves as point of departure for analyses, critiques, and
projects beyond the standard agenda of ICT-for-Development.

Workshop Areas

The ICT for Development Discourse

The critique of development and its institutional arrangements - of its
conceptual apparatus as well as the economic and social policies
implemented in its name - has always been both a theoretical project and
the agenda of a multitude of 'subaltern' social movements. Yet much work
in ICT4D shows little awareness of or interest in the history of such
development critique.

Instead, techno-determinist perspectives have become hegemonic, and even
many activists believe that ICT will lead to progress and eventually
contribute to poverty reduction. Have development scepticism and the
multiplicity of alternative visions it created simply been forgotten? Or
have they been actively muted to disconnect current struggles in the
area of communication and information from this history, adding
legitimacy to new strategies of 'pre-emptive' development that are based
on an ever-closer alliance between the politics of aid, development, and
security?

Are analyses based on the assumption that the internet and its promise
of connectivity are 'inherently good' already transcending  existing
power analyses of global media and communication structures? How can we
reflect on the booming ICT-for-Development industry beyond best practice
suggestions? And even more difficult, because it raises the entire
spectrum of questions associated with humanitarianism: is aid an
appropriate mechanism to foster so-called info-development?

WSIS: Human Rights, NGOs and Global Civil Society

For some, the 2003-5 UN World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)
is just another moment in an ongoing series of intergovernmental
jamborees, glamorizing disciplinary visions of global ICT governance.
For others, WSIS revives 'tricontinentalist' hopes for a New
International Information and Communication Order whose emphasis on
'civil society actors' may even signal the transformation of a statist
system of intergovernmental organizations.

Either way, WSIS continues to encourage the articulation of agendas,
positions, and stakes in a new politics of communication and
information. Yet not much is known among the general public about WSIS,
even less about the role of 'civil society organizations' in WSIS
negotiations. Which actors, which constituencies do these organizations
actually represent? Should they be held accountable for their agendas
and claims to representativeness, and  if so, to whom? Who is
marginalized by a dynamic of 'inclusion' dominated by NGOs?

Alternative Models for Internet Governance

Media activists interested in the question of 'internet governance' are
often presented with an apparent dilemma: either the internet will
remain in the hands of ICANN, i.e. the libertarian engineering class at
the heart of US-driven info-capitalism; or the UN, i.e. it will be taken
over by repressive regimes such as China. But why does so much
discussion limit itself to this false choice - what are alternative
models of internet governance?

The 90s libertarian spirit of internet governance has resulted in a
privatized decision culture, dominated by a hand-full of organizations
and like-minded IT-engineers. Yet the 2003 World Summit on the
Information Society has already put pressure on bodies such as ICANN and
ISOC to democratize internet governance. With a majority of users soon
living in the global South, it will become increasingly difficult for
backroom IT-managers and their consensus model to remain in control.
Ultimately, users will challenge the US government to give up its
control over top-level domains.

Given the dismissive responses to the UN-style governance alternatives
that have been proposed so far, is it indeed true that a shift from
ICANN to ITU (or a new UN body) would be an anti-democratic nightmare?
What are the options for 'global civil society' - team up with Western
IT-bureaucrats, take the side of Third World governments, or create an
alternative choice? Can the 'multi-stakeholder approach' be democratized
in such a way that it leads to more involvement of users and user
communities?

At the Limits of Civil Society

Many of the social and political desires triggered by the rise of the
so-called info-society are channeled through the concept and
organizational vision of 'civil society', not least because of the lure
of 'a seat at the table' in multi-stakeholder dialogues or at
intergovernmental summits. What are the strengths and limits of 'civil
society' strategies in the evolving organizational infrastructure of a
new politics of communication and information? Who introduced the
'multi-stakeholder approach' into the ICT4D context, and what's the
agenda behind such (corporatist) consensus models? What happens to the
users, communities and developers that sustain these movements when
NGOs, often operating under the 'global civil society' label even
without significant grassroots constituencies, become the dominant
representative of movements that are much more heterogeneous than the
idea of a 'civil society organization'  suggests?

Beyond a Politics of Communication Rights

After the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the bilateral order,
the discourse of human rights has become an important 'placeholder'  for
agendas of social change and transformation that are no longer
articulated in 'third worldist' or 'tricontinentalist' terms. In the
field of communication and information, major NGOs and their network
'campaigns' have also decided to approach WSIS-related issues by calling
for 'new rights' (http://www.crisinfo.org,
http://www.communicationrights.org).

But when info-politics are approached in the general context of a
politics of human rights, what happens to the tactical and
interventionist perspectives and practices developed by media activists?
What is the role of autonomous efforts like 'We Seize'
(http://www.geneva03.org) in articulating an alternative politics of
information? And what can be learned from the demise of the originally
third-worldist project of a New World Information and Communication
Order, beyond an embrace of the new politics of human rights?

Your Participation

If you are interested in participating in the editorial collective
and/or the work conference, please send a brief statement to geert_at_
xs4all.nl or s.zehle_at_kein.org that includes your current
areas of activity/interest/research and a (related) project your are
currently involved in (or, really, whatever else you want to send). We 
will soon start a conference wiki with a list
of participants and projects to build a pre-conference network,
circulate texts for inclusion in the reader etc