During this week, the V Training Seminar in Intercultural Dynamics is taking place at the Barcelona Center for International Affairs (CIDOB). Amongst the different sessions (December, 14-16th), there will be one talking about the politics of knowledge which seems particularity interesting.

Panel II – Strategies and Resistance from the Politics of Knowledge

Chair and discussant: Alexandra Zavos (Senior Researcher, Centre for Gender Studies, Panteion University)
Coordinator: Ana-Cristina Aguirre (FJIDI)

In this second panel we will discuss the ways in which academic knowledge is produced, as well as the intentions and conditions that underpin such production. The researchers who will participate in this panel should make full use of their areas of study and methods of research in order to propose alternative ways of acquiring knowledge. Basing their arguments on their own works, they should highlight the strengths and recognize the ambiguities and contradictions of their own research. From this perspective, we propose to analyse the following issues: what are the challenges that derive from your research? To whom is the knowledge you produce useful? From where and for what are you producing knowledge?

Here is the full program.

During the last days of februray (very last indeed!) til the begining of March (29th Feb – 2nd Mar.) the Western Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESO) is celebrating it’s XIX Symposium on Education jointly with it’s XXXII psychology week in Guadalajara, México.

There are plenty of conferences and workshops to choose from and I am glad they invited me to propose one (many kudos to the Department of Education!). So I came up with the idea of making a three day workshop on new pedagogic interactions delaing with digital content (i.e, Interacciones educativas en la sociedad del conocimiento: Gestión de contenidos digitales y nuevas prácticas pedagógicas for the spanish version). However, don’t let the title fool you.

The aim and scope of the workshop is to learn how to use and manage digital content such as comments on blogs or news (which might be interesting for different learning subjects but difficult to work with) using the well known app for firefox zotero. In addition, I expect to have an open discussion on these new forms of interaction that can emerge from the very capabilities and “everydayness” of ICT’s students have.

Sometimes teachers are afraid to lose control over tools or methods they do not fully master. Especially if students are truly expirienced users vis-a-vis their teachers. However, the focus will be more on practical ways to hack the academy

Here’s the link to the full program.

SAX!

Jalisco Cómo Vamos, a new citizen observatory was presented this Monday 11th at the Cámara de Comercio de Guadalajara, México.

Following the steps of previous experiences such as Bogotá cómo vamos (Colombia), it aims to provide and analyse huge amounts of data concerning the Quality of Live (QoL) of people living in what is known as the Metropolitan area of Guadalajara. A 60.000$ survey was carried out to find out some good indicators. This include, but are not restricted, to:

- Education
- Urbanism
- Public Institutions
- Personal relations
- Public Services
- Environment

The survey compromised 426 questions and, as results are being seed, it is the Obs will to affect political decisions based on their data. Positioning themselves as a neutral (meaning not supportive of any political party) agent they will release their raw data after it has been analysed.

Anyway, what I think it is interesting about this survey, is that it takes into consideration people’s perceptions, actions and believes. Therefore, it is not only a desperate search for the datum, but rather a search for “cross social validity” (if we may…). Nevertheless, as any quantitative survey, results bear an enormous rhetorical (not to be meant in a bad sense) ambiguity depending on who is to be the spokesperson of the data. But the presentation went really well and it was, indeed, enjoyable. Which is something you rarely see on a quantitative results briefing these days

However, the survey is just a first milestone. The Observatory aims also to generate some public debate on hot issues that will be identified from further analysis. This debate, they argue, will also lead to an increased public participation.

Now, what does this has to do with internet or citizen management of technology whatsoever? Well, it turns out that under the public service desk of the observatory some questions regarding Internet services and uses will be addressed. As some expert teams have been set to address and discuss these data, we expect to explain and highlight the guifi.net model of a free and neutral network as a success story of how ICT’s citizen initiatives can (and actually do) improve the quality of live of citizens. It will be interesting to show some of the difficulties and some of the good practices that dealing with public administrations guifi.net has been put through.

For those interested, you can download the computer presentation of the first results here.

RAX!

Teknokultura, a social movements and digital culture journal has relaunched his site and reopened his call for papers. The journal emerged first as an University of Puerto Rico (UPR) publication and then became reloaded by the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM). As such, Teknokultura is mostly a Spanish written journal. You can check their website at:

http://www.teknokultura.com/

Feel free to send any paper submissions and enjoy past and new issues!!!  I’ll be peer reviewing

RAX!

#spanishrevolution has been a trending topic on twitter. And, to present day, many camping squares and protests have risen in Athens, London, Paris, Berlin and Mexico (Mexico city AND Guadalajara). As I could start a never-ending discussion on many aspects of the #spanishrevolution, I will here only mention the successful wifi coverage of plaça catalunya by guifi.net.

Plaça Catalunya is the most representative square of Barcelona and, as such, it has been the target for a camping site during the #spanishrevolution. Many campers could connect to wireless networks and many people could watch what campers were doing via online webcams. However, many of these wireless networks were shutdown or left unavailable (even weather forecast webcams pointing towards plaça catalunya). Here is when an open and free network as guifi (an it’s users) become handy. They succeed in providing a wirless internet connection to plaça catalunya but with some technical master skills (aka . it was not easy). As one of the guifi.net members posted on their mailing list, they had to achieve a rebound of the signal as there were no guifi antenas on a near location. (I will avoid giving technical details). But I think that this capacity of turning a hole (no connection) into a node (connected) displacing antennas, making “rebounds”, managing urban infrastructure it is something to celebrate. Here are some pic’s guifi.net emailed:

RAX!

Last week I was invited to teach a 5 hour class on “new citizen practices” at the:

Diplomado “Atención a la diversidad, equidad de género y no discriminación” Belonging to the UNESCO chair on “equity and no discrimination” organized by the Instituto de Investigaciones en Innovación y Gobernanza (IIIG) from the mexican Universidad de Guadalajara (UdG).

Things went really well and, indeed, we were in need of some extra time. LOL. In any case, some questions and doubts were raised on specific topics or notions. So it made me think that prehaps it was worth sharing some aditional info here.

citizen? from "Veinte Centavos Blog"

One of the first distinctions we wanted to establish was between the notion of a citizenship based on representation versus one based on affirmation. That is to say, between a liberal idea of a small group of representatives that will enact the will of millions of citizens  and a more pragmatic turn that will consider how citizenship is enacted by the actions of citizens (being the vote only one action, and not the most relevant, to them). This last conception of the citizen resonates with the Lefebvre – Harvey idea of a right to the city.

Of course, to label oneself as a citizen is not self-evident. It implies a web of meaning as well as a need to use the label “citizen” where many conflicts or disagreements may arise depending on who is asking, who is naming, what for… This is also part of the pragmatic turn in so far it asks for the uses and effects of assuming or qualifying something as citizen (such as the need to talk about citizen participation). Which is highly opposed to more substantive definitions which seek to define the essence of the citizen as it could be the case in legal documents. We could trace a parallel with the notion of gender here.

Anyway, another notion that was left aside was net neutrality. When speaking of neutrality amongst social scientist, one must be extremely careful. For we know that nothing is more intended and potentially harmful than labelling something as neutral

But with the term network neutrality, what one really wants to explain is how people should be free of any artificial or imposed limitations on which webpages or search engines or services should they use. Limitations that can (and are) used by some Internet Service Providers (ISP). A quick look to wikipedia is enough to grasp a quick definition:

Net neutrality: “Is a principle proposed for users’ access to networks participating in the Internet. The principle advocates no restrictions by Internet service providers and governments on content, sites, platforms, the kinds of equipment that may be attached, and the modes of communication”

RAX!

I finally got my Ph.D

The purpose of this blog was to post some thoughts on my research as I went to the Ph.D process and finally, that process has been concluded (thanks to Joan Pujol, Marsiela Montenegro, Jose Emma & Cristina Pallí)

In any case, I will continue to post (as a doctor).

Ph.D defense 10 Dec 2010 @ UAB

What I am really grateful about is that people from guifi.net found my research useful and are willing to keep on collaborating. Sometimes the bond within academia and particular emergences of Civl Society is not (by many reasons) satisfactory or relevant to the actors themselves. I am glad this has not been the case and, above all, I am glad it has been without the need to position myself as a “militant” or “compromised” researcher. IMHO, there is a slightly abuse of those labels such as to make some propaganda of the “militant”, “engaged” self (in despise of the phenomena under study). If you work is an engaged, compromised, fair or whatever work, it will tell so to your readers without the need to explicitly state so.

Anyway, there are some projects pending such as www.openwaves.ws that will merit our full attention.

RAX!

An intereseting workshop co-hosted by the Manchester Architecture Research Centre (MARC) University of Manchester, UK and The Urban Plaza, Osaka City University, Japan.

from sed.manchester.ac.uk

Copy pasted from their url:

Convened by Dr Albena Yaneva, 11-12 November 2010, Manchester

Urban theory often fails to capture the practical relation between the large scale and the modification of the human and nonhuman associations. The prevailing approaches to cities either embrace a phenomenological understanding to tackle the urban as being the result of subjective, personalized, individualized visions, or sustain a purely objectivist understanding of cities as material infrastructures, maps, and artefacts. Most of these frameworks lead to abstractions that hamper a better understanding of the urban. Instead, this workshop aims at exploring the city as en entity that can only be grasped in concreto. Accounting in a variety of ways(through interviews, archival sources, participant observation, photo- and video-ethnography)the numerous traces left by all the humans and nonhumans who circulate through cities, the participants in the workshop will provide realistic accounts of cities inspired by original fieldwork they have carried out in different parts of the world. Following these accounts, we will attempt to question, and when possible, to dissolve the traditional distinctions between city natures and city cultures, between people moving through cities and the things in a city that makes us move.

The papers will be published in a special issue of the international journal City, Culture and Society

11-12 November 2010
1.69/1.70 Humanities Bridgeford Street
The University of Manchester

full program here.

RAX!

Yann Bona

Just on hallow’s eve; Hackmeeting!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

from: http://espora.org/hackmitin/

from espora.org

Hackmitin 2010, 30 de Octubre al 1 de Noviembre, Ciudad OaHACKa Mexico

..:: conocimiento | tecnología | compartir | construir | resistir ::..

El HM es un encuentro participativo y gratuito en el que la dicotomía organizador/asistente se diluye en el deseo de autogestionar el encuentro colectivamente. En el HM decenas de hackers y hacktivistas nos ponemos a trabajar para crear y hacer crecer nuestra comunidad de manera autogestionada, igualitaria, horizontal y, sobre todo, libre.

Entendemos el Hackmitin como una red de actividades autoorganizadas (talleres, charlas, mesas redondas, exposiciones, posters, etc.) que hemos llamado nodos. Puedes sumarte proponiendo nodos de trabajo/actividad/difusión. Cualquier persona es libre de coordinar, presentar, difundir un nodo dentro del Hackmitin: ÚNETE a La RED.

Program available here.

RAX!!!

I have recently  moved to Mexico, Guadalajara, for a mid term stay. Yesterday I noticed some helicopters and some extra traffic jams so I figured something big was going on…and yes. There is a meeting of the ONU’s International Telecommunication Union with some 60 telecommunication ministers from around the globe coming to disrupt everyday life (and paths) of Guadalajara citizens. No big issue. Disrupting everyday life might be enjoyable (to some extent). But then, I just learned I won’t be able to reach my house without proper authorization as I am living in a potentially attractive site to commit silly acts regarding the inaugural events of the ITU… whoa….

from en.wikipedia.org

I will be gifted with some sort of security card to let security guys know I do, in fact, live here so they can let me pass. This, of course, raises the question about who manages public space. But, to a more profound analysis, it does resonate with some ideas about Issue-Networks and Dewey / Lippman pragmatists approaches such as those present in Noortje Marres Ph.D.

“A democratic deficit must then be said to arise when bad issue displacements occur: when issues that depend on public involvement for their settlement are transported to locations that are inaccessible to publics, making their involvement in issue formation, and thus settlement of affairs, impossible.” (Marres, 2005)

On the next page of her Ph.D;

“Issues challenge existing modes of democratic political organization: if these issues are to be addressed, forms for organizing subjects and articulating problems must be reinvented” (Marres, 2005)

¿Is it not strange enough that, not only to enter an event such as ITU meeting, but even to access their homes, citizens do face inaccessibilities?

It is as if all sort of events as ITU meetings or NATO, G8, G20 ones were taking place at the constant risk of “not taking place”. I mean, there is a large believe and concern from security corps. that someones do not want these events to take place. And literally, they DO TAKE places. City under sieges, citizens under scrutiny. And, yes, quite often the public wants to be involved and, in absence of any other fora, they do public demonstrations or press conferences.

Paradoxically enough, these type of world wide meetings parallel Michel Callon confined research notion so as to think of a confined politics. (either case, Michel Callon notion of confined research parallels confined politics, in a similar way that technical representation comes exemplified jointly with political representation). But further explaining these would need another post…

That said, and to give some sense of place, I am writing via a conventional ISP located in Mexico, Megacable – Megared. Which works with cable Internet technology. Not bad, you could say. Well, yes, not bad. Cable bandwidth is not Fiber Optics, but it is not bad. However, They offer 2 and 3 mb (download speeds) connections…According to some net forums, they do share IP connections amongst different customers, jamming the bandwidth dedicated to one single-user with other ones…Oh…and they also block ftp ports so you are kind of obliged to contract their services if you want to run a ftp server…hummm…¿net neutrality? What was that again aiming at? good to remember.

RAX!