CHANGE
Institutions embody rules that regulate social behavior
while also ensuring their own reproduction. Highly institutionalized
entities are relatively invulnerable to social
intervention aimed at thwarting reproduction along
present lines; they present “a near insuperable . . . threshold”
(Jepperson, 1991) to collective action for alternative
articulations. A community network that is highly
institutionalized may evidence all or some of the following
characteristics: a well entrenched regime of rules and
sanctions to enforce acceptable conduct by users, embeddedness
in a field of powerful institutions, and relative
invisibility to interests outside the embedding field (see
Jepperson, 1991). For example, the rules may disallowany political speech. Interaction may be restricted to vertical
contact between users and institutional representatives; direct
user–user interaction may not be supported. Powerful
extralocal interests may appropriate the network for their
field operations in local markets, embedding the network
deeply, near-inextricably, in institutionalized procedures.
The network may become invisible, and thus impervious to
community oversight, as extralocal content displaces the
local: Local eyeballs may have little reason to go there. It
must be emphasized that, even in citizen-led efforts, such
outcomes may stem as much from drift as from design.
However, politics is part of the explanation of institutionalization
as well as deinstitutionalization (see DiMaggio,
1988); even if the motives are apolitical, the effects usually
are not. What relations, interests, and values is the network
institutionalizing around, and how might insurgent groups
act collectively to challenge exclusion?
Hampton (this issue) reports on the mechanics of collective
mobilization in Netville, a “wired” suburban residential
community in Toronto. The housing developer’s decision
to terminate high-speed ICT services at Netville—
services offered on a trial basis to residents—was the
provocation for “widespread collective action.” Residents’
ability to collectivize stemmed from their network of weak
social ties and their use of the (threatened) ICTs—in particular
a local e-mail list, NET-L—to converse and organize.
NET-L started out as an aid for organizing quotidian life,
and Hampton credits it with fostering a sense of community
in Netville through the social contacts it facilitated.
When the termination notice was announced, offline and
online reaction began to form, with NET-L used to mobilize
residents quickly and to convey their concerns to the
developer. Hampton notes key features of the effort: Over
half of Netville households were involved (higher than
usual), and NET-L had organized residents quickly and
more efficiently than expected. Recalling a point made by
Carroll and Rosson and DeCindio et al., Hampton shows
that “offline contact can encourage online contact, and
. . . online communication can be mediated by concerns
for how it will impact offline relations.” Collective action is rooted in relational structures and
the social and cultural resources they bring with them
(Melucci, 1996). These structures also constrain action by,
for example, defining power and interests, and by locating
objects for action. Use of NET-L fell after residents’
housing concerns were resolved. Whether new (similarly
galvanizing) concerns will emerge and how they may be
framed, and what their objects will be, will depend partly
on these embedding structures. This field throws up objects
and constructs needs, interests, and discourses that help actors
forge a collective (Melucci, 1996). However, breakthrough
social agency is always possible, whereby actors
actively construct issues as targets of broad-based collective
action and tap into resources from within and outside their immediate operating contexts to sustain momentum.
Moving from a relatively homogenous environment like
Netville to a heterogeneous one raises important questions
on the nature and emergence of collective action because
now the field is different, with perhaps a cacophony of
claims from constituent groups with differential access to
power. There may be not one concern but many different
and conflicting ones. Community networks, as Hampton
shows, can help get the word out quickly to rally actors
around and link to extralocal resources (as when NET-L
exchanges were leaked to “powerful outsiders”). They can
further the “logic of collective action” (Melucci, 1996) by
supporting many of its elements: instituting and strengthening
social ties and decision-making mechanisms, circulating
information, archiving experience, and social learning.
But whose concerns get voiced (offline, online) will
hinge on the relationship between the network and its embedding
field. It will depend on the network’s understanding
of its defining function in the social order.
In a normative sense, the network’s defining function
is mediating between community constituents, and between
them and the world. Community itself has been
viewed thus, as a mediating structure through which constituents
“feel meaningfully related to the larger society”
(Rubin, 1973). Support for open communication is a must
if the network is to play such a mediating role. There is
growing evidence that such a role cannot be assumed.
In the early days, support for open, two-way exchange
was an acknowledged object of community networks (e.g.,
Freenets). With the advent of the Web, however, community
networks’ focal function seems to have shifted to oneway
information dissemination—from government agencies
and businesses to users. In the extreme case, they may
provide no support for open exchange. In the less extreme
case, they may support interaction between users and institutional
representatives but not between users themselves.
Anetwork may be open in varying degrees, in otherwords.
A network that permits vertical exchange, allowing a user
to interact with an institutional representative, is less open
than one that allows horizontal exchange as well, where
users can interact with other users. Clearly, any form of
collective action would be impossible without direct userto-
user connectivity. (In Hampton, it was only after NETL
was established that residents could interact online.) A
horizontally open network is less likely to institutionalize
around narrow interests because it is vulnerable to social
intervention. A network that is only vertically open is less
vulnerable.
Even if they support open interaction, community networks
are only open to the extent that we want them to
be. The mediating function can be construed in a passive
sense (as an interface) or in an active sense. Per
the latter, the network works actively to represent—and
reach out to—constituents “without agency,” who may lack the ICTs and skills needed to get on the network.
They may lack political organizing skills. (Stanley [this
issue] looks beyond access to the “psychosocial obstacles”
that must be overcome for individuals to become
users.) As part of a community empowerment strategy,
outreach efforts aimed at social inclusion in and through
the network could complement existing approaches (see
Drier, 1996): community organizing (collective mobilization);
extending reach of, and access to, the social support
infrastructure available in the community for service delivery
and need fulfillment; and community-based development.
An activist view of the mediating function recognizes
the structural (and other) impediments to community
networks evolving as true civic innovations. An activist
viewwould avoid the power-evasive assumptions of earlier
community vitalization efforts in the U.S., which often resulted
in the neediest—their very targets—being excluded
from the benefits. Community networks, similarly, can
easily be appropriated by the powerful and well-resourced;
their public-regarding orientation (Wilson, 1973) cannot
be assumed but must be actively worked toward. Should
it emerge as a civic innovation, the network in its mediating
role will not merely represent needs, interests, and
values but will actively constitute them as the community
changes. This argues against the functionalist assumption
that social institutions emerge spontaneously, automatically,
in response to the need for them (see Bellah, Madsen,
Sullivan, Swidler, & Tipton, 1992). They do not. Needs,
interests, value hierarchies, rights—these are creatures of
politics (see Fraser, 1989). These construct communities
as much as they are constructed by them. Community
networks—as objects and as vehicles, as social catalysts—
are deeply implicated in such constructions and counterconstructions.
They ought to be.
This essay’s main arguments can be quickly summarized.
As befits a maturing field, we need to go beyond
Adamic discovery and naming exercises to robust, theoretically
informed accounts of community network development
as socially embedded and socially constructed
artifacts. They develop within a given historical and social
milieu and cannot be analyzed without reference to the embedding
social structure and the actions of human actors
directly engaged in the fabricative process: Their development
is best analyzed at macro- and microsocial levels.
They are also technologically embedded—grounded in,
institutionalized by, pre-existing technology and technical
support arrangements. They are thus shaped by both technological
and social forces. I argue that open dialogue between
users is a basic safeguard against the community network
institutionalizing around narrow, private-regarding
interests (Wilson, 1973). Support for open interaction implements
the network’s mediating function in the community.
However, considering the many impediments that
constituents “without agency” face in gaining voice, I argue for an activist interpretation of mediation—involving
outreach to promote social agency and human flourishing
on and through the netw
CHANGE
Institutions embody rules that regulate social behavior
while also ensuring their own reproduction. Highly institutionalized
entities are relatively invulnerable to social
intervention aimed at thwarting reproduction along
present lines; they present “a near insuperable . . . threshold”
(Jepperson, 1991) to collective action for alternative
articulations. A community network that is highly
institutionalized may evidence all or some of the following
characteristics: a well entrenched regime of rules and
sanctions to enforce acceptable conduct by users, embeddedness
in a field of powerful institutions, and relative
invisibility to interests outside the embedding field (see
Jepperson, 1991). For example, the rules may disallowany political speech. Interaction may be restricted to vertical
contact between users and institutional representatives; direct
user–user interaction may not be supported. Powerful
extralocal interests may appropriate the network for their
field operations in local markets, embedding the network
deeply, near-inextricably, in institutionalized procedures.
The network may become invisible, and thus impervious to
community oversight, as extralocal content displaces the
local: Local eyeballs may have little reason to go there. It
must be emphasized that, even in citizen-led efforts, such
outcomes may stem as much from drift as from design.
However, politics is part of the explanation of institutionalization
as well as deinstitutionalization (see DiMaggio,
1988); even if the motives are apolitical, the effects usually
are not. What relations, interests, and values is the network
institutionalizing around, and how might insurgent groups
act collectively to challenge exclusion?
Hampton (this issue) reports on the mechanics of collective
mobilization in Netville, a “wired” suburban residential
community in Toronto. The housing developer’s decision
to terminate high-speed ICT services at Netville—
services offered on a trial basis to residents—was the
provocation for “widespread collective action.” Residents’
ability to collectivize stemmed from their network of weak
social ties and their use of the (threatened) ICTs—in particular
a local e-mail list, NET-L—to converse and organize.
NET-L started out as an aid for organizing quotidian life,
and Hampton credits it with fostering a sense of community
in Netville through the social contacts it facilitated.
When the termination notice was announced, offline and
online reaction began to form, with NET-L used to mobilize
residents quickly and to convey their concerns to the
developer. Hampton notes key features of the effort: Over
half of Netville households were involved (higher than
usual), and NET-L had organized residents quickly and
more efficiently than expected. Recalling a point made by
Carroll and Rosson and DeCindio et al., Hampton shows
that “offline contact can encourage online contact, and
. . . online communication can be mediated by concerns
for how it will impact offline relations.” Collective action is rooted in relational structures and
the social and cultural resources they bring with them
(Melucci, 1996). These structures also constrain action by,
for example, defining power and interests, and by locating
objects for action. Use of NET-L fell after residents’
housing concerns were resolved. Whether new (similarly
galvanizing) concerns will emerge and how they may be
framed, and what their objects will be, will depend partly
on these embedding structures. This field throws up objects
and constructs needs, interests, and discourses that help actors
forge a collective (Melucci, 1996). However, breakthrough
social agency is always possible, whereby actors
actively construct issues as targets of broad-based collective
action and tap into resources from within and outside their immediate operating contexts to sustain momentum.
Moving from a relatively homogenous environment like
Netville to a heterogeneous one raises important questions
on the nature and emergence of collective action because
now the field is different, with perhaps a cacophony of
claims from constituent groups with differential access to
power. There may be not one concern but many different
and conflicting ones. Community networks, as Hampton
shows, can help get the word out quickly to rally actors
around and link to extralocal resources (as when NET-L
exchanges were leaked to “powerful outsiders”). They can
further the “logic of collective action” (Melucci, 1996) by
supporting many of its elements: instituting and strengthening
social ties and decision-making mechanisms, circulating
information, archiving experience, and social learning.
But whose concerns get voiced (offline, online) will
hinge on the relationship between the network and its embedding
field. It will depend on the network’s understanding
of its defining function in the social order.
In a normative sense, the network’s defining function
is mediating between community constituents, and between
them and the world. Community itself has been
viewed thus, as a mediating structure through which constituents
“feel meaningfully related to the larger society”
(Rubin, 1973). Support for open communication is a must
if the network is to play such a mediating role. There is
growing evidence that such a role cannot be assumed.
In the early days, support for open, two-way exchange
was an acknowledged object of community networks (e.g.,
Freenets). With the advent of the Web, however, community
networks’ focal function seems to have shifted to oneway
information dissemination—from government agencies
and businesses to users. In the extreme case, they may
provide no support for open exchange. In the less extreme
case, they may support interaction between users and institutional
representatives but not between users themselves.
Anetwork may be open in varying degrees, in otherwords.
A network that permits vertical exchange, allowing a user
to interact with an institutional representative, is less open
than one that allows horizontal exchange as well, where
users can interact with other users. Clearly, any form of
collective action would be impossible without direct userto-
user connectivity. (In Hampton, it was only after NETL
was established that residents could interact online.) A
horizontally open network is less likely to institutionalize
around narrow interests because it is vulnerable to social
intervention. A network that is only vertically open is less
vulnerable.
Even if they support open interaction, community networks
are only open to the extent that we want them to
be. The mediating function can be construed in a passive
sense (as an interface) or in an active sense. Per
the latter, the network works actively to represent—and
reach out to—constituents “without agency,” who may lack the ICTs and skills needed to get on the network.
They may lack political organizing skills. (Stanley [this
issue] looks beyond access to the “psychosocial obstacles”
that must be overcome for individuals to become
users.) As part of a community empowerment strategy,
outreach efforts aimed at social inclusion in and through
the network could complement existing approaches (see
Drier, 1996): community organizing (collective mobilization);
extending reach of, and access to, the social support
infrastructure available in the community for service delivery
and need fulfillment; and community-based development.
An activist view of the mediating function recognizes
the structural (and other) impediments to community
networks evolving as true civic innovations. An activist
viewwould avoid the power-evasive assumptions of earlier
community vitalization efforts in the U.S., which often resulted
in the neediest—their very targets—being excluded
from the benefits. Community networks, similarly, can
easily be appropriated by the powerful and well-resourced;
their public-regarding orientation (Wilson, 1973) cannot
be assumed but must be actively worked toward. Should
it emerge as a civic innovation, the network in its mediating
role will not merely represent needs, interests, and
values but will actively constitute them as the community
changes. This argues against the functionalist assumption
that social institutions emerge spontaneously, automatically,
in response to the need for them (see Bellah, Madsen,
Sullivan, Swidler, & Tipton, 1992). They do not. Needs,
interests, value hierarchies, rights—these are creatures of
politics (see Fraser, 1989). These construct communities
as much as they are constructed by them. Community
networks—as objects and as vehicles, as social catalysts—
are deeply implicated in such constructions and counterconstructions.
They ought to be.
This essay’s main arguments can be quickly summarized.
As befits a maturing field, we need to go beyond
Adamic discovery and naming exercises to robust, theoretically
informed accounts of community network development
as socially embedded and socially constructed
artifacts. They develop within a given historical and social
milieu and cannot be analyzed without reference to the embedding
social structure and the actions of human actors
directly engaged in the fabricative process: Their development
is best analyzed at macro- and microsocial levels.
They are also technologically embedded—grounded in,
institutionalized by, pre-existing technology and technical
support arrangements. They are thus shaped by both technological
and social forces. I argue that open dialogue between
users is a basic safeguard against the community network
institutionalizing around narrow, private-regarding
interests (Wilson, 1973). Support for open interaction implements
the network’s mediating function in the community.
However, considering the many impediments that
constituents “without agency” face in gaining voice, I argue for an activist interpretation of mediation—involving
outreach to promote social agency and human flourishing
on and through the netw
การแปล กรุณารอสักครู่..