Centre for Internet and Society

Methods for Social Change

denisse — 2015-04-17T10:42:11Z

On this brief introduction, I outline the main targets of my research project for CIS and the HIVOS Knowledge Program. As a response to the thought piece ‘Whose Change is it Anyway’ I will explore civic engagement among middle class youth over the course of the next 9 months by interviewing change makers and collectives that are part of multi-stakeholder projects in Bangalore.

Why look at the civic engagement of digital natives?

Some of the main knowledge gaps in the literature revolve around understanding the type and extent of political motivation and engagement of citizens (Fowler and Biekart, 2011) and how these motivations translate into sustainable and meaningful participation (Cornwall and Coelho, 2007) in the public space. Having the digital platforms as a space of participation, expression and experience (Cornwall and Coelho 2007, Pleyers, 2012) is necessary but insufficient infrastructure for civic engagement. It is the equivalent of building highways to improve the mobility and communication transactions of a community, disregarding the extent to which it connects the interests, knowledges and identities of those who transit these roads. Through the ‘Methods for Social Change’ project I want to explore the different factors behind building a strong sense of citizenship and sustained civic engagement through technology-mediated change practices.

The project seeks to respond to the questions around change-making raised in the thought piece 'Whose Change is it Anyway?', as part of the Making Change project. One of the main challenges today is how to move beyond the ‘spectacle’ created around digitally mediated change. The third axis of the piece specifically refers to what Shah calls the ‘spectacle imperative’, and suggests us to take a look at the less visible, undocumented narratives that are currently shaping change. Maro Pantazidou also makes the distinction between mass events and every-day practices of change; an interesting complement to Shah’s critique. Both frame ‘spectacle’ events that signal change in the public space as frequently short-lived instances of change, that lack a strong foundation to carry the “revolution” forward through every-day behaviour and practices.

This is not to say I am discrediting the impact of visibility of mass event citizen action. Change must be tackled from different fronts; whether it is by occupying the social imaginary through highly visible displays of civil disobedience or by tackling smaller community battles. However, according to John Gaventa and Gregory Barrett and their findings on mapping the outcomes of citizen engagement, there must be two elements to sustain activism culture: a) the presence of informed active citizens in the movement and b) practicing prefigurative activism, which is establishing horizontal democratic values in the internal organization of this movement. In other words, one of the ways to move beyond the ‘spectacle’ paradigm in citizen action, is through embedding civicness and solidarity networks in its citizens. Hence, my research will be based on the hypothesis that in order to make a transition from spectacle to quotidian activism, change practices must be infused with citizenship-building methods and the negotiation of the citizen identity in public and private spaces.

Who, Where and How

From this proposition, there are three areas to be explored:

First, the profile of our change agents. The population interacting with political and social issues through digital technologies is a very specific and privileged demographic. This group, assuming motivation and disposition, must count with the corresponding access and resources to act. As brought up in the Mapping Digital Media: India Report, recently published by the Open Society Foundation, middle class activism is not only on the rise but is currently experiencing the highest visibility when compared to political and social activism. This is the case not only for India but also for emerging economies in the Global South where the internet penetration rate is very much related to socio-economic status as well as to the urban-rural divide. Shah refers to this as the gentrification of contemporary politics and it is one of the core poignant critiques of his piece.

However, it also leads to the question of how to channel the resources and privileged accessibility of this group for the 'greater good'. Instead of focusing on the problematic behind this power inequality, I would like to look at how this group is using these resources to create partnerships that allows them to disseminate knowledge, awareness and confidence to other citizens; the formula behind strong citizenship and willingness to act according to Gaventa. This underscores the need for a mapping exercise that looks at the Indian political and social context in Bangalore and India, and identify the main challenges and opportunities to build citizenship and engagement among the middle class.

Second, the spaces where responsible citizenry must be instilled. As mentioned above, one of the main questions is how to translate the horizontal values of pre-figurative activism proposed by Gaventa into the horizontal forms of organization at the community level proposed by Pantazidou. The latter claims that establishing solidarity networks fights citizen alienation by providing a sense of belonging and adds that in order to strengthen these communal relations, citizens must be fully active, present and available in the social arena. In this respect, the possibilities for collaboration through online tools are grand for activism. Online tools and net-ability as pointed out by Fowler and Biekart in their exploration of post-2010 trends in activism, increase connected solidarity and collective consciousness, which are paramount for engaging the populace with its civic duties both in the community as in the larger public space.

Nevertheless, digital tools remain neutral in the question of how to translate it into sustainable every-day practices for change. In order for online engagement to be truly sustained it must be backed up by a solid offline community that carries this lifestyle forward; a question at the backbone of this research. I will be looking at individuals and collectives from different fields that build partnerships to create positive and sustainable change in Bangalore and India. The objective is to see how further collaboration between change agents translates to the ground level by bringing new groups of people, with different skill sets, lenses and networks into the field of social change. Another interesting possibility is exploring whether these new amalgams of change practices prove to be more enticing and provoking for the 21st century citizen.

Along these lines, the methods utilized to engage this group will be the third area of research. Although the prevalence of the ‘spectacle’ blurs the lines between engaging in meaningful civicness and succumbing into the fad of ready-made activism, it would be interesting to look at what makes the ‘spectacle’ appealing and borrow some of those elements to improve advocacy practices. As outlined in the piece, events of change now seem to demand three characteristics to be effective: legibility, intelligibility and accessibility. Creating an image following these criteria provides the message a degree of visibility and clarity that enables its recognition and further amplification through digital technologies.

Therefore, the final research goal is to explore multi-stakeholderism and its potential to enhance visibility for social change. Identify artists, graphic designers, start-ups, entrepreneurs and collectives who are remixing their skills with technology to revisit the question of impact and influence on their audience. I would like to test whether Pleyers’ thesis on the cross-fertilization of activisms also applies to strategie and analyse whether this approach helps overcome the limitations of each tactic, foster ownership by different stakeholders and ultimately empower citizens. Furthermore, as part of a generation that is highly stimulated by the 'visual', I am curious to see how the role of aesthetics and inter-disciplinary collaboration behind middle class activism unfolds. Particularly in Bangalore, a crossroads of technology, activism and creativity, innovation is becoming a praxis norm among change makers. What is left to explore is the extent to which this creative ecosystem can produce and attract the apathetic citizen into the camp of sustainable civic action.

All interviews and change-makers profiles will be published regularly on the Making Change page on the CIS Website.

Sources

Biekart, Kees, and Alan Fowler. "Transforming Activisms 2010+: Exploring Ways and Waves." Development and Change 44, no. 3 (2013): 527-546
Cornwall, Andrea, and Vera Schatten Coelho, eds. Spaces for change?: the politics of citizen participation in new democratic arenas. Vol. 4. Zed Books, 2007.
Gaventa, John, and Gregory Barrett. "So what difference does it make? Mapping the outcomes of citizen engagement." IDS Working Papers 2010, no. 347 (2010): 01-72.
Open Society Foundations “Mapping Digital Media: India, 2012. Retrieved from: http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/sites/default/files/mapping-digital-media-india-20130326.pdf
Shah, Nishant “Whose Change is it Anyways? Hivos Knowledge Program. April 30, 2013.
Pantazidou, Maro. "Treading New Ground: A Changing Moment for Citizen Action in Greece.
Pleyers, Geoffrey. "Beyond Occupy: Progressive Activists in Europe." Open Democracy: free thinking for the world 2012 (2012): 5pages-8.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/methods-for-social-change

Public Art, Technology and Citizenship - Blank Noise Project

denisse — 2015-04-17T10:43:55Z

Jasmeen Patheja speaks about the active citizen in the digital age, its challenges in the public and private spheres and interdisciplinary methods to overcome them.


CHANGE-MAKER: Jasmeen Patheja

PROJECT: Blank Noise Project: A volunteer-led arts collective community

STRATEGY OF CHANGE:
 Fostering an active, participatory and horizontal model of citizenship,
 empowering its volunteers to participate politically and address issues
 of street sexual harassments in the public sphere.

METHOD OF CHANGE: Public space interventions using community art and technology.

To open the interview series for the Making Change project, I interviewed Jasmeen Patheja. She is the founder of Blank Noise, a volunteer-led arts collective community that started in Bangalore and has now spread to Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Calcutta, Chandigarh, Hyderabad, and Lucknow. It seeks to address street sexual harassment and violence by triggering dialogue and building testimonials around notions of "teasing" and "harassment" in the public discourse. The collective has garnered attention and momentum since it was founded in 2003, and ever since, it’s fostering a model of active citizenship across India through its volunteer network. The story of Blank Noise and the working of community art with technology highlight the need to create spaces of expression and experience in which civic and political creativity can develop and unfold organically.

One of the main reflections stemming from my conversation with Jasmeen was the question of how technologies can create a sense of ownership and active citizenship. At the moment, we are moving on to a scenario in which technology has a more pervasive and complex presence. It is no longer judged merely on its connective utility, but is also understood as an actor, a space and a context within the ecosystem of social change and political democratic systems. For this reason, it is paramount to get to know the citizen that is being exposed to, influenced and impacted by these technologies and identify the ways in which his self-identity, social membership and political participation (King and Waldron 1988, Turner 1986, 1990) are being molded by them.

In this post, I aim to unpack ‘active citizenship’ drawing from political science literature around citizenship and civic engagement. The analysis will be based on two dichotomies proposed by Turner: the tension between the active-passive citizen, and the contradictions between its private and public presence. I will then refer to Westmeister and Kahnein, Kabeer, Gaventa and Bennett to identify the type of citizen that Jasmeen Patheja hopes to yield through her project and the main challenges of manoeuvering in the public space. Finally, I will look at some of the tactics taken by Blank Noise to reconcile these tensions through community art and technology. This exploration of citizenship is a first stage in the journey of detecting the undertones of citizen action for social change in the digital era.

Unpacking Citizenship

ACTIVE VS. PASSIVE CITIZEN

What is the difference between an active and a passive citizen?

A passive citizen comes to existence as a subject, recipient or client of the state (...) regards its rights as privileges handed down from above (...)complies with norms yet does not act to change circumstances (...)and its security and survival are merely determined by constitutional and common law traditions

Turner places the citizenship question on two points of contention. The first: the vectorial nature of citizenship and how to recognize an ‘active or passive’ citizen. According to his analysis, a citizen either comes to existence from above as mere subject of the state, or from below as an active bearer of its rights (Mann 1987, Ullmann 1975, Turner 1990). The force and direction from which the citizen emerges has important implications for the self-identity of the individual, its confidence and disposition for political participation (Merrifield, 2001). A passive citizen regards its rights as privileges handed down from above, in such a way that citizenship becomes a strategy for social integration and cooperation (Mann, 1986). Westheimer and Kahne find the manifestation of this model in what they call a “Personally Responsible Citizen”: a dutiful citizen who complies with norms, pays taxes and obeys laws, yet does not act to change the circumstances of other communities (2004). However, defining the citizen as a passive actor constraints its role within its network. If the citizen’ security and survival are merely determined by constitutional and common law traditions, and the negotiation between institutions and the individual (Weber 1958 - refer to Turner 1990), the individual is a disempowered recipient or client (Cornwall, 2007) as opposed to the proactive agent Blank Noise looks to recruit and shape through heir interventions.

Patheja, as shown by the interview, aims to disrupt the passive citizen model by fostering political participation and putting its counterpart: ’the active citizen’ forward. Blank Noise believes the citizen must ground its claims from the grassroots and grow from below; yet still be visible and present in the public space, redefining problematic concepts looming in society’s social imaginary; what Turner would describe as revolutionary citizenship (1990).

How is your practice building a stronger model of citizenship?
Change cannot happen only at one level. It would involve more people and different groups from different communities. For example, with citizen-led street action; we can’t end it there. It needs to push home the cause and make [the issues] visible with the government. How do we work with the government? Learning to ask and not assume it’s all their responsibility, but learning to assert our citizenship. What does it mean to do this? What does it mean to ask for safer cities in a way that it doesn’t become somebody else’s business entirely but that it’s about being able to see we are a society. We must understand the process of citizenship; what it means to be in a democratic country and what means to be a female citizen in it.

Safe City Pledge - Delhi

Safe City Pledge - Mumbai
Courtesy of Blank Noise blog: http://bit.do/fHMm

The message is: “this is your city, this is your space. Don’t be apologetic for your presence” And over time, Action Heros are reporting change: ”I'm getting my space. I'm not thinking twice about what I have to wear.” [...]So it was not only about a vocabulary shift, but a shift in attitude.

An active citizen comes from below as an active bearer of its rights (...), feels impelled to engage and mobilize its network (...) keeps government and community members in check (...) and evolves with a higher sense of individual purpose favoring solidarity and maintaining networks of community action.

Westheimer and Kahne label this stronger orientation towards a social-change approach as the second degree of civic engagement or as the behaviour of a ‘participatory citizen’; an individual who feels impelled to engage and mobilize its network, skills and action to respond to a community need. This participation impetus is one of Patheja’s main expectations from its Action Hero Network. However, this entails relying on intimate shifts of behaviour and attitude among the volunteers, which are in essence hard to demand, inculcate and entrench by a third party.

Their approach also reflects a vision of citizenship that relies on collective action (Montgomery, 2004) to, not only keep the government in check as suggested by Westheimer and Kahnne, but other community and society members as well. From Bennett’s point of view and taking the role of information technologies into account, he would define the ideal Action Hero as a self-actualizing citizen. In contrast to its counterpart: the dutiful citizen, who sees its obligation to participate in government-centered activities, the AC evolves with higher sense of individual purpose, favouring and maintaining networks of community action, backed up by a growing distrust in media and the government. In this sense the role of technology is also paramount to how Blank Noise spreads its predicament and expands its outreach:

What is the role of technology and media in your project?
Using the web for example, we happened to stumble upon blogging and we realized there was a community there. Once [Action Heroes] started blogging and the press started writing about it, it created a community further. So, going back to the fact that our constant thread of conversation has been the web, there is a large percentage of the English speaking youth who are action hero agents anidd now have the responsibility of taking the conversations and actions forward.

On the other hand, this is not always the case. In Delhi we did an event in collaboration with Action Aid. Many of the Action Aid volunteers weren’t necessarily on Facebook. They were people who were largely Hindi speaking; their stories were about harassment in slums and these were men and women wanting to do something about the issue. So being a loose volunteer is one way, but identifying different communities is also important. Every space is a point of engagement and we use different forms of media to enable that.

Citizen participation, communication and mobilization mechanisms, mediated by the state in the past, are now taken up by the people in the form of social protest, civil disobedience, digital activism, consumerism, etc. (Bennett, 2008). The emphasis on collective action also calls for a broader understanding of the citizen, away from the state-conferred rights and duties, and a definition that includes solidarity and membership to broader communities (Ellison 1997), Heater and Kabeer defines this as a “horizontal view” that stresses the relationship between citizens over that of the state and the individual (Heater 2002, Kabeer 2007) and Berlin has also made the connection between group identity and affiliation as a building block of citizenship (1969).

[on Giving Letters to Strangers] We trigger a conversation and it takes its own journey. Over time, what does it take to lean back and relax? Each person participates establishing their own level of comfort and every person’s narrative is different. [The project is] happening in Delhi while it is happening in Bangalore; allowing it to happen in a very individual, self-confrontational and at the same time, collective experience. They are doing this alone knowing that others are doing the same.

Dear Stranger:
Giving out letters to strangers in the streets of Bangalore. Courtesy of Blank Noise blog: http://bit.do/fHJw

In this way, Blank Noise has envisioned and designed a project that fosters an active, participatory, self-actualizing and horizontal model of citizenship. This combination builds a citizen prototype with a positive disposition and attitude to civic action; traits that Gaventa identifies as elements of empowerment and political agency that can derive into higher possibilities for social change. Having citizens identify community’s ailments as their own and their network’s responsibility, results in conversations that act as causal nexus of community action. The main challenge at the moment is the implementation of this model. To what extent will the Action Hero represent this model uniformly and steadily, preventing dissonance between Blank Noise’s discourse and its practice. And secondly, how will Blank Noise volunteers negotiate their political participation between public and private spaces?

PRIVATE VS. PUBLIC SPACE

Where should the active citizen operate?

The second tension on citizenship, as identified by Turner, is its political expression on the public arena versus its manifestation on the individual’s private space. We asked Jasmeen about the crises and spaces in which Blank Noise is operating:

To what crisis is the project responding to?
The project responds to the crises and experiences of street harassment. To the sense of getting defensive, agitated, angry; creating a wall and feeling vulnerable in a city. Blank Noise was initiated at a time were street harassment was disregarded and dismissed as teasing. This ‘eve-teasing’, just going by the pulse of things, included concepts of molestation and sexual violence. There was denial, there was silence.

First point on the public vs. private dilemma lies on the issue at hand. Volunteers are working to re-conceptualize social norms around ‘safety’, ‘agency’ and ‘gender’, that are not only deeply entrenched in society, but that can also be traced back to the private domain of traditions and culture at the household level. By openly discussing ‘sexual harassment’ in the public space and enabling volunteers to express and act on the basis of a new understanding of citizenship and freedom, the collective is possibly also redefining dynamics at the private space of its volunteers. What is more, the motivation and determination to be an Action Hero, as mentioned by Patheja, must be grounded in a "personal shift and challenge".

How does this translate it into citizens taking ownership of the cause and sustained behavioral change in everyday practices?
Anger is a good starting point. It is worrying when there is no anger. And then it has to be a personal shift. We’ve learned from conversations and feedback that volunteers who would say: “we came to address the issue and we are realizing that we are doing something in ourselves”. So what is the spirit of an Action Hero? Allowing something to shift and challenging something in yourself. Last year for example we worked towards having locality specific Action Hero networks and on how this intuitive citizen can become a full citizen, in terms of being an informed citizen as well.

Acton Hero Game. Courtesy of Blank Noise blog: http://bit.do/fHKq

The expectation of a personal pledge at the individual, community and public level, signals the project is blurring the lines between the private and public domain and fostering the politicization of the citizen at all fronts. This suggests that in order for the claims and behaviour of Action Heroes to become sustainable, they must also trickle into the common citizen’s routine. In words of Arendt: “the space of appearance comes into being whenever men are together in the manner of speech and action, predating all formal constitutions of the public realm” (1989). Establishing the private-public space as a common ground works towards bringing consistency and coherence to the interventions, yet it remains in many ways problematic and threatening to individual freedoms.

Does your project create new spaces for citizen expression and action?
Our role is to build testimonials and translate them back into the public domain. An example of this is the blogathon that happened in 2006, initiated by our Action Hero. She said: let’s invite bloggers to share their experiences of street harassment. 4-5 male and female Action Heroes made the event happen and in a couple of days we had hundreds and hundreds of testimonials and people talking about this for the first time. Maybe it was the first time speaking about it, remembering things that happened ages ago and that they had never shared. Suddenly the web was seen as a space where people could speak. Suddenly people had so much to say about the issue, the person dismissing the issue and their relationship with their body and the city.

Talk To Me:
Creating spaces for conversation and collaboration. Courtesy of Blank Noise blog: http://bit.do/fHKq

Turner reflects on the French revolution tradition to shed light on this particular challenge for active citizenship, as what bound Frenchmen together was their citizen identity (Baker 1987). Passing on from state subjects, to actively voicing their political, civic and social aspirations coupled with meaningful mechanisms of participation. However, how do we reconcile this tradition of positive democracy with the American understanding of citizenship that enshrines the autonomous sanctity of the private space. American individualism values personal success and the main way to exercise political participation is through voluntary associations that do not represent a large-scale force -or a threat- with enough power to shape their lives (Bellah et. al 2008, Turner 1990). Translating this to the Bangalorean context: a changing society in which community- based traditions in the household are coexisting with an agitated and growingly individualist youth culture; the issues and interventions must be addressed in an implicational manner. The connections between the issue and individual freedoms must be made, in order for these actors to be willing to politicize their action in both the public and private spheres.

MIDDLE CLASS ACTIVISM

Can everybody be an active citizen?

The second challenge is rooted in the socio-economic group that comprises the body of volunteers of Blank Noise. I asked Jasmeen the extent to which the Action Hero Network was being led by middle class citizens.

Are you only reaching out to the middle class activist that has the resources to be part of the Blank Noise project?
Yes and no. A large percentage of our volunteers are usually web-savvy, English speaking, teenagers or in their early 20s. Others have been around for the last decade. The mainstream media also reports back mainly to the web-savvy groups. But it is also about one action hero inspiring another Action Hero. I find [the project] fascinating in terms of the spaces it leaks into. Some people tell me they were at their religious meeting and they overheard two women talking about the project, who were not necessarily web-savvy. Ultimately the media is not only reporting us but we see them as point of engagement in which more and more citizens take ownership of the issue. Although our network is largely urban middle class, we are at the point where we collaborate largely with other groups that are working with different communities so it completes the entire picture. The question is: how do you take the conversation forward? What can be that medium? and what kind of technology can get to people?

“We use different strategies to enable dialogue across communities. It could be on the street, on the blog, within a workshop; the web has been a constant space. If you are an Action Hero, yes you may be web-savvy, but you also carry the responsibility to take the conversation to another space."

Jasmeen Patheja

This demographic is ultimately an interest group leading a movement and has taken on the responsibility of spreading the call to action among its network. Foregoing the assumption that every Indian citizen wants to challenge concepts of sexual harassment in the city, the fact that one group is spreading a specific opinion puts forward a tension between the dynamics of public social protest and the existence of privatized dissent. Turner reflects on Mill’s On Liberty and shows how this could entail a threat of spreading mass opinion to the extent it makes all people alike (Turner, 1990).

Kabeer also highlights this by exploring the tension between universality versus particularity — a debate that questions the extent to which human rights advocacy in the public sphere will be equally received and supported by every group, given diversity of opinion within as well as obstacles to freedom of speech. Nyamu-Musembi attempts to bridge this dichotomy by framing universality as “the experience of resistance to general oppression” and particularity as “how resistance speaks to each relevant social context”. In order to have the issue speak to all citizen groups, Blank Noise is currently also depending on the the ability of its Action Heroes to pass on a message that speaks to the different needs and cultural sensibilities of communities who do not belong to the Anglo-speaking middle class it is currently operating with.

In response to having the protest of a specific social group translate into homogenized dissent, Jasmeen is looking to increase her outreach by approaching and working with other groups.

How can you build effective solidarity networks among middle class activists, their networks and further communities?
It is an attitude we are trying to push forward: have that conversation with your grandma; with your domestic help. We would love to do something with domestic workers for example. We don’t hear enough stories of who empowers or harasses them. That’s definitely a rising concern within the collective. We really need to have the complete spectrum and what kind of technology or strategies can be used to get it. Identifying these groups is a proposed future project and also an ongoing preoccupation. For now, our role is to trigger conversations and have them take their own journey.

METHODS FOR CHANGE

How does the combination of art and technology foster active citizenship?

Some of the strategies Blank Noise has devised to overcome these obstacles relate back to the interdisciplinary design of its interventions. First, they are designed to be highly visible and aimed at triggering dialogue. This enables opinions and thoughts to flow from the private space into the public realm. Also, community art and technology as tools of expression and reflection, work as effective channels for responses to flow back and forth between both spaces.

Why did you take a multi-stakeholder approach and brought together technology and art?
The entire collective is really based on defining strategies and identifying approaches to breaking denial and building conversation. Our role is enabling dialogue across forms of media and using different strategies to enable dialogue across communities. There are also lots of questions of how to create an art practice that can be collaborative and participatory. Where does art exist? How can art exist, be, feel confrontational? Can arte provoke? How can we build testimonials? Could be on the street, on the blog, twitter or within a workshop. The web has been a constant space. We also work with the web in a way that we have a growing community of Action Heroes, and if you are web-savvy, you carry the responsibility to take the conversation to another space.

Twitter campaign. Courtesy of: http://bit.do/fHLK

Public art installation to redefine sexual harassment and eve-teasing. Courtesy of Caravan Magazine: http://bit.do/fHLV

Bennett and his work on civic engagement in the digital age, notes that one of the main strategies for positive civic engagement is nurturing creative and expressive actions in this generation.

How does this approach work towards creating sustainable change?
We are creating tool kits for different ideas so the community can take it forward. There are many creative processes that equip them to initiate action in a community space. For instance, the Yelahanka Action Heroes workshop (http://yelahankaactionheroes.wordpress.com/), was a one month initiative that got Sristhi students to arrive to action heroism through games, like the Hahaha Sangha for example. We invited women out of their homes, and we would speak through pure laughter, gibberish and a sense of play. In doing that, people felt they knew each other. Anonymity was broken, people felt comfortable and safety was established. We are working towards creating safe public spaces and going beyond the biases that come from language or through age. But through the Hahaha Sangha we found there is still a need for facilitators to continue the project with the purpose of creating a safe space. Also, one of our interns is in charge of creating an Action Hero College Network and spreading information about different events, calendars, etc. It is still fluid but we are moving in that direction. Action Heroes are the strength of the project.

Hahaha Sangha sessions - Courtesy of Blank Noise blog http://bit.do/fHMb

The ideal of an engaged youth must be sustained by the empowerment of young people; getting them to recognize their personal expression and identities in collective spaces (Bennett, 2008). By setting in place mechanisms and opportunities to critically dissect societal problems and develop a political perspective as put forward by Westheimer and Kahne, as well as the awareness, self-identity and political confidence to act, as noted by Gaventa, the Blank Noise interventions become a context in which active citizenship is more likely.

Conclusion

This analysis, part of the Methods of Social Change research project, aimed to shed light on how change-makers such as Blank Noise still place a heavy consideration on the notion of citizenship when designing, framing and implementing their projects. What is more, it is paramount to identify the working characteristics of an ‘active citizen’ and reflect on whether these are desirable and necessary in the populace to make political and social change more likely. It also contributes to the Making Change project by unpacking the workings of a change actor that is not confined to the ‘category of citizen’ but is still closely linked to processes of citizen action and social change in Bangalore.

As seen throughout this post, the analysis of our citizen is not grounded on its relationship with the state, but instead on its disposition, self-identity and notion of social membership. After identifying our ideal active citizen: an active bearer of his rights, that defines itself horizontally in relation to other citizens and their rights, participates in political processes and is informed about and at odds with power imbalances, the Blank Noise experience demonstrated spatial tensions in implementing this ideal and practice in the public and private realms. Designing strategies and identifying technologies that enable a flow of thought and action between both spaces is a way of restructuring the ecosystem in which volunteers from the Action Hero Network interact with each other, reclaim their citizenship and alter the status quo from within. While Blank Noise is not starting a revolution, it is consolidating a process of steady and growing resistance in the public and private discourse of sexual harassment and eve-teasing in the city.

Shah also notes there are implicit codes allowing only certain people to embrace this model of citizenship. This was evident on the demographic that comprises the activist bases of Blank Noise and the risks of homogenizing the political space with their discourse of change. Jasmeen Patheja brought this point forward herself, but with full confidence on the ability of dialogue and conversation to keep luring other social groups and communities into joining the debate. We discussed opportunities from exploring the foreign women experience in the public space in India to expanding the Blank Noise basis through simultaneous international interventions enabled and coordinated through technology. The network is ever-growing and its mechanisms of change are constantly innovating and adapting through its content. In the meantime, the ‘active citizen’ remains at the core of it all, pushing the project forward; fighting among other battles, that of its identity’s reassertion in the landscape of change.

Sources

Arendt, Hannah (1989) The Human Condition. Chicago, IL and London: The University of Chicago Press.
Baker, Keith Michael. The French Revolution and the creation of modern political culture. Vol. 3. Pergamon Press, 1987.
Bennett, W. Lance. "Changing citizenship in the digital age." Civic life online: Learning how digital media can engage youth 1 (2008): 1-24.
Berlin, Isaiah. "Two concepts of liberty." Berlin, I (1969): 118-172.
Bellah, Robert Neelly, ed. Habits of the heart: individualism and commitment in American life: with a new preface. University of California Pr, 2008.
Cornwall, Andrea, and Vera Schatten Coelho, eds. Spaces for change?: the politics of citizen participation in new democratic arenas. Vol. 4. Zed Books, 2007.
Ellison, N. (1997) ‘Towards a new social politics: citizenship and reflexivity in late modernity’, Sociology, 31(4): 697–717.
Gaventa, John, and Rajesh Tandon “Citizen engagements in a globalizing world." Globalizing citizens: New dynamics of inclusion and exclusion (2010): 3-30.
Heater, D. (2002) World Citizenship: Cosmopolitan Thinking and Its Opponents, London: Continuum
Kabeer, Naila, ed. Inclusive citizenship: Meanings and expressions. Vol. 1. Zed Books, 2005.
Kathryn Montgomery et al., Youth as E-Citizens: Engaging the Digital Generation. Center for Social Media, 2004. Retrieved February 15, 2007. http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/ecitizens/project.htm.
Mann, Michael. "Ruling class strategies and citizenship". Sociology 21, no.3 (1987): 339-354
Shah, Nishant “Whose Change is it Anyways? Hivos Knowledge Program. April 30, 2013.
Turner, Bryan. Outline of a Theory of Citizenship. Sociology (May 1990), 24 (2), pg. 189-217
Westheimer, Joel, and Joseph Kahne. "What kind of citizen? The politics of educating for democracy." American educational research journal 41, no. 2 (2004): 237-269

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/blank-noise-citizenship

Digitally Enhanced Civil Resistance

denisse — 2015-04-17T10:46:50Z

This reflection looks at how civil disobedience unfolds in network societies. It explores the origins of nonviolence, describes digital and non-digital tactics of non-violent protest and participation and finally comments on the possibilities of this form of civil resistance to foster individual and collective civic engagement.

Reflections of the possibilities of non-violence flooded newspapers on October 2, commemorating Gandhi’s birthday and the long-lasting legacy of civil resistance and non-violence. Debashish Chatterjee reflected on India’s founding father as “the true source” of timeless principles on his column in the New Indian Express. He claimed that his unswerving commitment to the core purpose of truth and having non-violence as the main way to achieve his goals was the formula behind the success of his bloodless revolution for political independence. Rajni Bakshi questioned the power and relevance of non-violence in our times in his article for the Hindu. “Stating and repeatedly restating our intention in favour of non-violence is an essential starting point (…) so vital to our species’ present and future”. Courage and ‘the ability to strike’, states Bakshi, are the pre-requisites of non-violence tactics; a claim that ignited reflections and considerations on the political motivations of Digital Natives and the nature of the strategies behind digital activism.

The idea of nonviolence that underpin civil resistance or ‘civil disobedience’ if you will, as outlined in the foreword of Richard Gregg’s essay The Power of Nonviolence, had its origins in the Upanishads back in the 500 BC. Since then, it traveled through Buddhism, Jainism, Jesus, Socrates, and Tolstoy among others, before making its way back to India and Gandhi in 1910. Since then, this idea has gathered “meaning, momentum, organization, practical effectiveness and power” as non-violence tactics are put into action in several instances of political and social resistance. Dr. Gene Sharp drew for the first time in 1973 a list of one hundred ninety eight methods to engage in nonviolent protest, persuasion and noncooperation in his book The Politics of Nonviolent Action. This repository was taken up in 2011 by digital activism scholars Mary Joyce and Patrick Meier, who are identifying the ways in which these methods have been digitally enhanced, in their crowd-source project Civil Resistance 2.0. Regardless of the larger debate that evaluates the effectiveness of non-violent tactics to deter the use of violence, the conceptualization of non-violent civil resistance is a body of knowledge that has not been explored from the point of view of network and information societies as of yet (Joyce, 2011).

Furthermore, tracing the idea of non-violent resistance in the light of Gandhi’s legacies is an interesting point to discuss digital strategies towards change. Is digital activism mainstreaming the use and proliferation of non-violent tactics of protest, taking them from a booming trend to an advocacy norm? Do non-violent online tactics make offline self-sustainable and continuous change more likely? Are these methods more conducive to citizen engagement and a consequent behavioral change in everyday practices? To start answering these questions we will refer back to the principles of Ahimsa and Satyagraha taken up by Gandhi for civil disobedience, complement them with Gregg’s work of the power of nonviolence, and finally with Sharp’s work on the tactics and complexities of defiance, resistance and struggles with social, economic, environmental and political objectives. These three texts will dialogue throughout this entry with the objective of understanding the nature of these methods and how they touch on civic and digital natives’ engagement.

Digital nonviolence and collective action

In Christopher Chapple’s account of nonviolence in Asian traditions, he describes the fundamentals of Ahimsa or non-violence as “the absence of the desire to kill or harm”. This concept, coupled with Satyagraha, the ‘power of truth’, was translated into what is civil disobedience and non-cooperation. Both methods were utilized to break unjust laws back in Gandhi’s struggle for political independence from the British. Aside from the moral debate on what constitutes truth and evil, we can already identify a relationship between these precepts and what sustains collective action. Mario Diani identified “shared beliefs and ties of solidarity attached to specific collective events” and “political and cultural conflicts arising for social change” as two fundamental characteristics in all sorts of social movements. The power of non-violent action and large-scale disobedience requires the intervention of suitably organized and disciplined individuals, acting collectively to stand up against authorities such as the thousands of peasants who stood up against soldiers under Gandhi’s leadership, or the thousands of Egyptian citizens who distributed copies of Sharp’s work on 198 non-violent methods to foster civil resistance and overthrow Mubarak’s regime. As stated by Gregg, the approach unified Indians by giving them the necessary self-respect, self-reliance, courage and persistence to collectively withstand the resistance efforts that ultimately led them to independence. In other words, in the midst of different ‘truths’, a shared set of beliefs and the use of non-violent methods invoked unity among citizens.

How are digital technologies mainstreaming these methods in the social imaginary of digital natives? Collective action requires the mobilization, organization and coordination of “networks of informal interactions” according to Diani’s characterization. This task is being facilitated and amplified by rapid and low-cost communication enabled by digital technology as argued in Anastasia Kavada’s essay on digital activism. She adds that the potential of internet for social movement activities lies on the possibilities of information dissemination, decision-making, and a crucial pillar for citizen engagement: the building of trust and a sense of collective identity. Therefore, although connectivity and collectivity are indeed made more likely through technology, digital tools are still value and content neutral. The challenge for digital non-violent civil resistance is the degree to which it is appeals to the populace and persuades them into being actors of the movements as opposed to loosely connected by-standers; in other words, the need for Gandhian digital leaders that transmit the need and power of civic involvement and public opinion.

Individual and collective resistance

The concept of non-violent civil resistance should be feasible and desirable for the 21^st century digital native, both in the digital and offline realm due to its individual and collective possibilities. In terms of individual resistance; while collective defiance is powerful it starts through individual awareness and everyday actions that build up the public opinion (Gregg, 1960). As Nishant Shah notes while distinguishing resistance from revolution: resistance-based change comes about to correct failures of infrastructure, administration, policy or law, and is not only an integral part of the system but it is also an encouraged form of citizen action, among others (2011). Individuals have now broader options than before to exert this resistant, starting with Sharp’s list of 198 methods. From group-coordinated persuasion strategies including social non-cooperation boycotts, withdrawal from institutions to the use of arts and symbolisms and psychological interventions, there is plenty of room for creativity and action. Furthermore, 196 of these methods have been digitally enhanced through peer-production, self-broadcasting, media attention-competition and other methods which, according to Joyce and Meier, can be feasibly executed by the fluent digital native.

What is more, aside from coordinating offline activities, individuals can also exert civil disobedience on the online realm as demonstrated by Andrew Chadwick’s list of online defiance tactics in Internet Politics. Instances of hacktivism, denial-of-service boycotts and virtual sit-ins (Kavada, 20120) are a few examples of expressions of activism through non-cooperation that showcase the digital autonomy of netizens. For example, recently, the Vietnamese activist group Viet Tan launched a visible and creative online campaign showing citizens how to remove the block from the Facebook site, denouncing state’s censorship and advocating for freedom of expression through ethical hacking. Ultimately, non-violent resistance methods have never been as relevant as today, when citizens are recurring to new mechanisms of participation and contestation to claim their rights, reclaim citizenship and assert democratic freedoms through increased participation (Sharp, 2002; Khanna, 2012).

On the side of possibilities for enhanced collectivity, it is worth looking into the moral covenants present in social justice struggles. Gregg’s work, in spite of being written in 1935 and revised in 1960, provides a very up to date description of the power of information in network societies:

“Although there have been violations of moral laws in the world, there has never been such clear, strong recognition on the part of the holders of power of the importance of public opinion […] shown by propaganda and censorship practiced by governments and the press”.

Whether it comes from the state, civil society or the citizens; attempts to put justice, democracy and rightness at the forefront of all public discourse is today a norm, demonstrating the persuasive power of moral laws if put at the core of citizen action. Glasius and Pleyers also state that democracy, social justice and dignity are the main tenets of collective action enabling solidarity networks and the rise of a collective consciousness that transcends borders (2012). In this respect, it seems that connectivity and collectivity to engage in non-violent resistance is made more likely through technology, and although these tools remain ‘value neutral’, the processes of change will be defined by the consistency between methods and rhetoric brought forward by the citizen. This will also lead to a more complete model of citizenship as these individuals take ownership of the methods, content and the values cross-cutting both; not only for and during the protest, but as a value system defining coherent every day activities and the exercise of responsible democracy beyond the spectacle of mass protests (Pleyers, 2012; Shah, 2013).

Conclusion

Gandhi’s implementation of civil disobedience methods and his adherence to Ahimsa were the result of a combination of religious and cultural factors, which coupled with education and experience, deemed his beliefs a lifestyle as opposed to a mere political strategy. This reflection puts the citizen on the spot light. Having non-violent and digitally facilitated methods of protest and participation on hand what is defining the political motivations and engagement of the digital native? Having the flexibility to adapt these methods to their skills and lifestyles, what is holding back the civic energy of the 21st century citizen? According to Gaventa and Barrett, confidence, awareness and self-identity are the pre-conditions for citizenship and action. The first two can be fostered by non-violence: Sharp argues that experience in applying effective non-violent struggles increases self-confidence, while Gregg explains how unity is a result of adding oneself to a mass civil movement. The latter: self-identity and how the citizen looks at its role in the larger discourse of social struggles, as well as other factors that enhance its civic engagement, sense of citizenship and creativity in political movements, is a question I will leave open to explore in my following blog posts.

Sources

“198 Methods of Nonviolent Action” The Albert Einstein Institution http://www.aeinstein.org/organizations103a.html
“iRevolution. From Innovation to Revolution” last updated April 26, 2012 http://irevolution.net/tag/gene/
Chapple, Christopher. Nonviolence to animals, earth, and self in Asian traditions. SUNY Press, 1993.
Gaventa, John, and Gregory Barrett. "So what difference does it make? Mapping the outcomes of citizen engagement." IDS Working Papers 2010, no. 347 (2010): 01-72.
Gregg, Richard Bartlett, and Mahatma Gandhi. The power of non-violence. Clarke, 1960.
Horgan, John. “Egypt’s revolution vindicates Gene Sharp’s theory of nonviolent activism” Last updated February 11, 2010. Scientific American: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/2011/02/11/egypts-revolution-vindicates-gene-sharps-theory-of-nonviolent-activism/
Joyce, Mary C. ed. Digital activism decoded: the new mechanics of change. IDEA, 2010.
Joyce, Mary. Last updated November 29, 2012. “Webinar on Digital Nonviolence” Meta-Activism: Activism analysis for the digital age. http://www.meta-activism.org/2012/11/wedinar-on-digital-nonviolence/
Khanna, Akshay. "Seeing Citizen Action through an ‘Unruly’Lens."Development 55, no. 2 (2012): 162-172.
Meier, Patrick. Last updated April 25, 2012. “Civil Resistance 2.0: A new database of methods” Meta-Activism: Activism analysis for the digital age http://www.meta-activism.org/2012/04/civil-resistance-2-0-a-new-database-of-methods/
Pleyers, Geoffrey. "Beyond Occupy: Progressive Activists in Europe." Open Democracy: free thinking for the world 2012 (2012): 5pages-8.
Sharp, Gene. "The politics of nonviolent action, 3 vols." Boston: Porter Sargent(1973).
Sharp, Gene “From Dictatorship to Democracy: A conceptual framework for liberation” The Albert Einstein Institution.(2010)
Travers, Will. “Civil disobedience for the digital age” Last updated December 23, 2010. Waging NonViolence http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/civil-disobedience-for-the-digital-age/

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/digitally-enhanced-civil-resistance

Bangalore + Sustainability Summit

denisse — 2015-04-17T10:48:52Z

The power of technology to create youth engagement and positive social change were discussed at the Bangalore + Sustainability Summit on September 21, 2013 at the Centre for Internet and Society(CIS) , Bangalore. The event, in conjunction with the Social Good Summit that took place in New York during the same weekend, explored creative and tech-based avenues to solve sustainability challenges and promote social good.

Our interest in understanding the role of digital natives in our society stems from the possibilities technology brings for the social good. This concept, a variation of the notion of the ‘common good’, is nowadays a popular and widely utilized term, both in its secular and religious variations. It conveys values and actions that benefit the well-being of society and in Mill’s utilitarian view: one which promotes the moral, intellectual and active traits of its citizens. Nowadays, its social justice undertones are part of the human rights discourse that characterizes twenty-first century civil society and citizen action, which are at the same time becoming increasingly connected in the context of network societies, leading to the new socialized form of the common good. The buzzword was there at the core of the Social Good Summit that took place in New York from September 22 to 24, as well as of the Bangalore + Sustainability workshop, organized by Ashoka India in partnership with Green Lungi and IDEX on September 21 at CIS office in Bangalore.

Local leaders and change-makers in Bangalore discussed the power of technology and its potential to provide sustainable solutions for the city’s greatest challenges at the event. The workshop was dynamic in structure and inspiring in content, as the participants were divided into make-a-thon sessions to collaboratively design technology-based prototypes that tackle the problems with feasible and impactful solutions. In the opening session Meera Vijayann, consultant for Ashoka India, commented on the nature of sustainability and how technological design must tackle all of its fronts, including environmental, government, public and citizenship engagement, to name a few, establishing a working framework for the day. This was followed by four panelists who gave brief talks highlighting their professional backgrounds and some of the lessons learned in the pursuit of social good.

The first to present was Kuldeep Dantewadia, founder of Reap Benefit, a start-up that provides low-cost solutions to encourage behavioural change around waste, water and biodiversity management. Inspiring attendees to “be fools”, and take chances, based on Ranjan Maliks’s talk: The Fool and his kind of Innovation, he spoke about environmental issues as a man-made disease with behavioural solutions, as opposed to an external crisis requiring intervention. His social approach within a workshop discussing the power of technology was, as the representative of IDEX, Daniel Oxenhandler said, a great entry point to start thinking of the leaps of good-will and risks to be taken in the field of social change. Encouraging the participants to be foolish, he invited them to be bold and inventive with their ideas throughout the day.

He was followed by Raahul Khadaliya, who defines himself as a thinker, observer and explorer of design for sustainability. He delved on the ultimate purpose of design and framed it as a problem-solving tool that ought to bring benefits for the masses. Stressing that design is not only concerned about how tools works, but instead on “how they work in a given environment” he brought up the importance of context and historicity in design, an important discussion point , incidentally also explored by the ‘Making Change’ project by CIS in conjunction with the HIVOS Knowledge Program. Digital technologies and derived platforms do not carry value in themselves when pursuing social change, unless they speak to the locality and respond to the crises lingering in their given ecosystem. Khadaliya ended his presentation with a slide that read “design is a behaviour”, adding to the recurring theme of the day: the need for citizen behavioural change, being it in creation, participation or conservation of resources.

Coming from a different angle, Kalpana Kar, who contributed to the Bangalore Agenda Task Force in an urban governance project, gave an insightful account of the role of public policy and private-public partnerships. Her talk came across as an insightful set of advice tackling considerations around space and how it intersects with collectives and their sense of entitlement and territoriality. Notions of power, pride and hierarchical arrangements are determining accessibility to public spaces, a highly relevant reflection that also applies to digital participation in online platforms, as explored in the Digital Natives framework. She added that creating technological solutions with social impact calls for a change in our behaviour and how we gauge our individual needs against the social good. “Enthusiasm can take you far, but not further”, for which she appealed to participants to “be real, practical and foolish” in their interventions and focus on designs that have impact with scale and economic viability. This vision puts the private sector on a par with sustainability state policies, and sets the ground for mechanisms of social accountability as an important complement of technological design.

The last panelist Sharath Chandra Ram, researcher at the Centre for Internet and Society and instructor at the Srishti School of Art, Design & Technology brought the aforementioned points together and based his talk on alternatives to bridge the distance between the citizen and the state through online-offline interventions. He focused on the enabling of citizen voices and freedoms in governance as a fundamental mandate for tech innovators of our times. “Models must maintain cultural specificities and have a holistic approach” to facilitate engagement in the globalized socio-political arena. He provided three of examples of citizen involvement in information and state governance: citizen journalism, citizen uprisings and citizen governance, coupled with a showcase of low-cost technologies designed at the CIS Metaculture Media Lab that would allow larger online access and offline participation if made pervasive. His pragmatic approach provided tangible and innovative examples, using every day apparatuses, to enable connection and overcome the social and political roadblocks in our networks; an interesting and inspiring segue into team formation and the make-a-thon to come up next.

Following the panel, the 40+ participants divided into working groups moderated by the organizers and delved into discussion on one out the five proposed problem statements: road safety, waste management, gender-inclusive spaces, forestation and public infrastructures. Brainstorm props provided, the groups created mind maps, Lego structures and comic strips to shape, frame and later pitch their idea to the rest of the workshop. While the use of technology was mandatory, the social good impact brought forward by these apps and campaigns took precedence in the presentations. The event all in all embodied an opportunity to bring ideas, skills and experience together from their different walks of life and yield innovation. In fact, as Ira Snissar, Venture Associate for Ashoka mentioned in her closing speech: three or four of the presented ideas had the potential to comprise business plans for future start-ups. The remark concluded the session by highlighting the need to create marketable and economically viable solutions to ensure sustainability of social good tools in market systems, defeating the long-standing tensions between corporate interests and social responsibility.

The four themes brought forward by the panelists: audacious innovation, large-scale design, power negotiations and citizen governance, as well as the group discussions reiterated a fundamental idea throughout the day: the need for behavioral change in the name of social good. While the state, the private sector and of course technologies were present as important actors in the making of change, the citizen was framed as the main engine and beneficiary of these processes. Stronger citizen engagement, improved negotiation between individual and collective needs, and diminished contestation in spaces of power are among the main objectives to attain these long-sought social good objectives. Technological solutions come across as enablers and amplifiers, perhaps necessary in a networked environment, yet not sufficient if not coupled with sustainable behavioural change. In this respect the question that should precede events like this one should focus on the substance behind the summit’s buzzword: what does ‘the social good’ entail? And attempt to understand the alignments of these understandings considering different models of citizenship and activism.

As of now, the implications and nuances of the social good remain under-theorized and lack epistemological consensus, yet the concept still represents an interesting pathway of research within the Digital Natives project. Is it possible to instill the need for behavioural change in the social imaginary? Is it feasible to establish solidarity networks through pervasive technologies? These are some of the avenues to be taken at the aftermath of the Bangalore + Sustainability event. The willingness to work together towards what benefits all was very prominent in the summit, suggesting that the feel-good nature of the concept and its social justice foundations make it a powerful drive to mobilize people and ideas. The challenge remains on how to extrapolate it and as advised by the panelists, have it derive into large scale impact among the masses.

Sources:

“7 Definitions 4 Social Good” Armchair Advocates. Last modified August 21^st, 2012. Accessed September 23^rd, 2013http://armchairadvocates.com/2012/08/21/the-7-definitions-4-social-good-back2school-yourself-series/
“Mill’s Moral and Political Philosophy” Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Last modified October 9^th, 2007. Accessed September 23^rd, 2013 http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mill-moral-political/#LibDemComGoo
Shah, Nishant “Whose Change is it Anyways? Hivos Knowledge Program. April 30, 2013
“Social Good Summit 2013” accessed September 23^rd, 2013, http://mashable.com/sgs/#about
“Social Good Summit: Ashoka India”, accessed September 23^rd, 2013, http://www.plussocialgood.org/Post/social-good-summit-ashoka-india/836a3a1e-ea21-4a96-bdbd-bb4fe58a8612

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/bangalore-sustainability-summit

Revealing Protesters on the Fringe: Crucifixion Protest in Paraguay

denisse — 2015-04-17T10:51:56Z

An analysis of the crucifix protest in Paraguay in the light of Nishant Shah’s piece: Whose Change is it Anyway? The blog post looks at the physical and symbolic spaces in which narratives of change were conceived and the extent to which information circulating within activates citizen action.

“What constitutes change? What are the intentions that make change possible? Who are the actors involved?” These are the questions with which Nishant Shah opens the thought piece ‘Whose Change is it Anyway’, a series of reflections and provocations exploring the future of citizen action and digital technologies in emerging information societies. The project, in collaboration with the HIVOS Knowledge Program, begins a process of unlearning conventional understandings of ‘change’ and redefining it in the light of less visible narratives of political, social and cultural transformation. Three pivots of analysis are at the backbone of this piece. First, it locates change by looking at the historicity and stressing the role of invisible crises that lead to digital activism. Second, it moves on to unpack our definition of change and the language framing activism as system-overhaul practices rather reformative experiments. Third, it looks at the outcomes of change proposing a redefinition of failure that enables us to recognize instances of change outside of what is dubbed ‘successful’ citizen action. All in all, the piece is reflective rather than conclusive and when paired up with contemporary events of political and social change, it serves as a framework to challenge existing paradigms and overlooked narratives.

This was precisely my experience when at the end of August I came across the Paraguayan crucifix protest in the BBC News website: the story of eight bus drivers who led by union leader Juan Villalba, crucified themselves onto wooden crosses to protest against labour exploitation in Asuncion.[1] In spite of its international media coverage, the protest has to this day failed to mobilize digitally fluent Paraguayan and global netizens into joining the ranks[2] of their plea, keeping protesters at the fringes of the online sphere. This is surprising compared to other publicized Paraguayan protests, such as Pro-Ache Tribe campaigns back in 2011[3] and the anti-corruption protests earlier this year,[4] which featured politically active students mobilizing through technology to influence public policy in Paraguay.


				Video of crucifixion protest

Before jumping into deeming the crucifix protest a success or a failure, I would like to refer back to the first axis of analysis in Shah’s work and discuss the history, context and structures in which the intent for change was crafted. I will follow Anat-Ben David´s framework based on her research on the geopolitics of digital spaces, and look at how “hybrid geographical and digital spaces” intertwine with “situated knowledges and practices” in order to localize change (2011). I will first focus on the political and social context of Paraguay and how it framed two online campaigns: the Aché Tribe campaign in 2011 and the anti-corruption campaign in June 2013. Then, I will move on to the symbolic and knowledge context in Paraguay and how it determined the outcome of the offline crucifix protest in August 2013. The objective is to identify the factors that drove the first two issues into the online sphere vis-a-vis those that impeded the latter from making that transition. This will be instrumental to understand what —and what not— activates youth mobilization and citizen action in Paraguay and how their vision of change aligns with their experience in crises.

Political and social context of Paraguay

Landlocked, Catholic and mestizo, Paraguay was under a 30 year oppressive dictatorship that finally came to an end in 1989. Since then, the succeeding thirteen years of democracy have been characterized by citizen upheavals, as younger generations are breaking the silence and conformity of older times (Zavala, 2011). Among the most pressing issues addressed by coup attempts, strikes and protests,[5] corruption remains the standing evil in the Paraguayan political system. Seventy-eight per cent of its citizens perceive the government as ineffective at fighting corruption,[6] and with good reason. Paraguay is ranked as the second most corrupt country in Latin America and 24th in the world, according to Transparency International.[7] The Paraguayan head of Seeds for Democracy, Marta Ferrara commented on corruption being absolute in the public sector due to the legacy of dictatorship, and hence called civil society groups to exert more pressure on the government to fight it.[8] This sentiment is consistent with the loss of faith in democracy in Latin America to which research has attributed the rise of the left and a growing desire for social change (Barret et al, 2008).

Another important contextual question to consider on a par is how relevant are digital technologies in Paraguay to mobilize change. The country has one of the lowest rates of internet penetration in the continent at 27.1 per cent, [9] suggesting that the remaining 70 per cent is comprised of disconnected Guarani voices whose stories remain untold. This is in a country with a 52.4 Gini coefficient, where 40 per cent of citizens live below the poverty line and 56 per cent of the income is controlled by the upper 20 per cent.[10]

Delving deeper into this divide, we can infer that the success behind the digitally enabled protests comes as a result of socioeconomic inequality and an alignment of the interests of this privileged class and the issues behind their actions. Based on this profile, my follow up questions are a) what is the common thread joining the online campaigns that is absent from the crucifix protest and b) how this digital class is defining these priorities.

The anti-corruption discourse
The legacy of the dictatorship and the anti-corruption discourse is a strong response to the first question. While the concept of corruption is severely stigmatized in society, it is also very loosely defined (Harrison, 2006), making it a versatile stimuli for change. Harrison states that in developing countries, the focus remains on the perception of the relationship between the state and those they are meant to be serving (2006), while for Haller and Shore it also refers to money transactions within power relationships that stratify and exclude in any structure (2005). In this way, the concept remains all-encompassing, perception-based and relevant to the democracy crisis in Paraguay. Hence, protesting against it is locally appropriate, and fits in the moral project Sampson dubbed the global anti-corruption industry (2010). He argues that condemning corruption is now a global trend grounded on uncontested ‘good governance´ and integrity values. Its rhetoric has been mainstreamed and infused with a “feel good character” that turns it into an appealing campaign, easy to identify with, simple to embark on and consistently present in the human-rights discourse both in the online and offline sphere.

The anti-corruption protest in June and the Pro-Aché mobilization in 2011 fit this criterion. In the first case, 3000 Paraguayans took to the streets inspired by neighbouring Brazil´s anti-corruption protests[11] to condemn a new retirement law project for parliamentarians that allowed them to retire after only ten years of public service. Framed as an indicator of state inefficiency, the online campaign PorUnParaguayMejor [For a better Paraguay] went viral compelling students to mobilize against the project in Asuncion.[12] The event was reported immediately by international media publicizing Paraguayan youth as revolutionary agents of change.[13]


	Above: "[Parlamentarians] are retiring in 10 years and demanding full pension (100% of their salaries). Paraguay, take the streets and denounce them", (pictured by Global Voices online: http://bit.ly/1aXGzA7)

The second case was also based on state inefficiency experienced by a specific community: the Aché indigenous tribe. The dispute was a consequence of the Ministry of Environment dishonouring an agreement and not granting property titles of the land Finca 470 to the tribe. As a result, a group of young Paraguayans created social media accounts to organize food and clothes drives, mobilize protests, attract further attention from the press and communicate horizontally with government authorities. Due to their extensive lobbying, the authorities acceded to declare the land an indigenous reserve for the Aché, making it another hailed example of successful technology usage by youth (Zavala, 2011).[14]

Above: Members of the Aché tribe take to the streets in Paraguay (photo courtesy Sulekha: http://bit.ly/1aPxeXv).

In both cases, the vaguely defined corruption was at the core of citizens’ claims. In the first one, the general outrage and dutifulness drove citizens into the anti-corruption discourse both on the online and offline spheres. Based on Shah’s conceptualization of the technologies of the state (2013), the issue of corruption was perceived as a threat to the survival of the citizen and its rights, and created a generalized sense of precariousness among the populace. Ergo, they intervened to secure their future and as put by Sampson, to convey the message that they ‘were doing something’ about it regardless of whether that ‘something’ would have a long-term structural impact.

On the other hand, the second online protest had a more altruistic tone. The members of the digitally privileged 30 per cent, in spite of not being directly implicated in the conflict, took the disconnected group’s plea and mobilized support networks on their behalf. Although the Aché did not request this intervention, nor intend to utilize technology during their camped protests, the digital group’s strategy was largely more effective at bringing the issues to the attention of media and the government. The successful mainstreaming of the Aché’s story upon being digitalized questions the extent to which staged protests will remain appropriate in information societies vis-à-vis online campaigning.

These developments show how the anti-corruption discourse not only mobilizes citizens in Paraguay but also their power and resources. Therefore, if corruption is the common thread we are looking for, to what extent is it applicable to other social conflicts? Will good governance values always trump individual pursuits of assurance? In the following section I will return to the crucifix protests in the light of the aforementioned and address non-geographical spaces of knowledge and practices, as recommended by Ben-Davis. This will shed light on this question and on the spectrum of citizen motivations framing how digital actors articulate change.

Knowledge, Symbolisms and Visibility

Yochai Benkler describes our networked society as an economy centered on information, cultural production and the manipulation of symbols (2006). These contain and pertain to different ways of understanding the world. In the optimistic view of Benkler, digital technologies enable these views to circulate freely in our network; amplifying all voices, however, as seen in the case of Paraguay, information is being produced by one sector of society that determines and constrains the visibility of other worldviews; reproducing socioeconomic inequalities in the digital sphere. In this section I will look at how different articulations of the present and the conflict between spaces of knowledge and symbolisms derive into different ways of telling the same story, in the light of the extremely visual crucifix protest.

The protest had a very different impact in the national scene, as opposed to its portrayal in international media. This is because crucifixes had already been staged in the past by people of indigenous descent[15] or union workers[16] to call for the attention of the Paraguayan state. Being a predominantly Catholic country, utilizing the charged image of the crucifixion of Jesus is the equivalent of cultural bandwagoning on its symbols of self-sacrifice and martyrdom. Eric Tyler reflecting on activism martyrs in the light of the role Khalid Saed in the Arab Spring, called them “catalysts with a profound amplifying impact when combined with the viral force of technology”.[17] Amy Sample Ward added another lesson from Egypt, noting that you do not need a high penetration rate in order for massive impact to occur, “as long as the community is connected”.[18] If the digital class had taken on the bus drivers case in the same way they supported the Aché, mobilization would have been likely. However, the cause did not resonate with the Paraguayan digital public. This lack of connection did not derive from the digital divide, but instead from the long-standing conflict between the transport sector and the citizens.

There are several points to be made about this case of citizen inaction. First, the citizen-market crisis played a large role in creating apathy around the crucifix protest. Shah states that technologies of the market must “assure us of the future in terms of material resources and infrastructures upon which happiness depend” (2013), which was not being delivered by the CETRAPAM (Transport Companies of the Metropolitan Area) in the eyes of the citizen. The CETRAPAM director is perceived as corrupt and inefficient[19] and earlier that month a transportation strike left 700,000 immobilized.[20] These incidents resulted in a citizen online campaign demanding a reliable and transparent service from the companies[21] having anti-corruption, once again, at the core of their claims.

This background determined how national media reproduced the crucifix protest story. ABC, one of the largest news corporations in the country, covered the story portraying drivers as ‘aichinjaranga’s” (‘poor little thing’ in Guaraní), who were appealing to “wake people up through pity and pressure, not resources.[22] On the other hand, the most popular entry on the topic in Crónicas Ciudadanas (ABC’s citizen journalism forum) reads: “We [Luque citizens] are tired. These drivers waste our time and we are sick of it.”[23] The digital class, having the power and resources to mobilize, chose to remain idle in order to disempower a group that has been causing precariousness in their present and future establishing a hierarchy of citizen priorities. By withdrawing their support, the drivers are now left with offline strategies and conventional protest tools to address their demands with only the support of their immediate community.[24] It is unclear whether this will represent a disadvantage for their ability to create structural change, but it does show that internal citizen crises leads to inequality of strategies and resources for mobilization.

Second, this case also highlights the dark side of Benkler’s argument in favour of citizen information production. He claims that citizen journalism curbs the power away from mass media and hands it over to autonomous citizens who can now exchange information, making them less susceptible to manipulation by the owners of communications infrastructure and media (2006). In the case of Paraguay, this power has been handed over to the digitally fluent who are only putting forward causes aligned with their interests and value scheme.Issues of access and digital inclusion come afloat, as the disconnected status of the crucifix protesters keeps them out of social spaces of debate and political conversation. This deems social status a determining factor between “statements that are heard and those that wallow in obscurity” (Benkler, 2006) and a serious constraint for the fulfillment of the drivers’ capabilities and freedoms.

Third, the use of symbols is effective depending on the audience, as shown by the narrative of international news corporations. The use of crucifixes came across as an ancient and peculiar tool protest for western media — especially in the digital era— earning them a space in the global public’s interest eighteen days into the protest. As commented by Al Jazeera’s opinion columnist Courtney Martin, in the light of the Tibetan self-immolations in February,[25]“in a world that tends to shine new power [on] online activism only”, other people need to resort to “attention-getting schemes on the hopes of calling attention to issues that remain unresolved”.[26]

The highly visual crucifixes caught the attention of the international media, yet the focus remained on the props instead of the underlying issues around union workers’ rights. This was evident on the picture included by the CNN, showing the workers lined up on their crosses lying next to a coffin claiming that this will become their "final resting place" if their demands were not met;[27] adding to the thriller effect of what is in fact a social justice crisis.


Crucified bus drivers in Paraguay (pictured by CNN International), http://bit.ly/1fpxKvs

In regards to the audience’s response, I would dare to speculate that the absence of the “language of revolution” that surrounds hyped narratives around digital activism (such as the June anti-corruption campaign accounts) played a role in the inactivity from international human-rights activism communities. Being a global audience “engaged with a spectacle of the rise of the citizen” (Shah, 2013), information circulating through mass media is either discarding or othering the less attractive, under-the-radar citizen struggles that do not fit this sale pitch. If a show must be staged in order to attain global attention, it is only natural to wonder if this plot will require a dramatic twist to become viral, one of the key ingredients for effective information dissemination according to Mary Joyce (2010). Having the protesters reach “the end” in order to achieve attention and support, is evidence of some of the morbid criterion steering our motivations for change.

Conclusion

This analysis localized some of the invisible conflicts underpinning action for change in Paraguay. Rather than focusing on a specific cause, such as workers’ rights; through a particular method, say crucifixions; I have looked at the structures framing the understandings around citizen action. It attempted to go beyond the spectacle of digital mobilization and instead look at two spaces: the geopolitical context of Paraguay and the symbolic knowledge framing the development of the crucifix protest in Asuncion, and how the bus drivers envisioned their future before and after the protest.

The Paraguayan political and social imaginary and their understanding of change are infused with the historicity of corruption. As explored in the first section, campaigning against corruption in Paraguay has risen as a convenient check-and-balance, citizen-led strategy to demand transparency and accountability from state and market actors. It fosters values of responsible citizenship and is endorsed by the national and international community. The prevalence of this discourse, even if it worked against the crucifix protest, is an indicator that ‘making change’ is not necessarily understood as a practice of material transformation in Paraguay, but that is has been legitimized at the stage of awareness and political engagement without tying citizens into long-term advocacy efforts.

The actions and reactions around the crucifix protest varied in the online and the offline sphere. In the online realm, the story was orchestrated by the group with access to information and communication technologies. The bus drivers, having remained at the fringes of digital production, had no control whatsoever of how their narrative was shaped by citizen journalists, national or international media. This was reflected in the offline sphere, where the lack of support to the protesters was a result of market-citizen conflicts and the inability of the crucifix symbolisms to speak to an urban population. These factors also show how socioeconomic divides at the political and knowledge levels were digitalized, determining information production, dissemination and reproduction as well as responses to the protesters’ narratives in the long-run.

In conclusion, this analysis has offered a broader view of how change is understood, in terms of the socioeconomic and information constraints in the making of change in Paraguay. Altruistic activism is only possible when the cause being fought for does not jeopardize the interests and assurances of a powerful class who is in control of the resources for online mobilization, in spite of the social justice nature of the claim. Some questions remain unresolved, particularly in regards to how digital activity is overshadowing offline initiatives in a spectacle driven environment. An interesting research avenue relevant to the larger project of ‘Whose Change is it Anyway?’ would be to collect narratives and stories of change that gauge the relevance of offline protests, to understand if they can remain relevant and appropriate in information societies and whether we, as an audience and potential supporters, are only defining change and citizen action in light of its digital possibilities.

[1]. “Sacked Paraguay bus drivers stage crucifixion protest” BBC News Latin America & Caribbean. August 28, 2013, accessed August 30, 2013, http://bbc.in/17n5NSm.

[2]. “Choferes de la linea 30 en huelga” ABC Color, September 4, 2013. Accessed September 6^th, 2013, http://bit.ly/1ffyGp3.

[3]. “Indígenas Ache Acampan frente a SEAM y piden transferencia tierras ancestrales” Ultima Hora. March 14th, 2011. Accessed September 18th, http://bit.ly/15aszv5.

[4]. Agencia EFE, “Protestas contra presunta corrupción en Paraguay”, Caracol Radio Colombia. June 22, 2013, accessed August 30,2013, http://bit.ly/1aPHfEn.

[5]. BBC Timeline: Paraguay. Last modified July 3^rd, 2012, http://bbc.in/B6UFV.

[6]. Alexander E.M. Hess and Michael Sauter. “The Most Corrupt Countries in the World”, 24/7: Wall Street: Insightful Analysis and Commentary for U.S. & Global Equity Investors. July 11, 2013. Accessed August 30, 2013, http://bit.ly/16jVxrE.

[7]. Corruption Perceptions Index 2012”, http://bit.ly/TBjshd.

[8]. “Paraguay’s Cartes: The man to lead anti-corruption efforts?” Thomson Reuters Foundation, May 3^rd, 2013. Accessed: September 10, 2013, http://bit.ly/1aXTd28.

[9]. "Percentage of Individuals using the Internet 2000-2012", International Telecommunications Union (Geneva), June 2013, accessed August 30, 2013, http://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/Documents/statistics/2013/Individuals_Internet_2000-2012.xls.

[10].The World Bank “Poverty Gap at the Poverty Line” Catalogue Sources: World Development Indicators. Accessed September 10, 2013 http://bit.ly/14oMRDI.

[11]. RT Actualidad, “La ola de protestas de Brasil ‘rompe fronteras’ y ya salpica a Paraguay” RT Noticias, June 22, 2013, accessed August 30,2013, http://bit.ly/1aBAqqj.

[12]. Agencia EFE, “Protestas contra presunta corrupción en Paraguay”, Caracol Radio Colombia. June 22, 2013, accessed August 30, 2013, http://bit.ly/1aPHfEn.

[13]. Gabriela Galilea “The Brazil Effect: Thousands Protest for a Better Change” Global Voices English June 26, 2013. Accessed August 30, 2013, http://bit.ly/15FKwAW.

[14]. For further information on the Pro-Aché online campaign, refer to Maria del Mar Zavala’s essay: Youth and Technology: An Unstoppable Force.

[15]. Protesters in Paraguay staged a public crucifixion in the past calling for a jailed former army general General Lino Oviedo to be set free. “Paraguay man crucified in public” BBC News November 30, 2006. Accessed on September 10, 2013, http://bbc.in/1aPI7Zq. Also see "Homeless in Paraguay protest with Crucifixion” Cleveland News. August 6^th, 2009. Accessed September 20, 2013, http://bit.ly/1gGyZHk.

[16]. A bus driver crucified himself for more than 10 hours demanding the recognition of his labor union. “Se crucifico para lograr el reconocimiento sindical” ABC Color, July 6, 2013. Accessed on September 10, 2013, http://bit.ly/1buNKiL.

[17]. Mary Joyce, January 27, 2012 comment on Arab Spring: “The Meta-Activism Community Reflects” Meta-Activism Blog, http://bit.ly/wfXhiW.

[18]. Mary Joyce, comment on Arab Spring.

[19]. 40 companies went on strike demanding further subsidies from the government, paralyzing public transport in Asuncion and leaving almost 700,000 immobilized. As a result, citizens organized a mobilization through Facebook to denounce corruption in the CETRPAM and demand an efficient transportation system, http://bit.ly/15I7Mnl.

[20]. Gabriela Galilea, “Public Transit Strike Paralyzes Paraguay” Global Voices English. Translated by Victoria Robertson. August 8, 2013. Accessed on September 10, 2013, http://bit.ly/1bdllum.

[21]. Gabriela Galilea, “Public Transit Strike Paralyzes Paraguay”.

[22]. “Huelguistas quieren despertar lástima según gerente de Línea 30” ABC Color, September 4, 2013. Accessed on September 10, 2013, http://bit.ly/1ffyGp3.

[23]. ABC Color “Choferes de la linea 30 en Huelga”.

[24]. “Sindicalistas de Paraguay fueron recibidos por el presidente tras jornadas de protestas” Telesur, September 4, 2013. Accessed on September 10, 2013. http://bit.ly/14kntkF.

[25]. “The 100^th Self-Immolation in Tibet – A case for the world to answer” Central Tibetan Administration, February 14, 2013. Accessed on September 10, 2013, http://bit.ly/X65jvA.

[26]. Courtney E Martin “Building a slower, longer fire among the digital flares” Al Jazeera English, February 4, 2013. Accessed on August 30, 2013, http://aje.me/X9YNDj.

[27]. Rafael Romo “Fired Paraguayan bus drivers crucify themselves in protest” CNN International. August 31, 2013. Accessed August 31, 2013, http://bit.ly/1fpxKvs.

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For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/revealing-protesters-on-the-fringe