“An anthropology of the internet” by Keith Hart

Is an anthropology of the internet possible? If so, what would it look like? I will attempt a provisional answer here, building on my book about the consequences of the digital revolution for the forms of money and exchange. People, machines and money matter in this world, in that order. Most intellectuals know very little about any of them, being preoccupied with their own production of cultural ideas. Anthropologists have made some progress towards understanding people, but they are often in denial when it comes to the other two; and their methods for studying people have been trapped for too long in the 20th-century paradigm of fieldwork-based ethnography. I do not advocate a wholesale rejection of the ethnographic tradition, but rather would extend its premises towards a more inclusive anthropological project, better suited to studying world society, of which the internet is perhaps the most striking expression. For sure, we need to find out what real people do and think by joining them where they live. But we also need a global perspective on humanity as a whole if we wish to understand our moment in history. This will expose the limitations of the modern experiment in the social sciences — their addiction to impersonal abstractions and repression of individual subjectivity.

more: http://thememorybank.co.uk/2010/02/06/an-anthropology-of-the-internet-2/

US Congress Increases Funding for Native American Language Programs

from Cultural Survival News:

Date: 01/14/2010

Hundreds of Native language advocates convened on Capitol Hill this past May, asking Congress to approve a minimum of $10 million in additional federal support for the Esther Martinez Act, which funds Native American language immersion schools, master-apprentice programs, and other revitalization projects. Native language advocates have made the $10 million request in earnest since 2007, and the new administration heard the call. In May during the Cultural Survival and National Alliance to Save Native Languages summit, Congressional appropriators welcomed the language revitalization funding request from Code talkers, fluent speakers, and novice learners alike in nearly three dozen meetings with key members of Congress and their staffers. A $12 million increase for the Esther Martinez Native American Languages Preservation Act of 2006 was signed by President Obama on December 16, 2009 as part of the omnibus fiscal year 2010 appropriations bill (HR 3288, which included HR 3293). The $12 million in increased funds for Native languages will be administered in a competitive grants program by the Administration for Native Americans within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Article: MyKnet.org: How Northern Ontario's First Nation communities made themselves at home on the World Wide Web

Philipp Budka
Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology
University of Vienna

Brandi L. Bell
Comprehensive School Health Research
University of Prince Edward Island

Adam Fiser
Faculty of Information
University of Toronto

Abstract

In this article we explore the development of MyKnet.org, a loosely structured system of personal homepages that was established by indigenous communities in the region of Northern Ontario, Canada in 2000. Individuals from over 50 remote First Nations across Northern Ontario have made this free of charge, free of advertisements, locally-driven online social environment their virtual home. MyKnet.org currently comprises over 25,000 active homepages and strongly reflects the demographic and geographic profile of Northern Ontario. It is thus youth-based and built around the communities’ need to maintain social ties across great distances. We draw upon encounters with a range of MyKnet.org’s developers and long time users to explore how this community-developed and community-controlled form of communication reflects life in the remote First Nations. Our focus is on the importance of locality: MyKnet.org’s development was contingent on K-Net, a regional indigenous computerization movement to bring broadband communications to remote First Nations. MyKnet.org is explicitly community-driven and not-for-profit, thus playing an important role in inter- and intra-community interaction in a region that has lacked basic telecommunications infrastructure well into the millennium.

Budka, P., Bell, B., & Fiser, A. 2009. MyKnet.org: How Northern Ontario's First Nation communities made themselves at home on the World Wide Web. The Journal of Community Informatics, 5(2), Online: http://ci-journal.net/index.php/ciej/article/view/568/450

Special Issue: CI & Indigenous Communities in Canada—The K-Net Experience

The Journal of Community Informatics Special Issue: CI & Indigenous Communities in Canada—The K-Net (Keewaytinook Okimakanak's Kuhkenah Network) Experience

Table of Contents
http://ci-journal.net/index.php/ciej/issue/view/27

Editorial

The K-Net Experience: Thematic Introduction to the Special Issue
Brian Beaton, Susan O'Donnell, Adam Fiser, Brian Walmark

K-Net, Community Informatics and Service Delivery: An Evolving Paradigm
Michael Gurstein

Articles

MyKnet.org: How Northern Ontario's First Nation Communities Made Themselves At Home On The World Wide Web
Philipp Budka, Brandi Bell, Adam Fiser

How K-Net and Atlantic Canada's First Nation Help Desk are Using Videoconferencing for Community Development
Mary Milliken, Susan O'Donnell, Elizabeth Gorman

Out from the Edges: Multi-site Videoconferencing as a Public Sphere in First Nations
Fenwick McKelvey, Susan O'Donnell

Representation and Participation of First Nations Women in Online Videos
Sonja Perley

Implementation of Information and Communication Technology in Aboriginal Communities: A Social Capital Perspective
Javier Mignone, Heather Henley

Case Studies

Managing Changes in First Nations’ Health Care Needs: Is Telehealth the Answer?
Josée Gabrielle Lavoie, Donna Williams

Notes from the field

In Search of Community Champions: Researching the Outcomes of K-Net’s Youth Information and Communications Technology Training Initiative
Kristy Tomkinson

A Community Informatics Model for e-Services in First Nations Communities: The K-Net Approach to Water Treatment in Northern Ontario
Michael Gurstein, Brian Beaton, Kevin Sherlock

Reports

Enabling and Accelerating First Nations Telehealth Development in Canada
Valerie Gideon, Eugene Nicholas, John Rowlandson, Florence Woolner

ON-LINE RESOURCES about Keewaytinook Okimakanak, the Kuhkenah Network (K-Net) and Associated Broadband Applications
Brian Beaton

Article: Transforming learning infrastructures in the social sciences through flexible and interactive technology-enhanced learning

Philipp Budka and Claudia Schallert
eLearning Center of the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Vienna, Austria

Abstract
The changing higher educational landscape in Europe creates new learning infrastructures and transforms existing ones. Students are thus provided with new possibilities and challenges. Through the case study of a newly developed common curriculum for the social sciences of a public university in Austria, this article discusses the interacting social agents, elements, and tools of a flexible and interactive technology-enhanced learning model. In doing so, the transnational, national, and local infrastructural conditions and challenges are critically examined from a socio-technological perspective. Selected evaluation and survey results highlight students’ learning practices, usage behavior, and suggestions to improve their learning situation. The article concludes that student-centered learning models focusing on flexibility and interactivity can support the stable implementation of a common curriculum and its technology-enhanced learning infrastructure for the social sciences at public universities with high student numbers.

Keywords
Higher education - Learning - Infrastructure - Social sciences - Austria

Budka, P., & Schallert, C. 2009. Transforming learning infrastructures in the social sciences through flexible and interactive technology-enhanced learning. In: Learning Inquiry, 3(3), 131-142.

Ontario Asks Canada To Reconsider Un Declaration On The Rights Of Indigenous Peoples

Let's see if it works...

Official Press Release Government of Ontario, December 22, 2009

As part of Ontario's continued efforts to enhance cooperation, and to build strong relationships with Aboriginal people based on mutual respect, Premier Dalton McGuinty has asked the Government of Canada to reconsider its position on the United Nations' Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Ontario supports a review of Canada's position on the Declaration as a means to demonstrate its commitment to improving the lives of Aboriginal people throughout Canada. Reconsideration of the Declaration would demonstrate Canada's willingness to foster an open dialogue to improve the lives of Aboriginal peoples.

more: http://media.knet.ca/node/7607

U.S. Will Settle Native American Lawsuit for $3.4 Billion

from the NYT:

The federal government announced on Tuesday that it intends to pay $3.4 billion to settle claims that it has mismanaged the revenue in American Indian trust funds, potentially ending one of the largest and most complicated class-action lawsuits ever brought against the United States.

The tentative agreement, reached late Monday, would resolve a 13-year-old lawsuit over hundreds of thousands of land trust accounts that date to the 19th century. Specialists in federal tribal law described the lawsuit as one of the most important in the history of legal disputes involving the government’s treatment of American Indians.

more at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/09/us/09tribes.html

Declaration on ICT for Development

At the World Congress on ICT for Development held 10-12 September 2009 in Beijing, a declaration on ICT for development was created, which includes the following understandings and agreements:

1) Millennium Development Goal, for Remedying the Unbalancing Boat
2) Information Age, New Stage of Human Society
3) ICT, Effective Tool for Development in the New Age
4) Education, Key to the Use of ICT Tool
5) Responsibility for Governments and Citizens
6) Responsibility for International Organizations
7) Public Call

more detailed information: http://www.wcid-cic.org/home/view.php?id=137

Since some quite outdated concepts and views on sociocultural ICT practices are being deployed in this declaration, it certainly needs to consider current research projects and results e.g. from the fields of community informatics and media technology anthropology.

internet turns 40

from the NYT:

Goofy videos weren't on the minds of Len Kleinrock and his team at UCLA when they began tests 40 years ago on what would become the Internet. Neither was social networking, for that matter, nor were most of the other easy-to-use applications that have drawn more than a billion people online.

Instead the researchers sought to create an open network for freely exchanging information, an openness that ultimately spurred the innovation that would later spawn the likes of YouTube, Facebook and the World Wide Web.
...
more

some interesting sites on the web:
http://www.livinginternet.com/
http://www.archive.org/index.php
http://www.scientificcommons.org/

International Day of the World’s Indigenous People

9 August 2008, United Nations Headquarters, New York

The International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples was observed at UN Headquarters on 10 August 2009.
Video, Programme and Documents

History

In 1994, the General Assembly decided that the International Day of the World's Indigenous People shall be observed on 9 August every year during the International Decade of the World's Indigenous People (Resolution 49/214 of 23 December). The date marks the day of the first meeting, in 1982, of the UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations of the Subcommission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights.

The UN General Assembly had proclaimed 1993 the International Year of the World's Indigenous People, and the same year, the Assembly proclaimed the International Decade of the World's Indigenous People, starting on 10 December 1994 (Resolution 48/163). The goal of the First Decade was to strengthen international cooperation for solving problems faced by indigenous people in such areas as human rights, the environment, development, education and health.

In 2004, the UN General Assembly proclaimed a Second International Decade of the World's Indigenous Peoples through Resolution 59/174. The goal of the Second Decade is to further the "strengthening of international cooperation for the solution of problems faced by indigenous people in such areas as culture, education, health, human rights, the environment, and social and economic development, by means of action-oriented programs and specific projects, increase technical assistance, and relevant standard-setting activities".

more at: http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/en/news_internationalday2009.html