When you ACTUALLY truly shift the lens of benefit to look at issues of sustainable livelihoods, accessible democratic practices and sharing of resources with future generations…… THEN what would we think of a progress? I keep thinking of the senior citizen who asked about why we were not improving our (US) railways - and why we always focus on better flying and fighting technologies (at least that’s the gist it seems of what he said). And of the rickshaw pullers that disappeared from the streets of Hyderabad from one visit to the next “back home” (India)…. 

Oxford Internet Institute - Civil Society Practitioners Programme

Invitation to apply

The Oxford Internet Institute (University of Oxford) invites applications from the global South to fill two places in its Civil Society Practitioners Programme.

This visitor programme is intended for Civil Society Practitioners of distinction or outstanding promise who wish to visit the Institute for a period of six weeks between February and December 2008, to undertake research concerning the social impact of the Internet and related ICTs. Visitors are expected to reside in Oxford during their stay, and to participate fully in the intellectual life of the Institute. The successful applicants will receive:

* A subsistence allowance of 3800 GBP (7500 USD) to cover research expenses and living costs during their stay in Oxford
* A travel grant of up to 1000 GBP (2000 USD) for travel to and from the UK

Applications will ideally be submitted by Civil Society Practitioners in or from the global South, active in the areas of freedom of expression, media reform, media justice, and communications and information policy in the globalized context of the Internet.

How to apply

For details on how to apply, please download:
Information for Applicants (PDF, 45kb) at http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/CSPP_Application_Information.pdf

You may also request to have this information emailed to you in plain text form. The deadline for completed applications to reach the OII Academic and Student Affairs Officer (by post or email: contact details below) is 26 September 2007. Please note that incomplete applications cannot be considered.

Final notification of an award will occur in November 2007. Successful candidates will be expected to take up their six week residency in Oxford at any time between February and December 2008.

Contact

Laura Taylor
Academic and Student Affairs Officer
Oxford Internet Institute
University of Oxford
1 St Giles, Oxford OX1 3JS
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0)1865 287222
Fax: +44 (0)1865 287211
Email: recruit@oii.ox.ac.uk

This programme has been made possible through funding by the Ford Foundation

This Call for Applications is also available at: http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/microsites/cspp/

what can I say?

whose voices am I consuming as I say

why can I not say

when you can

but yet you want their authentic voices

what I tell you cannot be trusted

that’s what you say

as if you had heard the authentic

yourself

then why do you need me to reveal it to you

if you know what it should look like?

Professor Wiebe Bijker, Chair of the Department of Technology and Society Studies at the University of Maastricht, Netherlands, is “visiting” my class during the month of March. He will be “meeting” us at http://www.cyberdiva.org/729, where members from my Grad class (COMS 729) as well as some of my Phd advisees and my NGO collaborators from Hyderabad India will engage him in discussion about his work in “Social Construction of Technology (”SCOT”) for which he is widely known.

Dr. Bijker’s website is at

http://137.120.191.229/public/websites/bijkernieuw/

It is a closed discussion with my class in the context of their coursework, of course.

so what is the nature of evidence in the academe - who is required to provide what evidence and why…

how may you be made ready to hear the voice(s) you ask me/us to reveal to you?

why do you want us to reveal that “authentic” voice to you?

who decided that if I put something in quotes it becomes his authentic voice?

how may you be made ready to hear the voices you think you will hear if we reveal his words to you?

how would you know his “authentic” voice when you do not take the trouble to go there and hear it as a voice in context?

why do you wish me to pull forth his voice for you to pull forth with the click of a mouse

how does that make you the judge of whether or not it is really his voice

why is she assumed to be voiceless

when the conceptualization of “voice” is in your control

still

(k)no(w) you

we will not “give” you her voicings

you will just have to make the effort of trying to understand within what we write

or come down and try to translate it yourself - but be assured you are being watched as you

confident of your ability to translate

invade, capture and preview

hers

and

his

voice

so that they may be pulled up and analyzed and understood

even as you take their daily living away as in the capturing and replaying

you take no note of what they seem to be asking for

because the complexity of what they say cannot be captured, recorded, shifted and replayed

outside

de-contextually

where

all so that you may feel you are a part of the community of protest

you have replayed, captured and colonized his meaning

yet again.

Grandmother of the heights

Note - sometimes posts and pages on this blog are password protected - if you are interested in reading and participating in those select discussions - email me and I might consider sending you a password.

If not - keep guessing:)

Usually - I leave most posts unprotected for about 5 to 6 hours (sometimes even more hours - sometimes not at all) after I post them before protecting them.