Its time to write some of those tangents and cross-thoughts and by-products…

and maybe I will.

My publisher and I ended up deciding we should just call it an edited issue – I have so many collaborators woven into the project as authors – I would have loved to add on more chapters – authored by some more people – but maybe next time.

The chapters in the book are a result of several years of conversations and collaborations. So here’s a footnote from chapter one (page 53 or so of the book if the pages dont change as the production process continues) that notes this:

“… we illustrate our arguments through examples and understandings drawn from a long term collaborative research project that includes interdisciplinary participants and which was started in 2004 and 2005 when the first author of this chapter [Radhika] and her collaborator at that time, Annapurna Mamidipudi, worked on a project with the BASIX livelihood promotion institute (http://www.basixindia.com/) where they investigated the possibility of using online portals for the training of fieldworkers who worked in livelihood promotion. Financial inclusion services are provided by this institute, in addition to training and other livelihood promotion services. These financial services include rural microcredit lending. Later, the first and third authors [Anca] of this chapter began to look at online networks for the empowerment of women along with a few other collaborators who had worked on projects resulting in the publication examining lexicons of women’s empowerment and online non—profits (Gajjala, Zhang and Dako—Gyeke 2010). The first and third authors of this chapter thus encountered kiva.org during that research project and proceeded to investigate (Gajjala and Birzescu 2010). We drew in a development economist and a few other graduate student collaborators (see Gajjala, Gajjala, Birzescu and Anarbaeva, 2011) along the way, and the second author of this chapter then ended up taking up particular aspects related to the digitization of race in online microfinance and elaborating on this aspect in his dissertation. The first and third author still continue to examine digital financializationand non—profits online through a transnational feminist lens in relation to offline non—profits and movements to empower the subaltern in Romania and India. The second author of the current chapter proposes to look at issues of empowerment through the Internet in relation to the Ghana context. ”

Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction: Subaltern empowerment, socio-economic globalization and digital divides

1. Producing the Global: Microfinance Online
with Franklin Yartey and Anca Birzescu

2. Philanthrophist or Investor? Microlending to the Other
with Anca Birzescu, Franklin Yartey

3. Snapshots from Sari Trails, Cyborgs Old and New
with rad Zabibha

4. Framing the Loom: An Indian Context
with Seemanthani Niranjani and B. Syamasundari

5. Kente Cloth and Adinkra in the Global Market
Precious Yamaguchi and Franklin Yartey

Conclusion: Multiple interfacings with the so-called subaltern: To be continued

Key Concepts and Terms
References
Index
About the Author
Contributor Bios

I should do more research workshops in my weaving room (the other living room in my house) – around cultural work, craft, economy, nationalism, Gandhi, Marx, affect, labor, value, everyday rural (and urban) practice and globalization…
Y O, D P, A B and I had a very engaging conversation intertwined with demonstration of four harness loom use and Y J’s modelling of the Kanjeevaram sari

[my initial instinct is to put this post on my LJ and/or in a private setting - and maybe I will change this into a private setting later...even here]

Being part of multiple contexts – as I immerse myself here, there and then there and here – following the connections – I am once again sinking in and getting lost in being within them – the angst, joys and practices carrying me through – I have to remind myself to write – to pick up those scattered post it notes and scribblings in the margins and make them into sentences and paragraphs… linking them to the parallel journey of reading that each intersection leads me to in order to get a broader view or more detailed historical context for….

How do I write all this without freezing and type-casting – how can the act of writing and theorizing record the active fluidity while noting the nodes and shifts and connections with clear evidence that what I see is happening?

Starting with a story that dates back to 2006 to note what seemed like a power imbalance when viewed through language and image – that hid expertise and located the Othered body in local weavers… then finding out about how existing binaries are mired in historical rewritings and encounters with various forms of romanticizing and Othering – while the materiality of everyday life shifted because of policy made in response…

how do I stack these up (do I “Stack”) – organize and write?

The positioning of particular theoretical knowledge and expertise – production modes in the space of practice – while placing others in the domain of Theory, Abstraction and drawing them into policy… when traced through history go back into a intertwining of both colonial and nationalist imaginaries… decisions made through multiple kinds of exchanges and dialogues across contexts to place them in one…

Indeed, even the writings of nationalist leaders Gandhi and Nehru reveal that they were very aware of these binaries in practice… resistance movements and later national policy was developed with this awareness..

yet the policies perpetuated some of these – and solidified particular ethnographic observations as actuality – so that even when at the time of writing those ethnographic writings were as much partial truths and shaped by ideologies and viewpoints of those writing them – as they wrote them as “history” – these ethnographic observations are now acted on as the only historical reality…

multiple histories of social movements, political movements and industrialization provide the possibility of re-routing through another strand… what sorts of shifts and collaborations might those lead to?

would this happen through grassroots everydayness, networks of active resistance, planned policy intervention?

yes the writing has to commence – but where do I start?

what are the limits to unravelling? The key nodes/knots formed that refuse to unravel – these might be the moments to stop and reflect on before unravelling further and …

[[ok ok - I will stop with the roving metaphor - there is a point when it cannot go back further -

and the metaphor can carry me to a logic that wont allow me to see something else...]]
—

This is why, of course, it is a good thing the MS for the Weavings book is at a stage where I cant drag it back into a full overhaul – even though I will likely add and revise a bit more before the final stage of going to press in the next couple months….

These questions will organize a into a next book project – based on which intersection I land on in the articulation of that project.

“Digital diasporas” occur at the intersection of local/ global, national/

international, private/public, offline/online and embodied/disembodied. In

digital diasporas, a multiplicity of representations, mass media broadcasts,

textual and visual performances and interpersonal interactions occur. The

term *”digital diaspora”* is most often used to talk about how diasporic

populations the world over use the Internet to connect to each other.

Scholars such as Anna Everett (2009) and Jeniffer Brinkerhoff (2009) have

each used the phrase in relation to very specific situated histories of

forced migrations (African American histories of slavery) and transnational

travel respectively. The link to labor flows and hierarchies of colonialisms

and digital globalization is clear in both. In most general usage of the

phrase “digital diaspora,” however, it is used to describe migrant

populations without attention to the specific conditions of subjectivity

that produces diasporas. Further, it is interesting that international NGOs

(specifically the United Nations) and Transnational corporations as well as

National businesses have mobilized the notion of digital diaspora in

“reverse brain-drain” efforts where very materially successful

transnationals and migrants with moneys to invest actually get to return

home.

In the past I have edited a couple publications that center around South

Asian Digital Diasporas (a Special Section of New Media and Society in 2006)

and South Asian Technospace (a co-edited collection of essays). My intent

with this next volume on digital diasporas is to include material that helps

elaborate on the more current platforms where links between transnational

capital and labor flows can be mapped in the context of the increasing

NGOization and ITization of the globe. Thus questions include (but are not

limited to) – why “digital diaspora” and why now? What forms a “digital

diaspora” within gaming environments and social networks? How are

non-profits and transnational corporations (similarly or differently)

mobilizing this idea of digital diaspora in relation to labor and capital

flows? How does a “digital diaspora” form – how does it “look” – how does it

function and so on.

>From prospective contributors, I will need an extended abstract of 800 to

1000 words that fleshes out the theoretical and methodological approaches in

relation to a specific site that will be examined.

Due Dates:

1] Extended abstract due on July 26th, 2011

2] You will hear back about your abstracts by August 15th 2011 – with

suggestions on how

you can proceed if the abstract is considered acceptable for the collection

3] Full essays are due by October 1, 2011.

If you have questions regarding the publisher and what exactly I’m looking

for and so on – feel free to email me -

radhika@cyberdiva.org with the subject header

“digital diasporas.”

My research journeying to where money is being exchanged through online software is taking me into various muddyings of ideology, finance and socio-economic practice – in places of work through play.

click, click, click…

Start with the fluff and move to essentials…. microtransact away… or make essential the fluff (which is a bit different from essentializing fluff…)

[there's an interweaving commentary I have that's being staged in my head on the interweaving of social entrepreneurship, microtransactions, crowdfunding and micropolitics - but you can ask me about that f2f sometime]

Virtual worlds and social networks… looking at crowdfunding, microtransactional software, RMT and so on.

Practices of money exchange have always been “virtual” so this makes me think anew about the binary we have in the internet era – between “virtual” and “real” – in the context of money.

Parallel -ly, examining historical descriptions of finance communities and parallel as well as alternative practices of production, consumption, marketing … seeing how these trajectories allow me to push at the teleology of modernity ….(that [in]visibly underpins various current day political approaches to money and transactions of value).

So reading about Money and Liberation … Micropolitics and microtransactions – money as discourse (but of course it is – I dont see that as “new”) – exchange value, after all, is based on valuing through discourse and practice – and this connects back to Virtual worlds, RMTs and Virtual Economies (at least in my writing that is forthcoming). In that sense I am taking these issues in a different direction than that taken by some researchers of gaming cultures and virtual economies.

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?