Posts Tagged ‘democracy’

A Tale of Two Workshops: the Internet and the future of creativity and publishing in the Arab World

Recently I had the chance to facilitate two thematically related workshops given to two different audiences. The first was part of the Arab Digital Book Expression Program and was given to a group of young Egyptians who are interested in independent e-book publishing. The second workshop was given to a number of professionals and publishing house owners from the Egyptian Publishers’ Union. Both workshops broadly addressed how the Internet is affecting extant systems of publishing, copyright laws, as well as the how it is empowering content creators and changing the role of the publishers (the sessions were slightly tailored to be relevant to the interests of the two groups). The reactions of these two groups of participants highlighted the rift in expectations about the impact of emerging network technologies on creativity and the publishing world, and by consequence draw attention to the main obstacles against the emergence of alternative publishing models and a freer environment of knowledge and creativity in the Arab World.

In many ways, the difference between these two groups and how they responded to the themes tackled in the two sessions mirrors dynamics of change (and resistance to it) that have been triggered by the Arab uprisings, and underscore some of the key drivers behind these transformations. The questions from the publishers group were revealing of a prevailing sentiment in the publishing industry; that which regards the Internet mainly as a threat to their business models, and which still envisions the role of the publisher merely as a sort of logistical intermediary of culture. While this sentiment is not unique to Arab publishers, it is important to note how many still fail to grasp that new technologies offer as many, or perhaps more, opportunities as they do imperil paradigms of knowledge creation and distribution that predate the Internet.

The other group was comprised of young people with diverse interests, including art, film making, political activism, among others. This group did not appear to be, on average, more technologically-savvy than the publishers group, but all its members shared an interest in how they can independently create and distribute their creative literary work. Everyone in this session seemed very eager to explore the opportunities and tools presented in some of the topics discussed, even beyond what the time limit of the session allowed. The energy and enthusiasm in this group exemplifies an emerging ethos of a technologically-democratised creativity, more accessible co-creation of knowledge and a less restricted ecosystem of cultural production.

Across the Arab World, reactionary forces still cling to their authoritarian roots and place hurdle after another in the face of movements pushing for progress, the latter being largely driven by young people, who are a demographic majority in many Arab countries like Egypt. Given the great uncertainty in the political transitions the Arab World is experiencing, it is far from assured there will be any kind of genuine democratic transformations in the near future in some or all of these countries. One thing we can claim with some modicum of conviction, though, is that the disruptions created by the events of the Arab uprisings have created new contexts of political contention that makes it increasingly difficult for authoritarian regimes to play the ‘long game’ and preserve the status quo. Similarly, if Arab publishers – including those in the realms of music, film and digital content – continue to regard the Internet as merely disruptive and remain entrenched in business models that are rapidly falling out of relevance, they miss opportunities that they can capitalise upon sooner than later. The very notion of what a publisher is and does is changing. Internet skeptics miss the forest for the trees when they try to think of contemporary modes of creativity in terms of the pre hyper-connectivity world.

The big picture is this: The Internet is changing is not only the roles of cultural intermediaries in our communities, but also creating new ones. The incipient horizon is of a world where the cultural public sphere embodies the notion of ‘building upon’, and the role of publishers shifts from being ‘gate-keepers’ of knowledge and creativity to facilitators in and catalysts of an unrestricted cross-pollination of prospects for creative pursuits. Instead of focusing on how to continue policing the boundaries of access to creative resources, a task that is increasingly becoming technically impractical and rationally untenable, Arab publishers should switch their attention to how best to tailor their core functions to a world where preparation for printing and physical distribution are not the main value added by a publisher to the creative production process. If we are currently hoping for a sociopolitical renaissance in the Arab World, an unrestricted domain of cultural production and creativity will have an integral role to play in it.

Networks and contemporary protest movements: observing post-Mubarak Egypt

Resilient autocrats, networked movements and the digital beachheads of enduring activism

In previous blog posts I argued that both the recent global outbreaks of mass dissent as well as the historical universalism of the triggers of such movements (the “why”) warrant more attention of the technological catalysts (the “how”) of an increasingly accelerating pace of global social and political change. That is, the reasons why people protest, organize and rally to challenge authoritarianism, oppression and injustice have undergone much less change compared to the ways by which they go about staging such acts of rebellion. Considering how the technologies in question can be used for both well-intentioned and nefarious ends – by both individuals or governments – an important question to pose becomes: How effective is the use of networked technologies for challenging oppression in contexts where authoritarianism is deeply rooted and state violence is continuously deployed to silence dissent? In other words, can technologically-savvy social movements play the ‘long game’ against established structures of control and hierarchies of power?

Looking at the Egyptian political arena can yield some insights, but it is too early to be certain of anything seeing how the scene in post-Mubarak Egypt has been one of chaotic and often violent contention since January 2011. The somberness of the national mood is matched by a strong sense of pessimism in academic predictions about the sociopolitical trajectories the country is taking. All indicators seem to evince is that the popular drive for a genuine democratic transformation in Egypt has returned to square one: a reproduction of the authoritarian structures of the past several decades. I argue that this view, while accurate when only considering readily observable givens, is based on notions of contentious politics that are undergoing immense and rapid changes.

Online organizing and citizen innovations

Most of the dismal analyses on Egypt is based on ‘classical’ understandings of power and politics, and as such often seem to miss several subtleties that reveal how resistance to cyclical authoritarianism still thrives in the country, even in the wake of a rapid succession of disappointments. The revolutionary struggle in Egypt is far from dormant. With unrelenting commitment to dispelling the notion of false options Egyptians have been presented with for many decades, networked movements continue to find innovative ways to negotiate and contest power in battlegrounds of political, gender and social rights. Campaigns and groups likeMosireen, HarassMap and Masmou3, among others, mesh online tools with offline organizing to create new breeds of enduring activism, pump new life into the collective drive for change, and create digital ‘beachheads’ of sure-footed resistance against injustice.

Beyond Egypt, many (if not most) of the episodes of large-scale collective action around the world in the past three years demonstrated that it is not beyond reason to say that these ripples of technologically-accelerated change will not only affect how citizens everywhere go about claiming their rights and engaging their governments, but – from a long-term perspective and by consequence – it will also shift how structures of governance, authority and participation are constructed.

Mass dissent and new media ecologies

A dream hijacked? Persistent authoritarianism vs. an idealistic drive for change.

More than two years after the waves of mass uprisings in the Arab world, and the term ‘Arab Spring’ has lost its glamour in the media. Current social and political indicators in the countries that witnessed the protests are not conducive to optimism, with the common theme being a persistence of authoritarianism, and the post citizen uprisings political arenas largely dominated by new hegemons who appear to be disinterested in push an agenda of genuine, progressive democratic reforms. In Egypt, Islamists who have managed to capture both a parliamentary majority as well as the presidency refuse to acknowledge ideological and social diversities, and continue to dismiss any input from other political entities and voices in the civil society calling for an open, inclusive dialogue on what is essentially a transition period that is shaping the post-Mubarak sociopolitical public sphere in terms of rights, political participation, governance and accountability. © istockphoto Joel Carillet

Can a collective memory of resistance be sustained?

It could be argued that the ideological homogeneity that characterizes a collective resistance during a popular uprising has distinct temporal and physical boundaries. Beyond milestones that define the relative success of confrontational mass dissent (e.g. a dictator being ousted), many divisive factors will naturally force their way to the forefront of the sociopolitical arena. Faced with a common, much more able foe as the strongly entrenched regime, social identities coalesce and ideological divides are diminished temporarily during an act of popular uprising. Following a short-lived revolutionary euphoria, a society in which open political participation and self-expression was heavily stifled for several decades suddenly gains a level of freedom that in turn invokes a sort of collective hyper-awareness of perceived self-identities. Consequently, ideological affiliations became much more pronounced, and binary identification with certain political ideologies or factions became a way for most people to find and assert these identities.

Technology, popular dissent and the ‘new’ public sphere

Attempting to understand the prospects for genuine, desirable democratic transformation in Egypt after the 2011 revolution (as well in other recently manifested contexts of popular dissidence) necessitates an analysis that is not confined to the conventional frameworks of institutional politics and citizen-state relationships. Far-sighted analyses that aim to assess the extent to which grassroots drives for change can endure against continued oppression must have, at their core, a thorough consideration of how societies are making use of the networked world to bring voices previously stifled or unheard to the foreground of traditional politics. Sociopolitical change is a historical inevitability, and the reasons behind why people protest and revolt are globally and historically universal. Nonetheless, the modalities and processes of how such change takes place are undergoing profound changes, largely due to the exponentially advancing technologies shaping how people communicate, share information and create knowledge requisite to bring about the transformations they collectively seek.

Peer-to-peer democracy

Reflections at the intersection of technology, politics and social change

Posts Tagged ‘democracy’