Between Stability and Instability – a Project about e-Democracy

The aim of this article is to present, analyse and diffract a project called ‘KomInDu’ in in south-eastern Sweden. The project was defined as an e-democracy project with the focus on spatial planning with an interest on activating citizens to communicate and interact with the municipality via the web site. I will discuss the process of constructing the web site for the project. The focus is on how the concerns of the communication and interaction were interpreted during the project. The overall theme of the first part of the article is how the project was striving towards stability and how this stability was constructed in ongoing negotiations during the project time. Then I will discuss how the word ‘democracy’ worked and was worked with during the project. I want to explore what kind of contribution the notions of stability and instability can make to the democracy negotiations of the project. The final discussion concerns the hyphen between the letter ‘e’ and the word ‘democracy’. I will ask in what way the project was able to bring together the two parts of the project (e and democracy). I conclude the article with the question: was the project able to stabilise and integrate the two themes. Does the hyphen suggest that the ‘artful integration’ (Suchman, 2002) is necessary and also possible? How does it then become possible

Heterogeneous hybrids : Information Technology in Texts and Practices

How could one understand and interpret the phenomenon of information technology, is the overall research question of this licentiate dissertation. The point of departure is the way some official texts in Sweden define the concept of information technology. It is possible to identify two dominating discourses; the technical and the social. In the first paper, empirical material from the Women Writing on the Net-project is mirrored against these dominating discourses. In the second paper, the focus is on how the dominating discourses are translated into librarians´ work practices and how librarians shape and transform information technology. How could one understand librarians´ ways of talking about information technology where the two separate discourses of information technology identified in the official texts do not seem to be identified as pure and separable phenomena? Feminist theories, feminist technoscientific studies and ´actor-network theory´ offer epistemological and analytical frames and screens necessary to understand information technology as a hybrid involving numerous heterogeneous elements. Introduction to the Papers Paper One, Discourses and Cracks - A Case Study of Information Technology and Writing Women in a Regional Context, is the first paper where empirical material from a local IT project is used and discussed and where it is mirrored against the dominating discourses of information technology. The first part of this paper discusses information technology as a political and practical discourse which is in part shaped by the repetition of an exalted rhetoric. This repetitive discursive model can be distinguished in global, regional and local contexts and reflects an optimistic belief in technology as an independent power that automatically furthers democratic development. Is it really this simple? The analysis includes a discussion of the concept of ´universal citizenship´ in a context of women's experiences in Sweden. The second part of the paper presents empirical material and experiences from the Women Writing on the Net-project (this is included in the framework of the DIALOGUE project, which was partly funded by ISPO/EU). The aim was to create a virtual space for women on the Internet and to explore the writing process in terms of aim, tool and method. The method of approach incorporated reflections and discussions about empowerment, democracy and representation of women. This created a more complex understanding of the values of the predominant IT discourses, and revealed the "cracks" in, and possibilities of feminist redefinitions of these values. In Paper Two, Translating and Negotiating Information Technology: Discourses and Practices, I continue exploration of my overall research question "What is information technology?" I study the dominating discourses of information technology; these I call "the technical suit" and the "social suit." In my empirical field studies among librarians in southeast Sweden I explore how the two faces of information technology - the technical and the social - are translated into librarians´ work practices. I study a project which was defined by the librarians themselves as an information technology project. I investigate how this project complies with the social/societal definitions of information technology, and how it complies with the technical definitions of information technology. In my second empirical study, I use two case studies with librarians involved in constructing web sites on the Internet. The Internet and the web are often seen in part as an open and undefined landscape in which new actors can move freely and build new partnerships, and partly as a shadow landscape of existing structures and relationships which can close up new openings. In the concluding discussion, I state that information technology seems to be both an amoeba and a chameleon. One minute it is a very pure and complicated technical story told by technicians. The next minute, it changes and turns into a financial story told by business people. It subsequently turns out to be an educational story told by teachers. It is also, however, a household story told by computer people. I suggest that information technology is impure. It is a hybrid. Inspired by Donna Haraways´s technoscientific metaphor of cyborg I claim that information technology is a cyborg in itself. In the third paper, From Networks to Fluids and Fires - A Prelude to Actor-Network Theory, I discuss a method of analysis I have tried to apply to my empirical material. I explore the notions of Actor-Network Theory (ANT), and Actor-Network Theory and After (ANTA). My point of departure is the way some official texts in Sweden define the concept of information technology by stressing the technical aspects of IT; at the same time they present information technology as a motor and a driving force for many sectors of society. In my research, I have discussed with librarians how they shape and transform information technology in their own work practices. The problems of analysing this empirical material started when the librarians started to talk about people, machines and money all in one breath. How could one understand their way of talking about information technology where the two separate lines of information technology identified in the official texts did not seem to be identified as pure and separable phenomena? How was it possible to understand the concept of information technology as it was used by the librarians, who seemed to involve all kinds of different heterogeneous elements which at first sight were very far away from information technology? It was when asking these questions that I discovered ANT and ANTA. In this paper, I present some basic ideas about these two research approaches by reading and analysing articles published between 1980 and the year 2000. In addition to the ANT and ANTA perspectives, I also introduce my own research questions: story telling and epistemological problematisations closely connected with feminist theories are, for example, closely intertwined in this paper

Medieteknik möter hållbarhet eller hållbarhet möter medieteknik

En av BTH:s profiler handlar om hållbarhet. Men hur skulle kurser i medieteknik kunna arbeta med hållbarhet? Hur koppla kurser i digital bildproduktion, digital ljudproduktion och digitala spel till hållbar-het? Är hållbarhetsfrågorna ens relevanta för medieteknik? Det var dessa ut-maningar som ledde till utvecklingen och genomförandet av kursen Designpers-pektiv och – metoder för medieteknik med explicit fokus på hållbarhet. Uppstod det någon kärlek mellan medieteknik och hållbarhet

Angels in Unstable Sociomaterial Relations: Stories of Information Technology

I have explored spaces, where negotiations of border transgressions take place and where issues of technology and politics mingle. We meet a diversity of actors in the world of information technology (IT): political texts, people and technology participating in numerous sociomaterial relations. Time is the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the new millennium, 2000. Years, when IT occupied the western world and created its own fuzzy discourse. Years, when IT stole the biggest newspaper headlines and years, when IT became a mundane everyday part of our work practices. Years, when we learned to live in heterogeneous worlds. Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and Actor-Network Theory and After (ANTa) provide analytical and methodological perspectives when working with the empirical material. I present a chronological exposé of some of the key concepts of ANT and ANTa. I also discuss how the classical ANT perspective has changed during the last few years from being a theory of networks to become a methodological and analytical approach to other kinds of spaces such as fluid and fire. The heart of the thesis consists of six empirical cases. My aim of writing stories of information technology has been to investigate the black box of information technology. Investigating includes also efforts of opening. Concepts that are taken for granted, such as the very notion of information technology in my case, can be explored, questioned, transgressed, blurred and opened up. Each of the diffracted stories is specific and unique, with its own actors, context, location and situatedness. But the stories are also connected through ANT, and feminist technology and technoscience studies. Case number one, ‘Discourses and Cracks – A Case Study of Information Technology and Writing Women in a Regional Context ’, is about a project, where questions concerning discourses of information society with a special focus on citizenship are discussed and where global and national politics are translated to local and situated practices. Case number two, ‘Translating and Negotiating Information Technology ’, consists of two main parts. The fi rst one is about a regional library project. The analysis of the project is based on the classical Actor Network Theory (ANT) approach that invites the study of the heterogeneous and negotiable shaping of IT. The second part is about librarians developing web-based services. The analysis is inspired by the later development of ANT (called ANTa in the thesis) in order to include more invisible actors, relations and negotiations. Case number three, ‘Negotiating Information Technology: Politics and Practices of The Public Sector Web Production’, is about work practices of a municipal web developer, through which creation of sociotechnical relations of everyday information technology practices is analysed and also mirrored to national and local IT politics. Case number four, ‘Making e-Government Happen – Everyday Co-Development of Services, Citizenship and Technology’, is presenting the same web developer as in the third case, but now his everyday practices are connected with an expanded and wider circuit of co-constructors of information technology. The text is a co-production of a multidisciplinary research group aiming to describe, analyse and problematise connections when creating practices, where technology and society collaborate. Case number fi ve, ‘Citizenship at the Crossroads of Multiple Layers of Sociotechnical Relations’, enrols technology as an active actor in the construction of citizenship in an IT context in Sweden. The perspective emphasising the active agency of non-humans both enhances and challenges the Scandinavian approach of systems development by suggesting a direction towards a cyborgian approach towards technology design. Case number six, ‘Between Stability and Instability – a Project about e-Democracy ’, takes its point of departure from a small-scale project having as its goal the development of e-democracy in a municipal context. In the text the focus is on the stabilisation processes in shaping the technology (‘e’) and democracy parts of the project. I also discuss what kinds of spaces exist in between (the hyphen in e-democracy) and ask if integration between technology and democracy is possible as a whole. Finally, my intention is to step further into stories and practices not yet existing. Inspired by the French philosopher Michel Serres, I introduce the fi guration of an angel as a cartographer, intermediator and (co-) constructor of sociomaterial relations. Angels are needed to sew the separate fi elds of technology, politics and everyday practices to a rich seamless tapestry. They are the ‘artful integrators’ (Suchman)

Medieteknik möter hållbarhet eller hållbarhet möter medieteknik

En av BTH:s profiler handlar om hållbarhet. Men hur skulle kurser i medieteknik kunna arbeta med hållbarhet? Hur koppla kurser i digital bildproduktion, digital ljudproduktion och digitala spel till hållbar-het? Är hållbarhetsfrågorna ens relevanta för medieteknik? Det var dessa ut-maningar som ledde till utvecklingen och genomförandet av kursen Designpers-pektiv och – metoder för medieteknik med explicit fokus på hållbarhet. Uppstod det någon kärlek mellan medieteknik och hållbarhet

DESIGN OF DIGITAL DEMOCRACIES: Performances of citizenship, gender and IT

Abstract The point of departure for this article is several Swedish IT policies that articulate goals for further development of the welfare state, which demand and enable active citizenship as well as enrolment of IT in the performance of this active citizenship. This article also examines the performance of active citizenship in a variety of sociotechnical arenas where people and technology coexist. Does the notion of active citizenship turn out a number of performances when translated into materialized technologies, such as Internet portals and web-based services? The authors juxtapose the policies with a construction of agencies in the story of citizens' design. In the last section, the discussions taking place in the parliament of things are summarized and related to the problematizations of citizenship, gender and IT

Säker och sökande: den flexibla folkbildningens vardag

I skriften Säker och sökande intervjuas sex folkbildare; pedagoger och bibliotekarier. De berättar om utmaningarna som it-tekniken medför i deras vardagspraktik. Arbeta som lärare/bibliotekarie i dag, är det samma sak som att arbeta som lärare/bibliotekarie i morgon

8 women 8 rules

8 women in a dark Nordic winter forest, playing around with flashlights, accompanied by the echoing of a world famous Arabic singer from their mobile phones- what has this to do with creative and playful cities?   This forest expedition was a part of a non-traditional participatory research and action project from southeastern Sweden. The project provides the empirical material for our reflective story. The overall aim of the project was to investigate, through playful explorations, how a diverse group of women can transform for us unfamiliar places, both concerning geographical, cultural, social aspects, and also how places in themselves can transform people. Ultimately the project also challenged the notion of citizenship not as a legal term but as an active and ongoing becoming. The core group of the project was created by academic scholars, municipality and a number of female immigrants from Syria.   When we started to plan the project we were in need of theoretical guides that could support us in our playfulness, without losing the critical and situated understanding of our trajectory and hence we identified some key concepts provided by our epistemological companions, such as:  caring (de la Bellacasa, 2012), touching/becoming (de la Bellacasa, 2009), messiness (Law, 2004). To meet up these approaches we had to rely on and develop methods that could enable the exploratory playfulness; therefore, we turned to the artistic movements of Situationists and Surrealists.   These choices demanded a sensitive awareness towards ourselves, each other and the places. We locate this project as a transdisciplinary framework of site-specific games, participatory design and feminist research.8 mujeres jugando con linternas en un oscuro e invernal bosque Nórdico, acompañadas por los ecos en sus celulares de una cantante árabe mundialmente famoso - Qué tiene que ver esto con ciudades creativas y divertidas?   Ésta expedición al bosque fue parte de un proyecto no tradicional de investigación-acción participativa en el sud-este Sueco. El proyecto proporcionó el material empírico para nuestra historia reflexiva. El objetivo general del proyecto fue investigar, a partir de divertidas exploraciones, cómo un grupo diverso de mujeres pueden transformar para nosotros lugares desconocidos, por un lado sobre los aspectos geográficos, culturales y sociales, y por otro sobre cómo lugares por si mismos pueden transformar a las personas. En el fondo el proyecto también desafió la noción de ciudadanía, no como un término legal, sino como un activo y continuo "llegar a ser". El equipo central del proyecto estuvo conformado por académicos, agentes de la municipalidad, y un grupo de mujeres inmigrantes Sirias.   Cuando comenzamos a planificar el proyecto tuvimos la necesidad de referentes teóricos que pudieran apoyarnos en nuestra diversión "playfulness", sin perder el entendimiento crítico y situado de nuestra trayectoria. Así pues, identificamos algunos conceptos clave provistos por nuestras acompañantes epistemológicas, tales como: cuidado "caring" (de la Bellacasa, 2012), tocar-sentir/llegar a ser "touching/becoming" (de la Bellacasa, 2009), desorden "messiness" (Law, 2004). Para encontrarnos con estos enfoques hemos usado y desarrollado métodos que pudieran facilitarnos una exploración divertida "the exploratory playfulness"; por lo tanto nos inclinamos hacia los artísticos movimientos de Situacionistas y Surrealistas.       Estas elecciones demandaron una conciencia sensible de nosotras mismas, de cada una y de los lugares. Nosotras localizamos este proyecto como un marco transdisciplinario de juegos geolocalizados "site specific games", diseño participativo e investigación feminista