Guides of the Atlas: An Ethnography of Publicness, Transnational Cooperation and Mountain Tourism in Morocco

How do digital media technologies shape or restructure social practice? And which transitions and demarcations of different forms of publicness arise in this context? The author examines this question in his ethnography of everyday life in the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco. In order to approach the ongoing, historically situated social transformations of the region, he analyses a variety of media practices concerning the organizational work and transnational cooperation that take place there - in particular at the intersection of mountain tourism, NGO work, and local self-government

Digital Hospitality: Trail Running and Technology in the Moroccan High Atlas

In the mountainous region of the Central High Atlas in Morocco, tourism has emerged as a promising economic prospect among a number of profound changes recently. However, the implications of digital media technology in situ and as part of this wider transformation have rather been neglected by scholarship. Hence, in this paper I propose the notion of digital hospitality to map out and articulate the interplay of digital media, tourism and ‘Mediterranean themes’ like hospitality, topography and connectivity, and to make it tangible how processes of sociotechnical restructuring are challenging the interactions and possible relationships between guests and hosts in the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco. Drawing on extended ethnographic fieldwork in the High Atlas, I analyse the ultramarathon sports event ‘Zaouiat Ahansal Ultra Trail’ as a mediated, circulated and digitised phenomenon. It is the readjusted focus on (digital) media technology, which foregrounds social practices and cooperation, that allows this trail-running event to be understood as an achievement of the organizers’ scaling work, which in turn feeds into and interacts with the scalar characteristics of hospitality itself

How decolonial can cooperation be? Critical remarks on ICT interventions in the Global South

Projekte zu Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien (IKT) in der Entwicklungszusammenarbeit im Globalen Süden operieren mit impliziten und expliziten Vorstellungen, Ansprüchen und Zielen. Die kritische Reflexion zu den Rahmenbedingungen, dem ethischen Status und den Konsequenzen solcher IKT-Interventionen und -Projekte kommt dabei oft zu kurz. Durch eine interdisziplinäre Perspektive und unter Rückgriff auf post- und dekoloniale Theorie können die Bedingungen und Partizipationsmöglichkeiten von „Nord-Süd-Kooperationen“ problematisiert und die ihnen zugrunde liegenden Begriffe, Konzepte und deren Konnotationen kritisch beleuchtet werden. Auf der Basis eigener Erfahrungen mit designorientierten Herangehensweisen in einem entwicklungs- und bildungspolitischen Projekt im Hohen Atlas in Marokko sollen diese Kritiken und Problemstellungen veranschaulicht und reflektiert werden. Indem eigene Vorannahmen, Erwartungen und Ansprüche auf den Prüfstand gestellt und Projektverlauf, Technikaneignung und interne Kommunikation nicht als gesetzt, sondern als prozesshaft und wechselseitig aushandelbar verstanden werden, können die Bedingungen für Kooperation in eine dekoloniale Richtung weisen.Information and communications technology (ICT) interventions and development cooperation projects in the Global South operate with implicit and explicit ideas, expectations, and goals about the course of the project and cooperation. Critical reflection on the framework conditions, ethical status, and consequences of such ICT interventions and projects is often neglected. Through an interdisciplinary perspective and recourse to post- and decolonial theory, the conditions and participation possibilities of “North-South cooperation” can be problematized, and the underlying concepts and connotations can be critically examined. Based on our own experiences with design-oriented approaches in a development and education project in the High Atlas in Morocco, we will illustrate and discuss these critiques and problems. The conditions for cooperation can point in a decolonial direction by putting one’s own assumptions, expectations, and demands to the test and by understanding project progress, technology appropriation, or internal communication not as given but as process-oriented and mutually negotiable

Media ethnography

Contents Editorial Thematic Focus: Media Ethnography Media Ethnography and Participation in Online Practices / David Waldecker, Kathrin Englert, Wolfgang Ludwig-Mayerhofer, Oliver Schmidtke The Story is Everywhere. Dispersed Situations in a Literary Role Play Game / Wolfgang Reißmann Co-operation and/as Participant Observation: Reflections on Ethnographic Fieldwork in Morocco / Simon Holdermann Ethnomethodological Media Ethnography: Exploring Everyday Digital Practices in Families with Young Children / Clemens Eisenmann, Jan Peter, Erik Wittbusch Cooperation and Difference. Camera Ethnography in the Research Project ‘Early Childhood and Smartphone’ / Bina E. Mohn, Pip Hare, Astrid Vogelpohl, Jutta Wiesemann Reports Coordinations, or Computing is Work / Sebastian Gießman

Co-operation and/as participant observation

This contribution carves out the co-operative foundations for ethnographic fieldwork, and participant observation in particular, by reflecting on the so-called ‘entry to the field’ as well as the establishment of rapport between ethnographer and interlocutors. Drawing on my fieldwork experience in the Moroccan High Atlas, I propose to understand the ethnographer’s delicate position as being both apprentice and expert simultaneously. Focusing on this relation enables methodological reflections on the workings of ethnographic research, the necessary co-operation of ‘researcher’ and ‘informants’, and the involved media practices. To take this tension seriously makes another insight possible: that the ethnographer, too, is being observed and under constant scrutiny. In this light, successful ethnographic research is possible precisely when successful conditions for mutual exchange and interaction can be situatively created and maintained. It is therefore a process of continuous co-operation that is mediated and necessarily involves media and even produces a range of different media practices

'Technology is Everywhere, we have the Opportunity to Learn it in the Valley': The Appropriation of a Socio-Technical Enabling Infrastructure in the Moroccan High Atlas

This paper describes the appropriation processes involved in establishing a socio-technical enabling infrastructure in a valley in the High Atlas of Morocco. We focus on the challenges of co-establishing such an intervention in a rural/mountainous region that is already undergoing a process of continuous development and profound transformation. We reflect upon the changes and unforeseen appropriation by our local partners and inhabitants in the valley of a computer club primarily used as an informal learning centre for school children. We followed an ethnographic approach and combined research perspectives from both socio-informatics and anthropology. This paper sheds light on what a successful cooperation and intervention in this kind of challenging environment can look like. It does this by taking seriously competing expectations, fragile infrastructural foundations and the socio-cultural context. Despite the challenges, the intervention managed to lead to the establishment of a socio-technical enabling infrastructure that plays a particularly valuable role in local educational endeavours and that is now moving towards supporting other members of the community. The paper thus provides insights regarding what has to be considered to create a mutually beneficial cooperation with all relevant stakeholders as well as a sustainable intervention