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‹ Volume 47 Issue 2, May 2022, pp. 271-291 › Articles Network Wisdom: The Role of Scaffolding in Expanding Communities of Practice and Technical Competencies in Community Networks Michael LithgowRelated informationAthabasca University Philip GarrisonRelated informationUniversity of Washington Esther Han Beol JangRelated informationUniversity of Washington Nicolas PacéRelated informationAlterMundi Michael Lithgow is Associate Professor at Athabasca University. Email: michael.lithgow@athabascau.ca. Philip Garrison is a PhD Candidate in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington. Email: philipmg@cs.washington.edu. Esther Han Beol Jang is a PhD candidate in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington. Email: infrared@cs.washington.edu. Nicolas Pacé is Community Networks Movement Builder at AlterMundi. Email: nicopace@altermundi.net Abstract Full Text References PDF EPUB Background: One of the key tensions to emerge from research on community owned and operated information and communications technology networks (“community networks”) is why some networks flourish while others fail. Analysis: These findings are based on interviews with 15 community network participants from four rural community networks in Córdoba, Argentina. Community network longevity is shaped by practices of scaffolding—knowledge sharing practices that expand what Étienne Wenger describes as “fields of negotiability” within communities of practice. Conclusion and implications: Network longevity was supported by scaffolding practices that decentralized technical capacities while encouraging deeper involvement among network participants. The network wisdom demonstrated in these cases appears to offer a promising strategy for community networks struggling to achieve longevity.

The global community networking movement promotes locally-managed network infrastructure as a strategy for affordable Internet connectivity. This case study investigates a group of collectively managed WiFi Internet networks in Argentina and the technologists who design the networking hardware and software. Members of these community networks collaborate on maintenance and repair and practice new forms of collective work. Drawing on Actor-Network Theory, we show that the networking technologies play a role in the social relations of their maintenance and that they are intentionally configured to do so. For technology designers and deployers, we suggest a path beyond designing for easy repair: since every breakdown is an opportunity to learn, we should design for accessible repair experiences that enable effective collaborative learning.

Background In public proceedings, professionalized discourses often reflect markedly different communicative strategies than those used by members of the general public.Analysis This article describes the findings of an aesthetic discourse analysis of public submissions to one of the largest public processes ever held by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), the Let’s Talk TV review of television regulation in Canada.Conclusions and implications Public submissions demonstrated heartfelt, affective, psychologically complex, and sometimes ambiguous expressions of desire. A routine tactic engaged in public submissions was “narrative aesthetics”—the implicit and explicit use of story structures to shape aspects of discourse legitimacy. The discursive landscape revealed gaps between public sensibilities and those legitimized by policy decisions, suggesting a territory of public experience more complex than the social realities reflected in policy discourse outcomes.RESUMEContexte Souvent dans les rencontres publiques, les discours professionnels refletent des strategies communicatives tres differentes de celles employees par le grand public.Analyse Cet article decrit les observations emanant d’une analyse du discours esthetique effectuee a partir de soumissions publiques dans le contexte de Parlons tele, un examen de la reglementation televisuelle au Canada qui a ete une des consultations publiques les plus importantes jamais menees par le Conseil de la radiodiffusion et des telecommunications canadiennes (CRTC).Conclusions et implications Bon nombre des soumissions publiques ont manifeste des expressions de desir sinceres, affectifs, psychologiquement complexes et, parfois, ambigus. Ces soumissions ont communement employe la tactique de « l’esthetique narrative »—l’utilisation implicite et explicite de structures narratives pour accentuer certains aspects de leur legitimite discursive. Globalement, le paysage discursif etait revelateur d’un ecart entrem les sensibilites du public et celles legitimees dans le cadre des decisions politiques, avec un champ d’experience de la part du public beaucoup plus complexe que les realites sociales refletees dans les diverses recommandations politiques.

Recent criticism of creative economies demonstrates tensions between programmes that support innovative cultural expression and community belonging, and those more oriented to instrumentally econom...

Discourse analysis often overlooks the role of aesthetic experience in the formation of relations of power through meaning. This paper presents an aesthetic discourse analysis of Canadian artist Allyson Mitchell’s Ladies Sasquatch , a celebrated sculpture-installation of six gigantic naked Sasquatches. I argue that by integrating expectations rooted in fine art sensibilities, playfulness and nostalgia into the physical instantiation of an untamed, separatist collective of queer mythological beasts, Ladies Sasquatch tactically uses aesthetic experience—through feelings of uncertainty, anticipation and belonging—to reclaim public space for radical, political lesbian experience. Aesthetic discourse analysis of Ladies Sasquatch demonstrates how aesthetic experience can influence and shape discourse outcomes in the context of resistance to dominant forms of understanding, in this case by challenging the legitimacies of patriarchal norms while destabilizing the ways radical lesbian experience is delegitimized in mainstream cultural contexts. RESUME L’analyse du discours neglige souvent le role de l’esthetique dans la formation de relations de pouvoir liees au sens. Cet article presente une analyse esthetique du discours de « Ladies Sasquatch », installation-sculpture acclamee de l’artiste canadienne Allyson Mitchell qui represente six geantes Sasquatches nues. Je soutiens qu’en integrant des elements propres aux Beaux-Arts (sensibilite, aspect ludique et nostalgie) dans l’instanciation d’un collectif separatiste et sauvage de betes mythologiques queer, Ladies Sasquach fait appel a l’experience esthetique, aux sentiments d’incertitude, d’anticipation et d’appartenance afin de reattribuer l’espace public a l’experience lesbienne radicale et politique. L’analyse esthetique du discours de Ladies Sasquatch demontre comment l’experience esthetique influence le discours dans le contexte de resistance aux formes dominantes de comprehension, en remettant en cause, dans ce cas, la legitimite des normes patriarcales et la facon dont l’experience lesbienne radicale est delegitimee dans la culture dominante. KEYWORDS: aesthetics; discourse; knowledge; legitimacy; lesbian; queer; sculpture; belonging; ambiguity; anticipation

The struggles of subjugated communities against the status quo often find their only visibility in alternative media. These are media that function outside traditional market-based routines, servicing small, neglected audiences whose experiences challenge or destabilise hegemonic discourses. Their marginalised political and cultural status is largely what makes them alternative: these are the articulations of activist citizens whose exclusion from dominant media has driven them into the production of their own cultural texts. Yet alternative media texts like news texts generally quickly lose their cultural currency. Archives exist as an apparatus of cultural preservation and legitimisation, but they traditionally have been the purview of large state-run or private institutions with little interest in preserving alternative media. This article examines the practices and preservation of alternative media archives in Canada. By mapping archival practices at sites of independent media production across Canada, and also archiving practices at a sample of provincial, municipal, independent and community archives in relation to alternative media holdings, this research assesses the current state of archiving alternative media records in a Canadian setting. The findings of the study suggest that while institutional archives often overlook alternative media records as falling outside of their explicit mandates, alternative media organisations are struggling to preserve their histories due to financial, technological and expertise deficiencies. Our findings suggest that a broad national strategy to help Canada deal with an alarming loss of alternative cultural records is long overdue, and that a partnership of archivists, activists, librarians and alternative media practitioners would constitute an important path forward at a time when our forgotten activist media are close to being lost.

Aesthetics manifest a rationally ambiguous category of meaning that encompasses both relational and representational dimensions of communication. In this paper, I argue that (1) truth claims have ontological consequences bound in the social commitments and obligations generated through expressive choices and interpellated audiences; (2) ontological implications entangle discourses of “truth” in the constitution of knowledge in ways that extend beyond rational argumentation into aesthetic experience; and (3) a reinterpretation of Kantian aesthetics offers a framework for understanding how aesthetic experiences influence the organization of relations of power.L’esthetique represente une categorie de sens qui est ambigue en ce qui a trait a sa rationalite et qui comprend des dimensions relationnelles et representationnelles de la communication. Dans cet article, je soutiens que (1) les pretentions a la verite ont des consequences ontologiques sur les obligations et les engagements sociaux qu’engendrent les choix expressifs et les publics interpelles; (2) les implications ontologiques melent les discours sur la verite et la constitution du savoir d’une maniere qui depasse l’argumentation rationnelle pour atteindre l’experience esthetique; et (3) une reinterpretation de l’esthetique kantienne offre un cadre pour mieux comprendre comment les experiences esthetiques influencent l’organisation de rapports de pouvoir.