Hi everyone,

I was a participant in this conference, and having been there and
with all due to respect to Ralf Bendrath, I think that this piece
takes a few issues/comments out of context and shouldn't necessarily
be taken as *the* description of what went on at Incommunicado 05. I
doubt that Ralf intended it to be more than an opinion piece of
sorts. Usually, I share a great deal in common with him (and Heinrich
Boll Foundation) in terms of opinion, but I think that more light
could be shed on this conference (in reference to the entire article,
which is not printed below but is at the web site listed). For
example, there is a quote from me in which I am said to question the
extent to which there is diversity in the WGIG, followed by an
admonishment from APC's Anriette Esterhuysen about some of us
focusing too much on process--who gets to speak--rather than on the
content of what is said. Although I did mention that only one-eighth
of the WGIG is comprised of women, my main point was that there had
been a diversity in issues of concern during the first phase and,
now, many had become marginalized by phase 2's emphasis on internet
governance and financing mechanisms only. I specifically mentioned
that community radio had become even more side-lined as an issue than
it was before. This piece makes it sound as though I was making
reference to some particularly simple issue of identity politics when
I was referring to diversity of concerns and perspectives. One of my
main points was that, after drafting a Civil Society Declaration,
many members of CS proceeded to catch a bad case of historical
amnesia about having done so and, in order to stay in the game as it
were, many CS members followed the government agenda laid out in the
official declaration and plan of action.

On the issue of communication rights, Sally Burch did indeed do a
great job of responding to criticisms of CRIS and the emphasis on
communication rights. This is especially notable given that she was
asked to do so at the last minute. She's always stunningly smart and
fantastic at keeping her composure. However, in fairness, the
academics that were present were asking questions about and
deconstructing the notion of "communication rights" in a manner that
has been done by CRIS members in the past as well. They simply were
not aware that CRIS members had been self-reflective about this and
had asked similar questions in the past--and that they continue to do
so. One major issue that CRIS is aware of, I think: the language of
human rights is available to all stakeholders and all make use of it.
The question is how does CRIS distinguish itself from the notion of
human rights as it is defined by, for example, the International
Chamber of Commerce/CCBI.

Speaking of academics, it seems unfair to paint a picture of a bunch
of Northern academics lecturing a bunch of NGO workers and
campaigners who are doing the real work "on the ground." First of
all, it's become a bit wearying to hear the refrain that being an
educator and researcher is not real work. Second, among those of is
who were academic participants, most of us had been working at the
various WSIS prepcoms, practicing participatory research and
activism. Third, there were far more NGO personnel and campaigners at
the conference than academics--that was something that was wanted by
the organizers--and the line between the two is not nearly so neat as
implied in the article. The main exception was the session on
"info-rights" during which CRIS was criticized. Other than that, any
one session tended not to include more than one or two academics out
of 5-8 speakers. Fourth, it is just possible that learning is a
shared experience and that NGO personnel who attended might have been
introduced to some new ideas or practical applications by academics,
even while we learned from these attendees. One of the greatest
differences that I observed is that many (not all) NGO
representatives (along with several government representatives) were
more likely to embrace an agenda in which public-private partnerships
were taken as inevitable while more academics were critical of
co-optation by neo-liberal orthodoxies. Perhaps this says more about
the fact that academics may enjoy greater independence and privilege
in terms of speaking our minds--once tenured especially, we don't
have to worry so much about having an organization that "goes out of
business" unless it engages in private sector donor-driven campaigns.
But, in any event, my main point is that it seems to me that things
at Incommunicado 05 were far more complicated than what is expressed
in Ralf's article.

Sorry to belabor issues around this conference, but I've seen this
article posted on other lists as well, as it should be, and I think
that it shouldn't be taken as the definitive evaluation of what
occurred at an event that was created to go against the grain of the
usual academic conference and that was far more inclusive than most
conferences or summits.

Thanks,


Lisa


At 4:48 PM -0400 6/27/05, Marilu Villachica wrote:
>PARA ESPANOL IR MAS ABAJO
>
>CRIS Info Communication rights at incommunicado.05
>
>A conference in Amsterdam last week brought together many
>info-activists and critical intellectuals for reflections on the
>"information for development" discourse. Themes of the
>"Incommunicado" event ranged from multi-stakeholderism at WSIS to
>the global political economy of information. It also was the largest
>gathering of people involved inside and outside the WSIS that
>provided a critical look at "the big picture".
>
>Ralf Bendrath wrote an article about the conference that includes an
>interesting report of a debate on communicatioon rights and the CRIS
>campaign. An extract of Ralf's aricle is below. The complete article
>is at
><http://www.worldsummit2005.org/>http://www.worldsummit2005.org/
>
>
>
>This liked nicely to a panel on the "communication rights" campaign
>and approach. Several panellists criticised the CRIS campaign for
>pushing a "legalistic game", as Ned Rossiter from the University of
>Ulster / UK said. Noortje Marres from the University of Amsterdam
>complained that the rights "frame" was just a means to avoid
>tackling the real question, which would be: "What is the exact
>political problem with communication and ICTs?" Soenke Zehle,
>Incommunicado co-organizer with renowned new media critic Geert
>Lovink, went as far as  stating that the Creative Commons project
>does to the intellectual property rights system what CRIS does to
>communication. It cleans the hybrid, informal and local forms of
>social practices and submerges them it under legal language.
>
>Sally Burch from APC member ALAI in Equador delivered a great
>defense of the CRIS campaign. According to her, the problem in the
>beginning of the WSIS process was not a clean legalistic language,
>but a very technocratic approach to ICTs. The CRIS campaign wanted
>to open the discussion and make sure that human rights are in fact
>addressed in WSIS. It was therefore a tactical enterprise to start a
>rights discussion, but also has a longer horizon.
>Anriette Esterhuysen added that we still lack a language of
>solidarity in the information and communication field. Therefore the
>organizations involved in the CRIS campaign used the language of
>rights, in order to make people able to use a shared language and
>identify with all the different struggles of all the others. Sally
>Burch added that the extension of rights to new areas was a common
>pattern in human history. As soon as the differentiation and
>specialization of labour made it impossible for most people to
>produce their own food, having something to eat became a rights
>issue. A discussion that did not occur at this point in Amsterdam,
>but would be interesting to hold, would tackle the link between
>rights and economies: Under which conditions would an economy
>provide all people with basic goods without making them the subjects
>of rights or objects of entitlement programmes? At least in the
>information field, the emerging economy and culture of sharing seem
>pretty promising here
>
>
>VERSION EN ESPANOL:
>