THE NETWORKED POLITICS & TECHNOLOGY SEMINAR
NEW! Post Seminar Beats
- Public event at San Francisco Friday 5 Dec
- Seminar Agenda Weekend 6 & 7 Dec: School of Information - Berkeley
- Reader
- Bios Participants
- Download participants info kit which contains all the basic information to participate (Abstract of articles, agenda, bios, practical infos) np_participants_info_kit.doc
Framework of the discussion
In broad terms, Networked Politics is an inquiry into decentralized and horizontal forms of organization from the perspective of new ways of organising for social change. Of course hierarchical and centralizing tendencies persist and even appear in new forms, but we are struck by how decentralized organizational logics and forms are emerging in many different spheres.
The nature of ‘networked politics’, even those elements of it that have been identified and discussed, is still unclear. It is still very much an emerging reality. There is much that is unknown and many questions about how to conceptualize the innovations, the potentialities and the problems associated with it. We think it is useful to systematically reflect on the consequences and ambiguities of these new realities. And although our focus in this search is the changing forms of political organization, we are learning from experiences and metaphors in other spheres.
The main experiences which have led us to this research are the Social Forums models of organizing. But we have been also exploring the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) movement and the web communities, inspired by their organizational parallels with the Social Forums. We have also been investigating “techno-political tools”: conscious attempts to introduce the new information and communication technologies into processes of political action and organization.
The research is action oriented. The plan is to work not in abstract terms but through concrete experiences, not to leave theory in the air but to try to be useful, to improve existing political organizing and to create new connections and using these experiences to refine theories.
THE NETWORKED POLITICS SEMINAR IN THE BAY AREA
The goals of organizing a seminar in the San Francisco Bay Area are: to enlarge the exchanges and the cooperation in the project between Europe and the United States; to connect and learn from the experiences of social forums and social movements in both continents; to profit by the uniqueness of the technological innovations, research and experiences based at the Bay Area.
The structure of the seminar is organized on three lines of discussion in the seminar (Weekend) and a fourth line of discussion addressed in a public session (Friday afternoon).
* First line of discussion: Governance of platforms for participation: Social forum and online collaborative communities
* Second line of discussion: When do new social media and political activism converge/match?
* Third line of discussion: New institutions: the rediscovery of the commons.
* Fourth section of discussion: Movement Organizing, Technology and Networked Politics: The experience of the Social Forums
CONTACT: mayo.fuster(at)eui.eu Phone: 510-2064743
