from to bear witness

One of the greatest conflicts I experience in my work that has no resolution in sight, is the tension between serving communities and working within the structures of state power. One of the starkest examples I can offer is the misapplication of state funding in community projects, which I have seen wasted due to a variety of reasons including mismanagement, corruption, and by far the worst: stringent and/or impractical deliverables imposed by the funding parties or institutional bodies that work at cross purposes with the needs of community members for the purposes of accountability.

What I have read about Community Informatics and its community led approaches and values fascinates me because you really cannot escape state power. It seems to me that the spaces by which a community can resist and challenge the state, or negotiate and debate institutional policies erode in proportion to the size, degree and quality of threat a community or CI project creates. There is a limit at which compromises are no longer tenable.

A couple of real life examples:

In March – May 2009, Tamil Canadians in Toronto organize a series of protests which slow downtown traffic. In one protest, participants refuse to leave a spontaneously organized blockade of a major traffic artery until the federal government agrees to raise the issue in Parliament. The Canadian public expresses mixed reactions including an understanding of the plight of Sri Lankans, a disapproving of protesters’ actions which hinder their daily lives, and a condemnation of protesters who would seek Canadian governmental action, especially when some protesters have flown the flag of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, a listed terrorist organization.

In October 2005 – October 2006, Six Nations community members organize protests and blockades on Caledonia, Ontario. Although the land claims disputes have not been settled by the federal government, Henco Industries plans to develop in the area. The Ontario provincial government tallies the cost for managing the protests and buying out Henco Industries in the millions.

A couple hypothetical examples of state vs community:

A geographically isolated community with high rates of HIV infection plans to develop an abstinence-only education program for youth using mobile technologies. Local religious beliefs regarding HIV/AIDs are included in programming which stigmatize and discriminate against those who have tested positive for the virus.

A local activist group uses Twitter to organize a pro-life rally in a public area nearby an abortion clinic. Participants do not engage in hate speech or harassment, but their presence is felt as intimidating and disrespectful by both staff and patients.

I began thinking a lot about Pro-Ana communities because many of them present the typical characteristics of a sustainable, community led CI project despite fierce opposition as they also present harsh criticisms to state patriarchal/medical knowledge. But more importantly, these communities also challenge the right of the sovereign to take life. The self determinatory path of anorexics, a trajectory which concludes in death (anorexics have the highest death rate of all DSM-IV disorders), vehemently resists the surveillance and control of the state over the body. As such, the violent reaction toward these communities – disgust, censorship, eradication – seems to be less about a concern over a mental disorder, and more about the various threats posed by the communities.

thinspiration

The emaciated visibility of the anorexic body, echoed in the forms of popular female models and actresses, threaten the inherent goodness of gender norms, and legitimacy of patriarchal and medical control over the female body and reach the limit of biopower: the right for a citizen to choose death. Pro-Ana communities ultimately cannot be accepted in a CI framework as it stands.

Pro-Ana presents an extreme example, but what about other community led projects like the examples above that may present real, practical challenges to state functioning, control and power? Do you know of any?

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