Dear Michel, pls find my responses in between your reply.
On Mon, Jul 7, 2014 at 9:49 PM, Michel Bauwens <[email protected]> wrote: > dear Andreas, > > nobody has made that critique, on the contrary, about every postmodern > scholar has made it .. > When I said that this critique has not been made I was obviously referring to the thread of this list and not to post-modern literature. Of course this critique bas been made excessively by post-modern scholars. I am very far from post-modernist thinking, but I have never come across any literature that dismisses this argument as superficial, as you do here. Maybe you can elaborate? > > it is in my opinion a quite superficial critique .. > > the flok was not about a bunch of foreign experts advising people what to > do at all > > it was a process that combined input from local civic groups (70 at least, > 24 seminars ect ..) and global commoners > hm, this is not how flok has been introduced originally on various platforms. All the hype was about the p2p foundation being asked by the Ecuadorian government to develop a plan for a transition of Ecuador's society and economy towards p2p structures. It is a bit pointless to change the story now. So my comments refer to the reading of these first announcements. > > at the invitation of the local government, which sees itself as > anti-colonialist > It doesn't matter much how the government sees itself, when it does not have the trust of the people. Isn't this an obvious point? > > originally the project was meant to combine 7 foreigners and 7 local > researchers .. > > the foreigners in case were not experts dispatched by MNO's but activists > > if calling a coworking between local and global commoners as 'colonialist' > then the only other solution is pure localism > I have not used the term colonial but post-colonial. There is a huge difference between these two concepts. Again, what is now presented as co-working and dialogical has earlier been presented in much more ambitious terms as helping to create a better Ecuadorian society. > > there was ndio research from outsiders of indigenous society ... the > indigenous scholars wrote their own paper > I have not suggested that this was research on indigenous people. I have pointed out that it is naive and arrogant for researchers in the west to fly in a country they don't know very well with a very high percentage of indigenous people to advice them on buen conocer. Isn't it rather ironic that westerners advice a country with a strong indigenous population on how to do the sharing economy? > > that is not to say the flok can not be critiqued for colonialist or > post-colonial elements, but this requires a bit more than just blanket > condemnation because foreigners are involved, > Again you are misreading what I said. I was not talking about foreigners, but about western research in and advice for non-western spaces. > > it's a kind of atavistic reaction, not a critique I would say, based on a > very superficial understanding of the project > You are right that I don't have a detailed understanding of the flok project. For this reason I hesitated to comment in the first place. I would have kept my mouth shut had I not been worried about the evaluation of flok on this thread. It is less the failed project itself that makes me nervous than a certain refusal to question its political and moral integrity. I detect lots of enthusiasm to try this again, but better. And lots of blaming individuals involved with bad intentions. However I don't see much humble reflexivity and self-critique. While I don't have any intimate knowledge of flok I do know a thing or two about ethnographic research, and I am convinced that these things can be applied to flok and its evaluation. The first thing I know is that it is important to think about research in relation to power. Usually it is a bad idea if the invite to do research or consultancy comes from those who are in power (e.g. the government). The second thing I know is that it is highly problematic to speak for others and to tell people in environments unfamiliar to the researcher how to improve things. Michel, I don't doubt your good intentions for a minute. But good intentions cannot replace the more fundamental questions I am raising. As I said I find it quite worrying that nobody else on this list has raised them. You don't do the p2p-foundation a favour if you dismiss them as an atavistic reaction. best, andreas
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