[p2p-research] Geophilosophy between Conflict and Cartographies of Abundance

[Michel Bauwens]

http://scidok.sulb.uni-saarland.de/volltexte/2009/2537/

Dear Athina,

I wonder if you could read the above essay, which deals with conflict, and
comment on it for our p2p blog?

Many thanks for considering it,

Soenke should attend our meeting in Hull, no?

Michel


*Essay: Network Ecologies: Geophilosophy between Conflict and Cartographies
of Abundance. by Soenke Zehle*

URL = http://www.i-r-i-e.net/inhalt/011/011-full.pdf


[edit<http://p2pfoundation.net/Geophilosophy_between_Conflict_and_Cartographies_of_Abundance?title=Geophilosophy_between_Conflict_and_Cartographies_of_Abundance&action=edit&section=1>
] Abstract:

"In the context of network-ecological thought, information ethics is perhaps
best understood as a transversal reflexive practice, aimed at identifying
the stakes attending the creation, consumption, and disposal of infor-mation
technologies. To situate itself as well as potential interlocutors, such a
thought requires correspondingly complex cartographies, a multidimensional
mapping of practices and presuppositions, of individual, collective,
institutional actors as well as the conditions of possibility of their
mutual engagement. Such cartographies do not assume the existence of the
„local“ or the „global“ as a given. Instead, they attend to the way human
and non-human actors and the discursive and material practices they are
involved in contribute to construction and reconstruction of geocultural
formations. Reapproached from within such a „network-ecological“ horizon,
information ethics becomes geophilosophy, generating new modalities of
intervention in the conflictual dynamics associated with the social-economic
life of waste."

Dealing with (e-)waste, the scarcity of social equity, and the potential for
abundance in the knowledge
economy<http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/dealing-with-e-waste-the-scarcity-of-social-equity-and-the-potential-for-abundance-in-the-knowledge-economy/2009/11/23>
[image: photo of Michel Bauwens]
Michel Bauwens
23rd November 2009

 Real economic abundance can come about only when the demand for a good is
finite and the plentiful supply makes the abundant good affordable enough to
all members of society. It lists an abundance-nurturing ethic as a major
goal of abundance management, and encourages economists to make abundance
together with scarcity their conceptual point of departure.

*Special Issue: Ethics of Waste in the Information
Society<http://i-r-i-e.net/issue11.htm>.
International Review of Information Ethics. Issue No. 011, Vol. 11 - October
2009*

This special issue of IRIE deals with the dark side of the knowledge
economy, e-waste, and also has 2 articles that focus on the relation between
waste and abundance, by Soenke Zehle and Roberto Verzola.

Below the abstract of the issue and of the two articles that retain our
special interest, and which we hope to present in more detail in the future.

*Issue Summary:*

*“IRIE, designed as a pure online journal, new issues announced by email,
downloadable and fully readable as e-paper – in 2003 the founding editors
really thought they have created a zero waste journal. But now we learned
that much more has to be taken into account if one really wants to calculate
the ecological bottom line of IRIE, includ-ing the electricity consumed by
hosting the journal as well as reading it and above all the construction and
disposal of the hardware engaged. Ultimately this expansion of the scope of
our respective self assessment leads to an expansion of the scope of
information ethics itself.*

*With this issue, IRIE – dedicated to the development of information ethics
as a reflexive practice and conceptual horizon – aims to engage itself with
the broad range of materials involved in the very acts and processes of
communication, information, and knowledge production. This includes, but is
not limited to, the instruments we employ, use, and discard in ever-shorter
cycles of consumption, outpacing our efforts to develop appropriate
mechanisms of disposal and recycling: from old television sets to LCD and
plasma displays, from old disk drives to flash cards and RFID chips.Used
locally, but designed, produced, and discarded across the world, the usage
of these instruments – things – raises a lot of questions whose technical
and political implications are increasingly being explored in an emerging
regulatory regime, but whose info-ethical dimensions deserve greater
attention as they require us to revisit cherished assumptions regarding the
scope and desirability of information-societal developments as we know them.
*

*The contributions to this issue offer the concept of network ecologies as a
way to open info-ethical reflection to geophilosophical perspectives
(Zehle), revisit the history of electronics activism and regulation (Smith,
Fonseca and de Carvalho Matie-lo), reflect on the need to rethink waste or
debris as resource for socio-technological innovation and survival
(Vallauri, Renno), attend to the ecological impact of networks of
distributed labor (Miller) and the biopolitical dimension of the
simultaneous governance of waste and work (Rossiter), remind us of the
material embeddedness of all info-ethical, geophilosophical reflection to
encourage the embrace of an ethics of passage (Carter), and insist on the
need to take abundance rather than scarcity as point of departure and
reference and develop holistic approaches attentive to their complex
relationship (Verzola).*

*Together, the authors offer themselves as interlo-cutors in info-ethical
exchanges, some directly, some from within different (perhaps even
incom-mensurable) analytical frameworks, recalling that acts of translation
are always already involved in any attempt of ethical reflection.”*


-- 
Work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University - Research:
http://www.dpu.ac.th/dpuic/info/Research.html - Think thank:
http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI

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