Hello Stefan
I'm from hipatia too. I'm on this list because Juan
Carlos told me about
Oekonux.
I'm a researcher from Brazil (Unicamp, State
University of Campinas) and
my master dissertation, on linguistics (discourse
analisys), was about
the free software movement and politics. From a
conception that
considers that the language event is a political
event, it was looked to
understand as and where the political enrolls itself
in this debate. On
the third chapter of the dissertation I've examined
some of the possible
reasons why the free software movement on Latin
America most of times
use the expression "free software" and almost never
"open source", and
which characteristics and qualities the Latin
American movement
enphasize about FOSS (i.e., independence from
foreing) countries.
I think one of the best examples of political
activity of Latin American
movement is this: http://www.grain.org/i/?id=38 But
there is some
resistance about this kind of action from the
non-political part of the
movement
Now I'm a PHD student on anthropology and my
research theme will be (I'm
on my first year) the history of formation of the
brazilian free
software movement.
Unfortunally, my english is not so good and most of
my work is only in
portuguese but I hope to exchange some ideas.
Best regards
Rafael
Stefan Merten escreveu:
Hi!
This weekend I attended a local conference in the
town of Biella
(Northwestern Italy). Among other things it was a
nice opportunity to
meet some Hipatia [http://www.hipatia.info/]
people there.
According to some talks which have been given
there in South America
there is some rather strong connection between
(classical) social
movements and Free Software. I heard of this
before but actually I
didn't know how strong this seems to be.
Now this is something which confuses me a bit
because from what I see
for instance in Europe there is no connection
between (classical)
social movements and Free Software. There are also
more theoretical
reasons why I think to no such connection is more
likely than to have
one.
In other words: An interesting phenomenon I'd
really like to consider
in detail. May be Oekonux and other interested
parties like Hipatia
can gain some useful insights by this.
To start the discourse I have some questions which
I think would be
interesting to start with.
* What kind of connection is there between social
movements and Free
Software exactly? What is the nature of this
connection? How strong
is it really?
* Why in contrast is there no strong connection
between Free Software
and social movements in more industrialized
countries?
* What are the goals of these social movements and
how does Free
Software help these? How can Free Software help?
* Do these movements help Free Software? Can they
help? If so: How?
* What are commonalities and differences between
Free Software and
social movements?
* Can this phenomenon of the strong connection
between Free Software
and social movements in South America be
compared to other
phenomenons happening around Free Software?
* Does this phenomenon relate to the things we
learned about Free
Culture in South America / Brazil and if so how?
I really want to invite the Hipatia people to join
this discussion
because as far as I understood this connection is
a big topic for
them. @Graham/Juan Carlos: Could you please help
with this? As an
exception: Would cross-posting between the lists
make sense?
Mit Freien Grüßen
Stefan
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Organization: http://www.oekonux.de/projekt/
Contact: projekt oekonux.de
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_________________________________
Web-Site: http://www.oekonux.org/
Organization: http://www.oekonux.de/projekt/
Contact: projekt oekonux.de