"bridge", was Re: VS: [governance] Summary Report of IGF MAG available

Parminder parminder at itforchange.net
Sun Mar 2 01:13:11 EST 2008



Alex

> approach. The grand collaboration that is the Internet is ill approached
> by first demanding people to divide themselves in groups and then try to
> coordinate.

Globalization, in its various shades of meaning, is also a grand
collaboration, as the Internet is.  But this doesn’t stop a high degree of
politicization of that subject. No one comes in and says - don’t be
divisive, pull yourselves together, be one voice and such. Global civil
society has its highest degree of organization and mobilization with respect
to the globalization issue. And it has found it necessary to develop some
broad range of CS political positions - though with enough contestations
within it - to distinguish itself from the business and government sectors.
I don’t know where their advocacy would be if they had not done this.
Building bridges comes in after such self-definition, and CS involved with
globalization issues does work with these other sectors as required. 

Much better to involve "bridge" people like you and a few
> others. The latest weeks have proven the fruitlessness of the "divide,
> divide, divide" approach.

Any advocacy group, as any action oriented group/ organization cannot do
without certain amount of developing broad overall positions and
orientations. The issue of 'bridges' comes in, as I said, after a group has
so defined itself and not before, which will make it impossible to define
itself, and what it intends to do, even within relatively broad boundaries. 

ICANN has its policy statements, ISOC has them, why shouldn’t IGC have them.
Any reasons? 

The problem is that some of us take IGC only as an e-discussion list where
we can contribute some information, pick up some and occasionally debate
issues. Others, and I taken them to be those who signed its charter (plus
some others who may want to), consider it also as a important advocacy and
action platform.

And for those who consider it as an advocacy platform it is obvious that
some amount of self-definition is a basic and an essential condition. And
also to have a set of broad common political positions. In fact at the time
the charter was adopted there was this talk of further clarifying basic
policy orientation of the caucus at a later time. 

So, there is no dividing going on here, only efforts to orient ourselves to
more effective action in pursuit of our beliefs. So, only those who are
either not interested in a certain broad set of beliefs that unite us (or
should unite us), or in IGC doing effective advocacy and 'action', may feel
that such efforts are attempts to divide, rather than organizing to act. 

BTW, I must clarify that IGC considers itself only as one of the CS groups,
and not THE IG CS. Such an appropriation and monopolization is anathema in
CS space. So, one doesn’t cease to be CS in IGC's eyes for not associating
with IGC. For instance I do consider ISOC as a midway organization between a
CS body and an industry forum. So they do have some claim to CS-hood. And
there are certainly many other CS groups involved with IG issues, each with
the right to self-define itself and associate itself with certain advocacy
positions. 

One last clarification of self-definition as per our charter. IGC does try
also to be an umbrella group for a variety of CS inputs into IG policy
forums, and in this task try a rather broader self-definition (within CS
parameters) rather than a narrower one which some other groups may prefer.
But this breadth of orientation cannot be so loose that it makes it
completely ineffective in its advocacy function. This balance has to
continuously negotiated among us. 

Parminder 


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Alejandro Pisanty [mailto:apisan at servidor.unam.mx]
> Sent: Sunday, March 02, 2008 7:27 AM
> To: Governance Caucus; Avri Doria
> Subject: "bridge", was Re: VS: [governance] Summary Report of IGF MAG
> available
> 
> Avri,
> 
> thanks again for pointing to the absurdity of the sectarian, pigeon-holing
> approach. The grand collaboration that is the Internet is ill approached
> by first demanding people to divide themselves in groups and then try to
> coordinate. Much better to involve "bridge" people like you and a few
> others. The latest weeks have proven the fruitlessness of the "divide,
> divide, divide" approach.
> 
> Alejandro Pisanty
> 
> 
> .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . .  .  .  .  .
> .
>       Dr. Alejandro Pisanty
> UNAM, Av. Universidad 3000, 04510 Mexico DF Mexico
> 
> *Mi blog/My blog: http://pisanty.blogspot.com
> *LinkedIn profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/pisanty
> *Unete al grupo UNAM en LinkedIn,
> http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/22285/4A106C0C8614
> 
> ---->> Unete a ISOC Mexico, www.isoc.org
>   Participa en ICANN, www.icann.org
> .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .
> .
> 
> 
> On Sat, 1 Mar 2008, Avri Doria wrote:
> 
> > Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2008 16:18:27 +0100
> > From: Avri Doria <avri at psg.com>
> > Reply-To: governance at lists.cpsr.org, Avri Doria <avri at psg.com>
> > To: Governance Caucus <governance at lists.cpsr.org>
> > Subject: Re: VS: [governance] Summary Report of IGF MAG available
> >
> >
> > On 1 Mar 2008, at 14:44, Kleinwächter, Wolfgang wrote:
> >
> >> And how you can split the other 20 among PS, CS and technical and
> academic
> >> community? 7 PS, 7 CS and 4 TC and 2 AC?
> >
> > are you assuming that each participant wears one hat and only one hat?
> >
> > due to my status as a consultant to the secretariat, i am not qualified
> for
> > this game, but i consider myself as having a hat in each of these
> closets:
> >
> > - i belong to several NGO's and am working on founding one with some
> other
> > people, and thus consider myself CS
> > - i have a part time university appointment and thus am AC
> > - i participate in the IETF, am an appointee in ICANN, write protocols,
> and
> > do technical research and thus am TC
> > - i hire myself out as professional consultant (gotta pay the rent
> somehow)
> > and hence am a small business person - PS
> >
> > I don't think I am alone in this multi-hatted nature (though i may take
> it to
> > extremes)
> >
> > note, the gov'ts don't only appoint government people.  some can appoint
> CS,
> > especially in those countries where CS considers itself served well by
> the
> > gov't.  in fact this was part of the argument for more people from
> > development countries since they consider that those countries are the
> ones
> > who really support CS.  so _in addition_ to trying to place development
> CS
> > people through the other category, i suggest that CS from developing
> > countries get their gov'ts to live up to the promise.
> >
> > a.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ____________________________________________________________
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