Message-Id: <3.0.1.32.19970519153038.007019cc@osf1.gmu.edu>
Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 15:30:38 -0400
To: David Katz <dkatz@wpo.it.luc.edu>
From: "Jeanne A.B. Calabro" <jcalabro@osf1.gmu.edu>
Subject: Re: Virtual Identities and Communities ...refs ??? -Reply
Cc: socgrad@csf.colorado.edu
In-Reply-To: <s379ec22.006@wpo.it.luc.edu>
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>I agree with you that the Internet is a medium in which marginalized
>groups can build community--I have found this to be the case in my own
>research on Neo-Pagans.  However, I am highly skeptical of any claim
>that the Internet can be used to overcome inequalities.  Let's face it,
>outside of Bill Gates' fantasy land, economic class (and associated
>educational opportunities) will continue to be 
>a significant factor in who gets Internet access.  
I said I was excited about the *potential" that the internet can be used to
overcome inequalities "that is, once computers are more readily available
to all." Many public libraries and certainly facilities at community
colleges and state universities provide internet access to their
communities. My son's (very poor) public high school did (of course, he
went to school early or left late in order to use the computer facilities).
You do not necessarily need to *own* a computer or have it in your home in
order to enjoy access. (I have one provided by a grant I work on)
Community-based resources may well be an area to focus some attention on. I
am not talking from a theoretical base, or fantasyland experience here. I
went to a ghetto high school with no college prep track, running out of
courses to take early in my junior year. I worked three part-time jobs, one
as lab assistant during school hours, to save money for college and
certainly didn't have a lot of spare money. But I LIVED in the public
library, and when I finished reading the books that interested me there, I
discovered interlibrary loan or took the subway to the MIT library or the
Beth Israel Hospital library (I networked to get permission). I also took
courses at MIT taught by MIT grad students for next-to-nothing, and walked
to a nearby school to be tutored by volunteers from Boston College in
geometry for which no course existed in my high school. I went to programs
put on by the Boston Globe for high school newspaper editors where I got to
meet Washington political correspondents, or jazz festival directors and
Herbie Mann. I attended free lecture series at the Museum of Science. When
I interviewed for college, I found that I was considered "disadvantaged."
There are certainly not enough of these resources, and early damage to
self-esteem can often blind children to their potential and so make them
impervious to the resources that do exist. Rural communities present even
greater challenges because of a paucity of public resources in these
communities, although sharing among community members who know each other
is often greater in such communities. However, I find buying into the
stereotypes of stratification and the victimization of have-notism is a
problematic total dismissal of the strengths of communities. It seems to be
only the privileged that regard lack of privilege as epiphenomenal and
deterministically dooming. The internet has a great potential for making
knowledge and access more equally available, if and when computers are more
readily accessible (whether in the home or the community).

>Also, I'm not sure how
>forming virtual communities translates into the "cultural authority" that you
>speak of.  A marginalized group that has a strong sense of community
>identity is still marginalized.
Cultural authority and political authority are two different things.
Cultural authority is the power to define oneself, to claim and define
one's own problems, and to characterize oneself, one's goals, one's needs,
or, more particularly to define the group or subculture to which one
belongs, to claim and define it's problems, to characterize it, it's goals,
it's needs, and how it wants to be be addressed and responded to by other
groups or the dominant culture, rather than to have the dominant culture
project it's own perspective and position and identity (often the reverse
negative) into the group or subculture. This can be accomplished on the
internet, given access, with the use of one's voice. Cultural authority is
claimed when a parent of a child with Down syndrome says "I'm not going to
let the school psychologist or my family or my neighbors see my child as a
tragedy, because after I got over the initial shock that is not how I
feel." Or, "I am not going to let the therapists keep telling me my
daughter with Down Syndrome will never be able to read, because she knew
the alphabet at age 3 and began to read store sign's to me when she was in
kindergarten and she is playing word games on our computer."  Cultural
authority is gained when therapists and parents are speculating about
sexual development of their children with Down Syndrome and someone with
Down Syndrome enters the discussion and starts talking about his marriage
and how he is raising a normal child he had with his wife, supporting his
family as a computer programmer. Or when parents and builders and others
are discussing living arrangements for their adult children with Down
syndrome, and a person with Down Syndrome sends a very thoughtful,
sensitive message about how it feels  to only be considered for a group
home when they have just gotten an undergraduate degree from college and
really want to live independently on their own. It also happens when
parents are wringing their hands over the pathetic future earnings of their
baby with Down Syndrome in a sheltered workshop, and a girl with Down
Syndrome reports that she is active in the disability rights movement at
the law school she is attending.
	Marginalized people who are labeled as incompetent to speak for themselves
in society at large, and so are never asked what they think or feel, or
desire or need, can gain voice via the internet, and their input is
encountered by others who would never come across it in normal everyday
discourse. Politicians are asked about the needs of their constituents,
deans are asked about the needs of the faculty, school boards are asked
about the needs of teachers and students, doctors are asked about the needs
of patients, administrators are asked about what the insured want and need,
social workers are asked about the needs and behavior of people who are
poor, single mothers, or pregnant teens, and so on. I have encountered
someone from all of these groups, and I mean all. on the internet. I have
heard perspectives I had never heard elsewhere. Especially I have heard
people speaking for themselves to a wide audience who may never have been
heard before outside their own intimate circle. Patients often complain
about the imputed attitudes of doctors, and I have heard doctors state
their own feelings and attitudes directly. The internet or virtual reality
is a much more open forum for participants. And yes, the groups may still
be marginalized, but their members are not shy about rejecting the
authority of others to name them, and talk about their needs and
motivations, and desires, and so on, and to claim the cultural authority to
speak for themselves, and to do it very effectively and competently.
Political authority is another thing, but perhaps the ability of powerful
actors to "represent" marginalized groups will erode as these groups find a
forum to speak for themselves. Again, political authority is something
else, but certainly, not just perhaps, the ability of powerful actors to
speak for marginalized groups erodes as these groups find a forum to speak
for themselves, and so members of these marginaluzed groups lay claim to
cultural authority.

Jeanne Calabro
>

>David Katz
>Graduate Student
>Loyola University Chicago
>
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------
>>>> "Jeanne A.B. Calabro" <jcalabro@osf1.gmu.edu> 05/13/97 12:22am 
>>>>A lot of people worry about the current self-selection of membership
>in these communities, because there is a threshold of skills and
>education and economics in order to have the means to access the
>internet. After my research, however, I am really excited about the
>potential for the internet to overcome many of the inequalities
>experienced by marginal populations in terms of having voice, cultural
>authority, and access, that is, once computers are more readily available
>to all.
>
>
_____________________________________________________________________________
Jeanne A.B. Calabro			Home Phone:  703/450-5460
104 Norwood Place			E-mail:      jcalabro@osf1.gmu.edu
Sterling, Virginia 20164-8503	Affiliation: Brandeis University
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"Sociology changes the world." Personal opinion
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