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<p class="" style="margin-bottom:0cm">I hesitate to comment
on this project, as I have only followed this from a distance.
However a good number of comments in this threat make me really
nervous. I am reading that 'seeds have been planted', that the FLOK
research papers can become part of the commons movement in Equador,
that lessons have been learnt and that it is all about doing it
better next time.</p>
<p class="" style="margin-bottom:0cm">I'd rather see this as
a one-off project and hope sincerely there is no next time where a
bunch of experts are aiming to create profound changes in a society
they are not really familiar with. This is a post-colonial approach
and should be rejected. It is as easy as that.</p>
<p class="" style="margin-bottom:0cm">Every undergraduate
anthropology student knows that it is highly problematic to conduct
western research in non-western spaces. This is about otherness and
authority, about who speaks and who is being researched. All this is
common knowledge since the 'writing culture' debate in the mid 1980s.</p>
<p class="" style="margin-bottom:0cm">How much more dubious
and arrogant is the FLOK approach, which was not just about
researching another (indigenous) society, but about so called experts
giving advice for a better living in a country they don't know well.
This is so naïve, it is actually embarrassing. It is us who should
learn from them.</p>
<p class="" style="margin-bottom:0cm">Sorry for these harsh
words addressed to researchers that I respect a great deal. But nobody has made this critique so far. I
cringe at the idea that lessons are being learnt so we can do it
better next time. For me this project was politically and ethically
wrong. Digital technologies don't make localities disappear. Let's
please support p2p structures and the commons movements where we live
and where we struggle.</p>
<p class="" style="margin-bottom:0cm">
</p>
<p class="" style="margin-bottom:0cm">All best,
</p>
<p class="" style="margin-bottom:0cm">andreas</p><br></div>