<div dir="ltr">Dear Michel,<div><br></div><div>pls find my responses in between your reply.</div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Jul 7, 2014 at 9:49 PM, Michel Bauwens <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:michel@p2pfoundation.net" target="_blank">michel@p2pfoundation.net</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div>dear Andreas,</div><div><br></div><div>nobody has made that critique, on the contrary, about every postmodern scholar has made it ..</div>
</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>When I said that this critique has not been made I was obviously referring to the thread of this list and not to post-modern literature. Of course this critique bas been made excessively by post-modern scholars. I am very far from post-modernist thinking, but I have never come across any literature that dismisses this argument as superficial, as you do here. Maybe you can elaborate?</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div><br></div><div>it is in my opinion a quite superficial critique ..</div>
<div><br></div><div>the flok was not about a bunch of foreign experts advising people what to do at all</div><div><br></div><div>it was a process that combined input from local civic groups (70 at least, 24 seminars ect ..) and global commoners</div>
</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>hm, this is not how flok has been introduced originally on various platforms. All the hype was about the p2p foundation being asked by the Ecuadorian government to develop a plan for a transition of Ecuador's society and economy towards p2p structures. It is a bit pointless to change the story now. So my comments refer to the reading of these first announcements.</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr">
<div><br></div><div>at the invitation of the local government, which sees itself as anti-colonialist</div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>It doesn't matter much how the government sees itself, when it does not have the trust of the people. Isn't this an obvious point?</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div><br></div><div>originally the project was meant to combine 7 foreigners and 7 local researchers ..</div>
<div><br>
</div><div>the foreigners in case were not experts dispatched by MNO's but activists</div><div><br></div><div>if calling a coworking between local and global commoners as 'colonialist' then the only other solution is pure localism</div>
</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>I have not used the term colonial but post-colonial. There is a huge difference between these two concepts.</div><div>Again, what is now presented as co-working and dialogical has earlier been presented in much more ambitious terms as helping to create a better Ecuadorian society.</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr">
<div><br></div><div>there was ndio research from outsiders of indigenous society ... the indigenous scholars wrote their own paper</div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>I have not suggested that this was research on indigenous people. I have pointed out that it is naive and arrogant for researchers in the west to fly in a country they don't know very well with a very high percentage of indigenous people to advice them on buen conocer. Isn't it rather ironic that westerners advice a country with a strong indigenous population on how to do the sharing economy?</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div><br></div><div>that is not to say the flok can not be critiqued for colonialist or post-colonial elements, but this requires a bit more than just blanket condemnation because foreigners are involved,</div>
</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Again you are misreading what I said. I was not talking about foreigners, but about western research in and advice for non-western spaces.</div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div dir="ltr">
<div><br></div><div>it's a kind of atavistic reaction, not a critique I would say, based on a very superficial understanding of the project</div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>You are right that I don't have a detailed understanding of the flok project. For this reason I hesitated to comment in the first place. I would have kept my mouth shut had I not been worried about the evaluation of flok on this thread. It is less the failed project itself that makes me nervous than a certain refusal to question its political and moral integrity. I detect lots of enthusiasm to try this again, but better. And lots of blaming individuals involved with bad intentions. However I don't see much humble reflexivity and self-critique.</div>
<div><br></div><div>While I don't have any intimate knowledge of flok I do know a thing or two about ethnographic research, and I am convinced that these things can be applied to flok and its evaluation.</div><div>The first thing I know is that it is important to think about research in relation to power. Usually it is a bad idea if the invite to do research or consultancy comes from those who are in power (e.g. the government).</div>
<div>The second thing I know is that it is highly problematic to speak for others and to tell people in environments unfamiliar to the researcher how to improve things.</div><div><br></div><div>Michel, I don't doubt your good intentions for a minute. But good intentions cannot replace the more fundamental questions I am raising. As I said I find it quite worrying that nobody else on this list has raised them. You don't do the p2p-foundation a favour if you dismiss them as an atavistic reaction.</div>
<div><br></div><div>best,</div><div>andreas</div></div></div></div>