Re: [ox-en] Free Software and social movements in South America
- From: Rafael Evangelista <rae unicamp.br>
- Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2007 12:45:55 -0300
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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