anne scott - informing politics processes of feminist activitism in the information age

8/9/2019 Anne Scott - Informing Politics Processes of Feminist Activitism in the Information Age

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Womens Studies International Forum, Vol. 24, No. 3/4, pp. 409421, 2001Copyright 2001 Elsevier Science LtdPrinted in the USA. All rights reserved

0277-5395/01/$see front matter

PII S0277-5395(01)00171-6

409

Pergamon

(IN)FORMING POLITICS: PROCESSES OF FEMINISTACTIVISM IN THE INFORMATION AGE

Anne ScottDepartment of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Canterbury, Private Bag 4800,

Christchurch, New Zealand

Synopsis How is feminist activism changing in the information age? This article argues that the char-

acter, membership, and direction of activist movements can be strongly influenced by the nature of theeveryday, material practices through which their activities are conducted. It analyses some implicationsof recent developments in electronically mediated communications, arguing that these both create apressing need forand provide us with the means to createa diversified, transnational, feministmovement. Several issues arising from feminist deployments of information and communication tech-nology are explored. These include inequalities in access to these technologies, the need to developfeminist ways of working within electronically mediated networks, the problem of information over-load, and the issues raised for feminists by the ongoing commodification of information. 2001Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

INTRODUCTION

How should we understand feminist actionand feminist activism 1 in the information age?It has become commonplace to claim that weare living through a period of dramatic andfar-reaching sociotechnical changepartiallyinstigated by rapid developments in informa-tion and communication technology (ICT). Anumber of commentators have argued that theinformation revolution is transforming ourways of using information, of managing geo-

graphical and temporal boundaries, of commu-nicating, of experiencing our own corporeality,and of working with others. See, for example,the Information Age series by Manuel Cas-tells (1996, 1997, 1998), as well as SherryTurkles influential discussion of identity is-sues in relation to the new communicationstechnologies (Turkle, 1996). Traditional un-

derstandings of time, space, and place, theystate, are being remade (Adam, 1995; Castells,1996). If these claims are correct, it seems that,inevitably, the material basis of our social andpolitical activity will be transformed over thenext few years.

Id like to focus in this article on one partic-ular anglerelating to material, bodied, pro-cessin approaching the question with which Istarted. It is a truism to state that all events arerooted in particular times, places, and spaces.Social activism is thus a material and corporealprocess; it is bodied enmeshed in a set of so-ciotechnical artefacts, institutional networks,and everyday activities. 2 It is my argument thatthe shape and quality of this materiality influ-ences the ultimate success or failure of all so-cio-political movements. Moreover, it seemsthat material processes can act in subtle, andnot so subtle, ways to construct the character of these movements; I will argue in this articlethat this influence extends beyond peripheralmatters of process to substantive issues of po-litical ideology, leadership, and direction.

This article is based on three sources of em-pirical data, collected over a period of a year.These include interviews with five, British-based, feminist activists working on a nationalor international levelprimarily on issues re-

Earlier versions of this article were presented at the UKWomens Studies Network Conference (July 1999), theUniversity of Bradfords Gendering the globalisationdebate seminar series (Nov. 1999), and the University of Canterburys sociology seminar series (April 2000); thanks tothe participants at these events for their useful feedback.Thanks to Clare Beckett and Libby Wrighton for theirhelpful comments, and also to workshop participants at theOnline for Change? and the Women Connect conferences.


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lating to peace/war and violence againstwomen. Four of these activists make substan-tial use of electronic forms of communication;the fifth is currently challenging governmentabuses of this new technology. The interviewswere conducted in the summer of 1999. Mysecond source of information arises from anemail discussion list established, in late 1999,by the Women and Media working group, acollaborative effort by WomenAction and Wom-enWatch. 3 The Women-Media list devoted itsfirst few weeks to issues relating specifically tothe new communications technologies, generat-ing a lively international discussion. A thirdsource of data arises from my (research) in-volvement with Women Connecta CDF/LAproject which, in its first phase, linked 20womens organisations in a learning commu-nity with the aim of enabling women to useand shape the net together (Page & Scott,1999b).4 I have been working with one of theco-directors of Women Connect to address the-oretical issues arising from the project (Page &Scott, 2000), and have drawn on relevant expe-riences from it in this article. I have also beenassisted in my thinking by the discussion atthree conference workshops on feminist poli-tics and the Internet. 5

With the exception of the Women-Mediacontributions, all of my data has been British-basedalbeit some drawn from individualsand organisations engaged in international ac-tivism. One of my themes in this article will bethe interplay of the local and the global in con-temporary feminist activism. This article is, initself, an expression of this process; my con-cerns are transnational, but my perspective

and analysis have local origins.In this article, I want to consider four ques-

tions regarding process that may be helpful inthinking about feminist activism in the infor-mation age:

1. How do like-minded women find eachother, form cohesive networks, and becomemotivated enough to make necessary sacri-fices? On answers to this question hinge im-portant outcomes relating to the inclusivity

and direction of feminist movements, andeven to their very existence.2. How are spaces created in which these

groups of women can develop an ideology,coalesce into community, and formulateplans for material action? As Ruth Lister

has noted (Lister, 1997), citizenship as so-cial and political agencythe right to par-ticipationis a socially constructed andmaintained good; it requires time, space,money, sociocultural and material re-sources, and relative bodily safety.

3. How do social movements become, and re-main, visible to the wider world, and how isthis process now changing? Manuel Castellshas argued that . . . in a society organisedaround mass media, the existence of mes-sages that are outside the media is re-stricted to interpersonal networks, thus dis-appearing from the collective mind (1996,p. 336). The mutually constituting relation-ships of public and private, of centre andperiphery, and of global and local, areclosely tied up with this question.

4. How do social movements effect policychanges, influence decision makers, buildinstitutions, andmore generallybringabout sustainable social change?

In this article, I will first describe the theo-retical framework in which I am conceptualis-ing ICT as a technology. I will then relate three

stories from different historical eras, drawingout some of the ways in which a focus on tech-nologies can help us to answer the above ques-tions. After going on to argue that we need atransnational feminism that can address theconsequences of globalisation, I will go on todiscuss some issues that may arise in feministsuse of ICT. Finally, I will raise some concep-tual questions regarding the notion of infor-mation as it is currently being elaboratedwithin feminist practice.

WHAT IS TECHNOLOGY, AND WHYIS IT IMPORTANT?

Why should we look at process issues relatingto feminist activism with a particular focus ontechnology? An obvious danger in such aproject is that we might lapse into some formof technological determinism. This fallacy,however, rests on a technicist assumptionthat technologies are simply objects, or arte-

facts (Grint & Woolgar, 1997), and that thesethings are not, in themselves, contributing tothe performance of gender relations (Ormrod,1995). By contrast, I am conceptualising tech-nologies as networked processes. In this arti-cle, I will draw on Saskia Everts definition:


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Feminist Activism in the Information Age 411

What is to be called technology is the totalpackage of this artefact plus the organisa-tional, informational, and human contextsthat are required for its functioning. Takingthis into account, technology will be definedas the human-made artefacts/processes andtheir social contexts that are geared towardsenhancing human capabilities (Everts, 1998,pp. 56).

The heterogeneous engineering Evertsdescribes includes objects, social practices, or-ganisational structures, cultural values, and in-stitutional infrastructure. Like her, I will bedrawing on a modified version of actor net-work theory (Latour, 1993; Law & Hassard,1999). Actor network theory tends to draw ona discursive, if thoughtfully materialised, un-derstanding of power which, as CynthiaCockburn notes, conceptualises power interms of capacity rather than domination(Cockburn, 1992, p. 42). I think the theoryneeds to be modified to incorporate a notionof power as access to resources, or to varioustypes of capital (Weekes & MacDermott,1995; Skeggs, 1997).

It makes sense, therefore, to talk abouttechnosocial networks rather than technolo-gies; we can thus encompass both materialand discursive concerns. Technosocial net-works are a way of deploying social and cul-tural power (Latour, 1993). The operation of this power, however, looks very different whenviewed from the periphery, rather than thecentre:

By experience and affinity, some of us begin

not with Pasteur, but with the monster, theoutcast . . .. We have usually been the dele-gated to, the disciplined. Our selves are thusin two senses monstrous selves, cyborgs, im-pure, first in the sense of uniting split selvesand secondly in the sense of being that whichgoes unrepresented in encounters with tech-nology (Star, 1991, p. 29).

Drawing on the work of Bruno Latour andMichel Callon, Susan Leigh Star has described

the way heterogeneous interests can be pulledtogether into mini-empires, enrolling bothhuman and nonhuman actors into new tech-nosocial networks (Star, 1991). Once stabi-lised, these networks begin to shape our sociallandscape, grounding each and every social ac-

tion and movement. She (re)names as politicsby other means (Haraway, 1986) the processby whichtheir once divergent parts disci-plinedthese new networks are made stableand, seemingly, irreversible. Within these net-works, new sets of physical-social conventionsare established which, being unstable for non-members, also create new forms of marginal-ity. Stars point is that the new conventionsand practices associated with ICT may act tofurther marginalise or disadvantage women.This view has also been put forward by othercommentators (Green, Owen, & Pain, 1993;Morahan-Martin, 1998; Spender, 1995).

The information societyas a technoso-cial networkis taking shape before our eyes.On what terms are women being enrolled intothis network? In what ways are their needs andinterests being translated into new technocul-tural forms? What impact will the develop-ment of an information society have onthose women who are without access to hard-ware, software and training? How will femi-nists experience the process of social activismwithin this technosocial network? After all, asStar notes, Every enrolment entails both afailure to enroll and a destruction of the worldof the non-enrolled (Star, 1991, p. 49).

Although these questions are being ener-getically debated at the moment (Harcourt,1999a; Hawthorne & Klein, 1999; Spender,1995), I would like to suggest that many of theissues being raised are not new. In the nextsection, I will briefly describe the technosocialnetworks in which British feminists, in twoVictorian time periods, were operating. I willthen look at a contemporary example of femi-

nist activismthe Beijing conference of 1995.I will argue that we cannot maintain a firmseparation between the material processesthrough which activists work and the characterof the movements they create.

THREE FEMINIST MOMENTS

In early 19th-century Britain, some membersof the Owenite Socialist movement developedradical views on marriage/divorce, secularism,

the household, womens agency, and freelove (Scott, 1996; Taylor, 1983). Disseminat-ing these views, however, was not easy, and in-stitutionalising them within the British polityproved to be impossible. The generally plebe-ian Owenites werebarring a few privately


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printed pamphletslargely dependent onbodied communication in the form of publicmeetings, debates, and placarding. Most Owen-ites did not have the vote, independent capital,or direct access to policy makers. Thus, therewere very heavy costsin respectability,material comfort and bodily safetyfor womenengaging in thesometimes riotouspublicspeaking, 6 or living in the utopian communi-ties, which were the primary means of expres-sion for Owenite feminist politics.

Just 2 decades later, members of BritainsLangham Place Group were able to take ad-vantage of a newly enlarged print media, andthe newly developed postal and rail infrastruc-ture, to engage in lobbying and institutionbuilding (Lacey, 1987; Levine, 1994). 7 Easier,cleaner, and more respectable means of estab-lishing contact with potential colleagues, andof publicising womens concerns, had emerged;this period saw a large influx of upper andmiddle-class women into feminist activism(Levine, 1994; Shanley, 1993).

The Langham Place women possessed socialand cultural capital; 8 they were capable of act-ing at the level at which political and institu-tional power was held, and they took advan-tage of this to establish lasting, mainstream,institutions. They have been derided, however,for the conservatism, and for the class bias, of their social and political thought. Unlike themore colourful Owenite feminists, they did notgenerally discuss sexuality in public, did notpress for contraception, did not attempt to leg-islate for divorce on demand, did not challengethe precedence of Christianity and, certainly,they did not advocate dissolution of the nuclear

family. Their dependence on friendship/kinshipnetworks within the British middle and upperclasses, and on having articles published in elite journals, severely constrained their freedom of expression. The Owenite feminists, by contrast,drew larger crowdsand garnered more atten-tionwhen making controversial public state-ments on issues relating to sexuality, marriage,and religion. In these two feminist movements,then, technologies of communication were in-tegrally connected with the social background

of their most visible actors, their political out-look, and their ultimate effectiveness.Id now like to tell a story concerning the

UN Fourth World Conference on Womenheld, in 1995, in Beijing. This conference fol-lowed the strengthening of global feminist net-

works in the wake of the Nairobi UN confer-ence in 1985. As Alice Gittler notes:

The Beijing process differed from previouswomens world conferences in both scale andapproach. The global womens movementhad grown in numbers and influence. It hadbeen 10 years since the movement had cometogether on a global scale. Womens NGOswere determined to make their concerns anddemands known to governments and theworld, and to facilitate the participation of asmany women as possible in the process (Git-tler, 1999, p. 94).

The electronic media provided a set of toolsthat could make this happen. Women wereable to obtain draft versions of the Platform for

Action via email, gopher, conferencing, theWorld Wide Web, and fax. Regional caucuseswere held in every part of the world, withwomen drafting additions, deletions and amend-ments, circulating information, and mobilisingsupport. Gittler notes that NGOs in somecountries were better informed than their na-tional delegations: Discussions previously re-served for a few governmental delegates andobservers at the United Nations were nowopen to anyone able to access the medium(Gittler, 1999, p. 95). There were major prob-lems, of course. Many women did not have ac-cess to the equipment, reliable telephone lines,and Internet access needed to participate di-rectly. Much on-line information was availableonly in English. Those without direct access, orenough time of their own, had to rely on fil-tered information distributed by others.

Nevertheless, the events surrounding Beijingwere unprecedented. Thousands of womenwere able to participate in the UN process, tomake their voices heard, to use this event tomobilise support, and to lobby their own gov-ernments. Women who could not attend theconference could, nevertheless, follow proceed-ings (Harcourt, 1999b). There were 100,000 vis-its to the APCs Beijing Website, and the IWTCreached several hundred more groups by faxand e-mail (Gittler, 1999).

Feminists in many developing countries putgreat energy into organising around the Beijingconference, and they made their voices heardon the world stage in a way that was qualita-tively new (Gittler, 1999; Harcourt, 1999a). Inaddition to its major impact on the outcome of


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the main event, the NGO event which ranalongside the Beijing conference contributedto the development of a new global conscious-ness surrounding womens issues (Page, 1997;Harcourt, 1999b). Reverberations from thecommunications revolution in Beijing con-tinue to be felt. 9 Feminism can no longer be re-alistically presented as a white, middle-class,Western, phenomenon; some cyberfeministsargue that electronic communications have fa-cilitated the creation of a truly internationalfeminist movement. When discussing ICT forexample, Lourdes Arizpe recently suggestedthat Feminism has created a global room of our own (1999, p. xiv).

IS CYBERFEMINIST OPTIMISMJUSTIFIED?

Accounts like the one above are used by somecyberfeminists (Light, 1995; Pollock & Sutton,1999) to argue that ICT is an inherentlydemocratising technology (Scott, Semmens, &Willoughby, 1999). Clearly, ICT can providenew and powerful tools in relation to three of the process questions raised at the beginningof this article. It is now easier to make contactwith like-minded people (Korenman, 1999). Itis also easier to find information about an issuewhich, it might be said, should increase themotivation for activism. With the advent of web publishing, it is easier and cheaper tomake movements visible (Castells, 1997; Pat-tanaik, 1999). Safe discussion spaces can becreated; this is of particular benefit to womenliving in isolated places (Lennie, Grace, Daws,& Simpson, 1999). When discussing rural femi-

nist activism in Croatia, one of my respondentsnoted that, . . . the risk-taking, I think, isabout being in a small community . . . and whatpeople think of you within a small community(R2, 1999). For isolated feminist activists, thenational and international networks createdon the World Wide Web, or via the telephone,can be life-transforming (Arizpe, 1999).

If three conditions for successful activismare now easier to achieve, we have a seemingparadox. Why are social inequalities now wid-

ening? Why is poverty being feminised on aglobal scale (United Nations DevelopmentProgramme, 1999)? Why are women becomingrefugees and migrants in unprecedented num-bers (Pettman, 1996; United Nations Develop-ment Programme, 1999)? Why is a backlash

against womens reproductive freedoms inprocess (Bandarage, 1997; Berer & Ravindran,1996)? Although the process may be morecongenial, it is not clear that the contemporaryefforts of feminist activists are bearing morefruit than they have in the past. The fourthquestion I raised earlierhow do we influencethe actions of decision makersthus seems tobe the crucial one at this time.

ICT provides feminist activists with newand powerful tools, but like all technologies,these tools are, themselves , changing the sociallandscape in which they are used. In relationto reproductive technology, Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim has argued that technology isnever neutral:

the development of new reproductive technol-ogies not only produces new options, it alsoeradicates old ones; it creates not only free-doms, but also new pressures, controls and de-pendencies (Beck-Gernsheim, 1995, p. 22).

The argument also applies to ICT; newtechnologies act to shift social choices as muchas they act to enlarge them. They increase thecapabilities of different social groups by differ-ing amounts and in different ways, thus chang-ing the way power relations are expressed.

Technologies act reflexively, affecting thestructuring of their environment, and of them-selves, in complex and unpredictable ways; it isthus impossible, in principle, to foresee all theeffects of introducing a new technologicalpractice (Everts, 1998). The technosocial land-scape, in relation to ICT, is currently changingenormously quickly; as new (techno)practices

are introduced they are also, to paraphrase Su-san Leigh Stars earlier point (Star, 1995), de-stroying previously existing worlds.

Internet-based culture is acting, withoutdoubt, as standard bearer for a globalised, tech-nocratic society in which economic inequalitiesare widened, the space for local cultures is re-duced, American English is squeezing outother languages, human and environmental re-sources are ever more comprehensively ex-ploited, and the so-called democratic deficit

is becoming enormously problematic. Aftertwo centuries of work to widen the franchise,we now find economic, social, and culturalpower moving increasingly from the institu-tions of representative democracy to transna-tional financial institutions and TNCs (Jacobs,


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2000; Loader, 1997, 1998; Martin & Schumann,1996). The information society is not, for themost part, being developed by women . . . orwith womens needs foremost in mind. Sus-anna George, a contributor to WomenActionswomen-and-media list from Isis Interna-tional in Manila, drew an analogy with thegrowth of the colonial enterprise and its mani-festations:

These technologies open up routes for multi-national business transaction, and whateveralternative communications between socialmovements and individuals is in some senseslike the little canoes that flow on major wa-terways dredged for the movement of oiltankers . . .the challenge for us should en-compass some of the broader questions of control and hegemony, fully cognizant of therole of ICT in empire building of a differentsort (George: women-media, 1999).

Communications technologies may be help-ing to catalyse the development of a globalfeminist movement, but they are also facilitat-ing the worst aspects of globalisation.

With socio-economic power increasinglybeing held at transnational level, it is impera-tive that a transnational feminismwhich canact coherently and effectively at these levelsalso be developed. In this new politics of place we will, according to Wendy Harcourt,need to nurture and sustain our diverse localnetworks, but will also need a means by whichthey can tap into global networks (Harcourt,1999b). If we are to use ICT to build glocalpolitics, however, we must address several

thorny issues regarding equality of access toICT, relationship-building via the electronicmedia, and the nature and status of informa-tion. These will be the subjects of the nexttwo sections.

AN ICT PRACTICE FITFOR FEMINISTS . . .

As transnational feminist networks rely on theuse of electronic media, we must address the

serious inequalities in economic, social, andcultural power which restrict access to thesetechnologies. This has been a recurring themewithin the women-media list discussions. Sev-eral contributors noted that, particularly in ru-ral areas, many people still have little access to

reliable telephone lines. A second theme inthese discussions is that the predominance of English on ICT networks excludes speakers of other languages. Several contributorsfromIndonesia, Sri Lanka, Latin America, and sev-eral other regionsidentified this as the mostserious barrier faced by women in their locali-ties. Lack of appropriate training presents an-other barrier. The APC womens programmesurveyed 700 womens groups, world-wide, re-garding the obstacles to ICT use they faced;lack of appropriate training was identified as aproblem in all regions, while in Europe andNorth America it was the obstacle most oftencited (Farwell, Wood, James, & Banks, 1999).

The access problem does not relate sim-ply to individual womens ability to use thetechnology, but also to the capacity of womenas a groupto shape the emergingtechnology to their own approach and theirown ends (Cockburn, 1992; Scott et al., 1999;Star, 1991). As Awatef Ketiti notes, the factthat women find themselves part of a minor-ity elite in the world of technology makes itdifficult for them to make their presence felt,or to change its dominant practices (Ketiti:women-media, 1999). 10

The question of access is not, however, asstraightforwardly problematic as it may firstseem; economic resources do not, alone, deter-mine who makes use of ICT. Access problems,for example, have limited the development of ICT-based activism in otherwise well-con-nected Britain; one of my respondents notedthat, as not everybody has access to e-mail, thetelephone and fax are more inclusive forms of communication (R3: 1999). Most womens

NGOs in the urbanised areas of Indonesia, bycontrast, do use the Internetthe expense anddifficulty associated with other types of com-munication has been a powerful driver forchange (Liang: women-media, 1999). LuzMaria Martinez, of ISIS-International, notesthat women may be in the majority among In-ternet users in some of the more developedEast Asian countries (Martinez: women-me-dia, 1999). Feminist activists in the former Yu-goslavia were making use of the Internet by

the latter part of the 1980swell before mostemail networks developed in Western Europe.

When the war started [the Women in Black]all found that communication was cut off,and that they werent actually able to speak


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to each other. Quite crazy, because that isquite important . . . making links across bor-ders. Somewhere, somebody along the linethought of an email network. To becomepart of the network, you had to be an activistthat was interested in peace and against na-tionalism and all those things. They called itZamia, which means For peace, and itgrew to be really quite extensive acrossformer Yugoslavia (R2: 1999).

Feminist activists can be creative in findingways to acquire, adapt, and use the technolo-gies they needat least at basic levels. Al-though rightly struggling for universal access toICT and better translation services on the Web,we shouldnt allow ourselves to be pushed intopainting an oversimplified and homogenouspicture of womens exclusion, victimisation,and passivity in regards to ICT.

A second issue relates to the quality of work-ing relationships conducted, primarily, via elec-tronic networks: how do we create and maintainrelationships of trust when using less directlybodied forms of communication? Second-wavefeminists sloganeered that the personal and thepolitical could not be separated, and built organ-isational structures and practices which reflectedthis insight (Kaplan, 1996; Riordan, 1999; Rad-ford, 1995). Some of these practices must beamended when used with electronic forms of communication. This issue has been continuallyaddressed, for example, within Women Connect(Page & M. Scott, 1999a; Page & A. Scott, 2000).

Several of my respondents described difficul-ties in trying to conduct feminist politics on aninternational scale; how can working styles de-

veloped for local, personally mediated, groupsbe applied in networks spanning the globe?

I work out of an environment here in Glas-gow. You know, the women involved in thenetworks I work in . . . one of the networksWISEis into Scottish politics. And we takethat elsewhere. And certainly Im keyed intoa lot of other networks. But say a lesbianfriend in Belgrade . . . shes keyed into hernetwork in Belgrade or something . . . So its

an interpersonal relationship thing. If youdont know yourself you couldnt give your-self to someone else. And in the same way if youre not rooted in your own politics, inyour own locality, theres nothing to give,you know (R1: 1999).

Feminist activists must consider more thanthe size and output of activist networks; thetype of relationship-building they facilitate isalso important.

My respondents all argued that working re-lationships could not usually be sustained withtelecommunication links alone; a similar atti-tude emerged in members evaluations of Women Connect (Page & Scott, 1999a). Twoof my respondents (R1 and R2: 1999) de-scribed the regular use of peace camps to buildinterpersonal relationships amongst feministsusing the Internet to work on South-EasternEuropean issues. Another respondent (R3:1999) described a well-elaborated structure of local meetings, open meetings, and rotatingnational meetings to maintain interpersonalworking relationships in the Britain-wide Jus-tice for Women organisation. The women of the Menwith Hill peace camp make little useof e-mail, preferring to work together atground level (R5: 1999). Women Connect builtin face-to-face visits, training events and net-working days, particularly in the early stages of the project (Page & Scott, 1999a). As one ac-tivist relying heavily on e-mail noted, . . . itsthe friendship networks that underlie all this(R1: 1999).

Face-to-face meetings play a role in intro-ducing new members to the tacit, nonarticu-lated, knowledge grounding activist practice.One activist described problems arising whenwomen using ICT had missed out on a politicalapprenticeship in which they could learn di-rectly from their own experience, and fromthat of colleagues:

They can tap into email, or go to web pages.But it doesnt actually give them a deeperunderstanding of some of the issues that areinvolved. And Ive found that can be quiteproblematic. That in a meeting when you getwomen who are planning to do something,you actually have to deal with some of what Iwould say are quite basic issues and explainthem to people that appear to be, superfi-cially, quite well read around a particular is-sue (R2: 1999).

These concerns point to specific problems inintegrating the very different pacing of elec-tronic and relationship time (Adam, 1995).They also point to issues regarding space andplace: how can we integrate immersion in par-


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ticular places with inhabitance of the world as awhole? How do we create a transnational femi-nist community?

Elsewhere, Margaret Page and I have ar-gued that on-line communication is not enough,in itself, to create community. In our analysis of Women Connects learning community, we ar-gued that community is a verbsomethingwomen do which involves the development of shared projects, obligations and goals (Page &Scott, 2000). Thus, feminist community re-quires the development of commonality andshared perceptions . . . at least to the extent thatit becomes possible to work together.

Transnational feminism encompasses, bydefinition, ethnic, national, religious, sexual,and class differences. As numerous analystshave established, these social differences mayalso be inequalitiesconstituted within histor-ical relations of social domination (hooks,1990; Phillips, 1999; Plumwood, 1993). Thus, asUma Narayan has noted, good-will is notenough when working across difference(1988, p. 34). We must understand that mem-bers of differently located social groups maysee the world in strikingly variant ways; this isa difference of knowledgeof informationembodied in everyday, material, practice.

[People in oppressed groups] have epistemicprivilege when it comes to immediate knowl-edge of everyday life under oppression . . .They know first-hand the detailed and con-crete ways in which oppression defines thespaces in which they live and how it affectstheir lives (Narayan, 1988, p. 36).

Nira Yuval-Davis (1997) and Cynthia Cock-burn (1999) have suggested that transversalfeminism an approach that respects the irrec-oncilability of certain differencesmay permitstrategic and shifting alliances to be made acrossdifference. Although this approach is promising,it remains to be seen whether it will suffice forthe more extensiveand cohesivetransna-tional feminist practice which will be neededwhen addressing globalised policy formations.

RETHINKING INFORMATION

In a world where it is no longer rare or difficultto acquire, what is the nature, status, and valueof information? The sheer number of com-munications now possible can, in itself, change

the nature of feminist activism. One respon-dent returned from holiday to find over 1,000e-mails waiting for her (R4: 1999). Similar pres-sures were described by all of my respondents:

. . . its also created a lot of extra work.Thinking about how much time we all spendin front of the computer. And also theamount of crud that you get on email as well,which you have to filter through . . . its a bitlike housework, isnt it? (R2: 1999).

While in the fairly recent past a paucity of re-liable information and communications tendedto restrict feminist political activity, this situa-tion may now have been reversed. Paradoxi-cally, the speed and ease of telecommunica-tions can produce overloading, swallowing upthe time and leisure of information age activ-ists. This can actually block the political actionthe electronic networks were expected to facil-itate. At the beginning of the Kosovo war, forexample, ICT-based peace networks were or-ganising political action; as the war proceededlarge quantities of information began comingin, and the activist function of some networkswas, literally, squeezed out (R4: 1999).

Good information can facilitate the devel-opment of a coherent analysis that motivatesactivists and influences the wider world; on aday-to-day level, the ability to travel and com-municate across borders seems to be makingthis task substantially easier. The ability of Serbian and Kosovar women to work togetheron documenting and presenting instances of rape in war to the International War CrimesTribunal, for example, (R1: 1999) greatly in-

creased their credibility and effectiveness.The sheer amount of information generated

by electronic communications, however, canhinder the development of a coherent and co-hesive story. One effect, of course, has beento contribute to the fracturing of feminist ac-counts themselves. Feminism is now acknowl-edged by most commentators to be partial, di-verse, and fractured (Anzalda, 1990; Basu,1995; Mirza, 1997; Sebestyen, 1988; Wieringa,1995). As the globalisation of feminism under-

mines the liberal individualist assumptions onwhich Euro-American feminists once relied,this diversity is increasing.

As one respondent noted, information canbe a trap (R5: 1999). The need to collect andverify endless streams of information can de-


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mand time and energy. Expectations are beingraised, moreover, in regard to the quantity andquality of information needed before a plausi-ble case can be said to exist. As one respon-dent noted, people want more and more infor-mation before taking action. But there is apoint at which one has enough information toact; the acquisition of more information be-yond this point can be confusing and paralys-ingand can actually block the taking of ef-fective action (R5: 1999).

One respondent described activism as in-volving three legs of a triangle. The first leg isaction direct, practical, effective, and nonvio-lent. Information is the second leg; it is neces-sary to get good information to the people whocan make best use of it. She described the thirdleg as spirituality ; thoughts, feelings and careplay a crucial role in the ultimate success of any movement (R4: 1999). The problem, asshe saw it, is that our new-found facility withthe collection and transfer of information hasled us to overemphasise the second leg of thetriangle, at the expense of the two other, morebodied, elements. This point has been echoedby Pi Villanueva, a contributor to the women-media list from ISIS-International in Manila,who argued that:

The greatest technology we need to preventfrom becoming corrupted by the transna-tional grip is our own minds. The electronicextension of that only assists, if we dontmentally pay into the trap of that grip (Vil-lanueva: women-media, 1999).

Information cannot, on its own, accomplish

anything. It must be grounded, and used ,within a context of strong relationships, withpurpose and direction, and with a sense of carefor colleagues, and the movement as a whole(R4: 1999).

Finally, feminists may need to rethink theprocess of informationalisation itself. We areliving through a period of aggressive capital ac-cumulation, in which the body is being informa-tionalised while information is, relentlessly, be-ing commodified. As Pi Villanueva notes:

There is one thing that is common to allwomen in this day and age of digitization andminiaturization. We are all being mined forinformation. The books that we write, the artthat we create, down to the genetic level of

our being. It does not matter where we live,what we do; womens bodies are being minedfor the minutest information that can be digi-tized, databased, copyrighted, and sold forprofit (Villanueva: women-media, 1999).

The body, which was once seen within En-lightenment ideologies as private, must beunderstood very differently in the light of bio-informatics, the new reproductive technolo-gies, ICT technology, and the development of virtual reality. Donna Haraway has analysedthis trend in detail, arguing that:

For us, the living world has become a com-mand, control, communication, intelligencesystem (C3I in military terms) in an environ-ment that demands strategies of flexible ac-cumulation . . . Not only does metaphor be-come a research program, but also, morefundamentally, the organism for us is an in-formation system and an economic system of a particular kind (Haraway, 1997, p. 97).

Information, whether it relates to so-calledpublic concerns, or to the intimate realmsof sexuality and reproduction, has become acommodity. Arguments that the Internet is ademocratising space, or even a new publicsphere, have been invoked by someprima-rily male, white and North Americancom-mentators on the information society (Brown-ing, 1996; Schuler, 1996; Rheingold, 1994);these optimistic views, however, assume theexistence of an intellectual commons that re-mains separate from private and particular in-terests. 11 In our globalised, privatised, world,

this commons does not exist; many feministcommentators would argue, in fact, that itnever has existed (Harding, 1998; Lloyd, 1984;Oakley, 2000).

Feminist activists have, historically, beenheavily orientated towards creating and dis-seminating information. Does information,however, mean something qualitatively new inthe heavily commodified information soci-ety we now inhabit? If so, feminist informa-tion work may produce unexpected results. It

is not yet clear what might be the conse-quences of participatingon the old termsina historically unprecedented situation. CynthiaGehrie, one contributor to the WomenActionwomen-media list, noted that the sharing of knowledge between women is nothing new:


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