Φυλλο

Φυλλο

Πέμπτη 21 Ιανουαρίου 2016

Some thoughts on the article: CLUES. ANOMALIES. UNDERSTANDING..... DIGITAL HUMANITIES THROUGH THE AIME PROJECT

A very interesting article

I want to add some thoughts which center around the access and agency of the audience



1. AIME is a very special Digital Humanities project which  combines mediums with very different penetration to audiences:
a) one part of the digital platform is very easily accessible in many places around the globe. No cost
b) there is another part (the one that includes the digital version of the book and the commentary system etc) which needs fast computers and fast connections. Although it is still no cost accessibility in reasonable ways is smaller
c) there is the printed version of the book. It costs. It is probably accessible through e-shops outside the big centers
d) f2f workshops . The mose excusive and expensive (and still very important)
So there are many audiences, the way AIME was structured, of which full participation fits only to the few that could also participate in the workshops.

This change of the size of the audience, of the accessibility of the different components of the project is not really considered when anomaly family #1 is discussed. It should be taken account that the more demanding medium (f2f meetings) was not covered through redundancy by other mediums but "a huge role was also played by the face-to-face meetings, mainly aimed at discussing, accompanying, and encouraging contributions on the platform. Comparing reading and contribution activity of the platform overall and the project events agenda, it seems that the digital platform activity was correlated with the AIME workshops and events agenda."

It should be noted that this was not something obvious form the start (that f2f workshops would be that crucial)

I am not sure how this reliance on f2f workshops could be dealt otherwise. In the article I read that"co-inquirers should have known the main inquiry narrative by having read the report (traditional humanities literacy skills)". This is a big underestimation of the difficulties that the text presented at least to "practitioners" which was one of the intended audiences.
To my understanding the book was demanding "conceptual change" from the part of the readers of the most demanding part. Using the terminology of M. Chi (Chi, M.T.H. (2008). Three types of conceptual change: Belief revision, mental model transformation, and categorical shift. In S.
Vosniadou (Ed.), Handbook of research on conceptual change (pp. 61-82). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum) there was a demand for many categorical shifts.
I mean that practitioners were asked to assess what were the principal values of their endeavors (and not just play with some intellectual curiosity) and the new description was way different from their habits of mind. It would not perhaps be difficult to claim that some of the description was somehow similar to their practice, or covered some aspects of their practice. But it is very different to ask them to assess whether what was really valuable for them was faithfully represented (on the way they had to accept such difficult to swallow proposals like overcomming the subject-object division, change their understanding of what matter is, feel entities around them exhale morality like ferormones etc)

Furthermore the use of the "AIME protocol" (a " a strict protocol ") is central in participating in the inquiry. I think the term refers to two things: the protocol needed in order to validate that a real "crossing of modes" was reported and the protocol that refers to the way this was to be registered in the digital platform. However participants in anthropology usually have to be trained in the correct use of protocols, except if following the protocol is obvious. (was it THAT obvious? Especially the part that had to do with identifying mode crossing or proposing amendments?). So I think that there is a further filtering of the audience here. (It would be interesting to see the statistics relative to the profiles of the contributors. Could they be considered representative of the connunities that were to work as sources of "informants"?)

Indeed time and discussion (which was mainly done in f2f workshops) is needed for such demanding learning situations (I know "learning" is not the proper word, because the AIME approach may not have  the goal of being systematized like a scientific theory and anyway it is a project in progress; but there is a similar demand even to achieve "communication" that is worth its name).  To do this in a way fitting to digital humanities would mean I think appropriation of techniqes from the blended learning community

(The issue is not insignificant in my opinion. I think that one of the most important audiences of such a project is European Muslims. I think that it offers to many of them an opportunity to approach modernity in a way that is much more friendly to parts of their cultural heritage than are many other presentations of modernity. I wonder if this project managed to become accessible to them)


2. I think that in this article the agency of the audience can be highlighted in a stronger way. It is not only the issue of authorhip of contributions or demands for open access. I think that what is described as built-in expectations (which presents the audiences in a pathetic way) may also be cosnidered (in  a project which present itself as open to change) as suggestions for improvement, an expression of the agency of the audiences who want to have a say on what are the significant themes in the inquiry and how the inquiry should proceed. (Obligations lead to rights: if participants put a lot of work to the project they may expect their opinions to be better represented)

As far as I feel it, there is an "uncertain" dealing with the audience perhaps throughout this project and in this article as well. The audience is called to be free and constrained in a way that is ambivalent.

  • "Eventually, they were encouraged to propose a “contribution” to the inquiry by attaching to one part of existing content a production of their own in order to amend/expand the original PI work (philosophy and anthropology-related skills)." My opinion is that this system although described as symmetrical (amend/expand) it was very unsymmetrical. It was like a ratchet (http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/I_46.html). It was far more easy to expand (with an example) than amend (point a difficulty in construction) or even support amendment (ask for a clarification). The ratchet worked towards the production of supprting examples.
  • " the AIME contribution activity is indeed somehow perturbing: it could be framed, on the one hand, as an open reviewing process where co-inquirers propose modifications and improvements," but was the actual percentage of contributions that could count as modifications and improvements (And not added examples) significant ? 


3.AIME must not be the sole ethnography of the moderns. However all ethnographies of the moderns are taking place in places with lots of means. As an experiment in Digital Humanities one might expect AIME to be  accompanied by digital bridges with other "centers of ethnography of the moderns".

Finally I want to express my admiration for the team that produced the AIME work and the article. They are pushing against all kinds of difficulties, bringing forth the need for real politics, doing important work in different branches of science, going against different political correct views and economic interests (the latter ones must not have understood the meaning of the work or it would not be funded I think)
"With [many]  voices singing in [their] ears, saying
That this was all folly."






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