Information Cosmopolitics: An Actor-Network Theory Approach to Information Practices

By Edin Tabak

Information Cosmopolitics explores interaction between nationalist and information sharing practices in academic communities with a view to understanding the potential impacts of these interactions. This book is also a resounding critique of existing theories and methods as well as the launching point for the proposition of an alternate approach. Dominant approaches in the Information Behaviour (IB) field are investigated, as well as questions existing theoretical approaches to nationalism and cosmopolitanism. The concept of information cosmopolitics is introduced as an approach for tracing information practices and enabling research participants to perform their own narratives and positionings, and that the focus of information studies should be on tracing the continuous circulation of processes of individualisation and collectivization.

• Provide an alternative to the dominant approaches in the field of Information Behaviour
• Offers a novel theoretical model to trace information practices
• Questions existing approaches to nationalism and cosmopolitanism

• Language: English
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Release date: Mar 19, 2015
• ISBN: 9780081001288

Edin Tabak

Edin Tabak is an EU Marie Curie Fellow at University of Zenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Before this, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Internet Studies at Curtin University in Perth, Australia, where he has completed his PhD in 2012. His research interests include actor-network theory, information practices, and digital humanities. He taught social networks in the School of Media, Culture and Creative Arts at Curtin University, and has published a textbook Information Behaviour at the University of Zenica, where he has founded courses on Information Behaviour and Digital Humanities.

Book preview

Information Cosmopolitics

An Actor-Network Theory Approach to Information Practices

Edin Tabak

Table of Contents

Cover image

Title page

Copyright

List of figures and tables

Figures

Tables

About the author

Foreword

Acknowledgements

1. Introduction

The bridge of civilisations

Rude awakening

The focus and structure of the book

2. Theory and practice: Jumping between different frames of references

Many approaches to nationalism and cosmopolitanism

Space and time in studies on nationalism and cosmopolitanism

User-centred paradigm in research of information practices

Centrality of context

Gap between theory and practice

3. Actor-network theory: An alternative approach

Actor, network, theory, without forgetting the hyphen

Sociology of associations

Plugging into nationalism and cosmopolitanism

Information cosmopolitics

4. Setting up the fieldwork

Following the actors in the field

Following the actors: Latour’s circulatory system

5. The fieldwork

Mobilisation of the world

Autonomy

Alliances

Public representation

Links and knots

Summary

6. Some patterns in participants’ information practices

7. Information cosmopolitics: A model of information practices

In-scription

De-scription

Contextualisation

Standardisation

Invitation to perplexity

8. Propositions instead of conclusions: Yet another invitation to perplexity

References

Index

Copyright

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Notices

Knowledge and best practice in this field are constantly changing. As new research and experience broaden our understanding, changes in research methods, professional practices, or medical treatment may become necessary.

Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in evaluating and using any information, methods, compounds, or experiments described herein. In using such information or methods they should be mindful of their own safety and the safety of others, including parties for whom they have a professional responsibility.

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ISBN: 978-0-08-100121-9

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List of figures and tables

Figures

Tables

About the author

Dr Edin Tabak is an EU Marie Curie Fellow at University of Zenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina, working on the project Information Behaviour in Digital Humanities. Before this, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Curtin University in Perth, Australia, where he completed his PhD in 2012. His research interests include information behaviour, social aspects of information system design, research management and politics of information practices. More recently, he has been exploring the emerging field of digital humanities and possibilities to align the insights from the research on information practices to digital humanities projects. He was an author of several publications in prestigious international journals such as Journal of Association for Information Science and Technology, Journal of Library & Information Science Research and British Journal of Sociology. He taught Internet Communities and Social Networks in the School of Media, Culture and Creative Arts at the Curtin University and has published a textbook Information Behaviour at the University of Zenica, where he has founded the courses on information behaviour and digital humanities. He was also acting as a member and a Chair of committees in a number of international academic conferences.

Foreword

Associate Professor Michele Willson, Head of the Department of Internet Studies, Curtin University, Perth, Australia

It was with pleasure that I approached the writing of this foreword: Information Cosmopolitics is an ambitious and innovative book. Simply described, Information Cosmopolitics explores interaction between nationalist and information sharing practices in academic communities (specifically within a university in Bosnia; a region that has experienced dramatic expressions of nationalist fervour) with a view to understanding the potential impacts of these interactions. However, this book is much more than an empirical study; it is also a resounding critique of existing theories and methods as well as the launching point for the proposition of an alternate approach. The author challenges dominant approaches in the information behaviour (IB) field, as well as questions existing theoretical approaches to nationalism and cosmopolitanism. He suggests current approaches within nationalism and within IB studies fail to adequately consider the breadth, extent and implications of participants’ practices and therefore reveal an inaccurate or partial picture.

As an alternative, the author introduces the concept of information cosmopolitics as an approach for tracing information practices and enabling research participants to perform their own narratives and positionings. The concept of cosmopolitics developed by Isabelle Stengers, combined with a relational approach derived from actor-network theory (ANT), is adopted into the formulation of a model and an approach that understands information practices as ‘a continuous circulation of negotiation (thus politics) between heterogeneous (human and nonhuman) actors in the process of composing a common world (a cosmos), constantly redefined by the circulation in which individual and collective exchange properties’. In this formulation, context is not seen as a container for information users but instead as an effect of the users’ own contextualisation. Nor is the individual conceptualised as an isolated mind involved in making sense of the outside world. The author suggests that instead of trying the ‘impossible task’ of revealing the social or cognitive forces behind individual information practices, the focus of information studies should be on tracing the continuous circulation of processes of individualisation and collectivisation through which users and context are provisionally constructed. Information cosmopolitics is one approach to doing so.

The book employs ANT to sketch an alternative projection for the study of nationalism and cosmopolitanism. The author claims that the positioning of theoretical approaches to nationalism and cosmopolitanism research within a continuum between particularism and universalism understandings generates a gap between theory and practice as it forces researchers to adopt a prior position before any empirical study is undertaken. He argues that these approaches understand a nation or a cosmos as a union of its members, whereas ANT more usefully conceptualises it as an intersection. The ‘union’ projection presents any social group as ‘something that holds us together’; the ANT projection sees it as ‘something that is held together’. Consequently, in the union projection, nation or cosmos is seen as a stable entity despite frequent replacements of its parts as the unity and durability is provided by the projection (union) itself. In contrast, the proposed alternative projection illuminates the hard work that numerous and heterogenous actors perform to maintain unity and identity. It allows us to see why a nation or a cosmos has to be constantly reinvented in order to maintain its identity as the imbrication of events, actions and individuals (or more accurately, to use ANT terminology, actants) forces the intersection to change its shape and size. The author argues that we should focus on these processes of reinvention as they illuminate the means of construction and reproduction of nation and cosmos (and in the process, reveal fragile connections that provide an empirical traceability between individual actions and the construction sites of nationalism and cosmopolitanism).

These understandings emerge out of a rigorous analysis of existing literatures in the IB and nationalism fields of research, and through the undertaking of field work with academics in Bosnia. The juxtaposition of a series of narrative episodes detailing the various intersections of information sharing practises and nationalist or cosmopolitan understandings and actions, alongside an exploration of the evolving model of information cosmopolitics is insightful. This enables the reader to appreciate the complexity and fluidity of information sharing behaviours and the ways in which nationalism and associated understandings and practices (as one of many influences) might impact upon these.

The book thus presents a multidisciplinary study, and as such it will be of interest to scholars working across wide range of fields, including information science, politics and science communication. Since it heavily draws on theoretical insights from science and technology studies, it will benefit the readership from this field as well. However, the book will primarily appeal to the researchers and students in library and information science, and it is particularly relevant to those working in the IB field. The proposed approach and model of information practices provides important theoretical and methodological contributions to this field. The concept of information cosmopolitics is based on ANT, which enables accounting for a range of heterogeneous actors involved in information practices. By extending agency to non-humans and focusing on relations between entities rather than on entities themselves, information cosmopolitics offers an alternative to the user-centred and context-centred approaches that dominate IB field.

As you read this book, you may find that the book itself could be described as a circulation of information cosmopolitics. It starts with the author’s personal reflections on cosmopolitan life in the former Yugoslavia during the 1980s and his bewilderment about the rise of an extreme nationalism among a large part of Yugoslav academic community during the Balkan wars in 1990s. This perplexity is described as the trigger for his project investigating the impact of nationalism on information sharing practices amongst Bosnian academics. The author utilised the ANT conceptual tools to ‘de-scribe’ the field data into his concept of information cosmopolitics. These individual interpretations were attached to the context of information studies and studies on nationalism and cosmopolitanism, resulting in a new model to trace information practices and providing a sketch for an alternative projection to study practices of nationalism and cosmopolitanism. Finally, the end of the book offers propositions rather than conclusions. These do not provide certainty but instead offer a provisional closure to the initial perplexity. In this way, the author intentionally makes the limitations of his approach clearly visible, inviting us explicitly towards further inquiries. He argues that the contributions of this book (as any other book) depend on the perplexity it creates amongst readers, and through that process ‘generates interests to be attached to a different context’. I hope that Information Cosmopolitics will generate such interest amongst its readers.

The author of Technically Together: Rethinking Community within Techno-Society

Acknowledgements

My first and most sincere acknowledgement go to Michele Willson, without whose assistance and support this book would not have been possible. I would also like to express my deep appreciation to Matthew Allen, Diane Sonnenwald and Jim Underwood for their thoughtful and constructive suggestions on earlier versions of the text. I wish to acknowledge the study participants, including all those who wanted to remain anonymous, for their willingness to share their experiences. I cannot name all of them here, but I am sure that Damir Kukić, Radoslav Drašković, Goran Opačić, Esad Delibašić and Enes Prasko will recognise their voices in this book. I am grateful to the publisher Dr Glyn Jones for the opportunity to undertake this project. Special thanks to George Knott, Acquisitions Editor, for his enthusiasm for the project, and to Harriet Clayton, Editorial Project Manager, for her guidance throughout the production process.

Some of the material in Chapters 2 and 4 have previously been published as Tabak, E. (2014), Jumping between users and context: A difficulty in tracing information practices, Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 65(11), 2223–32, and as Tabak, E. and Willson, M. (2012), A non-linear model of information sharing practices in academic communities, Library & Information Science Research, 34(2), 110–16. Some parts of Chapters 2 and 3 will appear as ‘Downloading plug-ins for nationalism and cosmopolitanism’ in a forthcoming issue of British Journal of Sociology. I gratefully acknowledge permission from Elsevier and John Wiley & Sons to reproduce the above material. I am also grateful to Harvard University Press: Figure 4.1 is reprinted by permission of the publisher from Pandora’s hope: essays on the reality of science studies by Bruno Latour, p. 100, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, Copyright © 1999 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.

1

Introduction

The departure point for this book was my bewilderment about extreme nationalism among a large part of the academic community in Yugoslavia during the Balkan wars in 1990s. This chapter provides a personal reflection on the cosmopolitan life in Yugoslavia during the 1980s and the subsequent period of the rude awakening in the early 1990s, in order to make clear my bias and my motivations for this study. It provides the context for the book that investigates the impact of nationalism and cosmopolitanism on information practices in academic communities and explores the ways in which we might study these practices.

Keywords

Nationalism; cosmopolitanism; Yugoslavia; Bosnia; scholarly communication; information practices

One of the great debates of our time is related to the question of identity in an increasingly globalised world, involving disputes between particularism of nationalism and universalism of cosmopolitanism. Some authors claim that new communication networks offer a liberatory power to escape the constraints of traditional understandings of identity as fixed and determined, and have the potential to create new post-national political forms. Others argue that the insecurity of contemporary globalisation reinforces the need for stronger national identities. Few institutions are challenged as strongly as contemporary universities by these processes. Being both ‘places for teaching universal knowledge’ and ‘important national cultural institutions’ for two centuries, they are profoundly affected by ‘changes brought about by the Internet and information technology, with the issues of globalization, the welfare state, the nation state, etc.’ (Kwiek, 2001, p. 29). However, the influence of these processes on scholars’ information practices was not a focus of information behaviour (IB) research. This book investigates the impact of nationalism and cosmopolitanism on information sharing in academic communities, based on the fieldwork conducted at Bosnian university. As such, the book is about the influence of politics on information practices. But it is also about the ways in which we might study these practices. The book questions the major theoretical perspectives in IB research field and offers an alternative approach to trace information practices, informed by actor-network theory (ANT).

The departure point for the book was my bewilderment about extreme nationalism displayed by a large part of the academic community in Yugoslavia during the Balkan wars in 1990s. This chapter provides a personal reflection of that period in order to make clear my bias and my motivations for this study. The first section reflects on the cosmopolitan life in Yugoslavia during the early 1980s. The second section describes my perplexity about the rise of nationalism in the late 1980s and the involvement of Yugoslav scholars in the Balkan wars during the 1990s. Finally, the last section discusses the focus and structure of the book.

The bridge of civilisations

The last few decades have been marked, on one side, with the end of the Cold War, the rapid development of information technology, and a hope that these processes will lead to the creation of larger transnational communities such as the European Union (EU), and on the other side, ‘regional struggles in the former Yugoslavia, the former Soviet Union, Ireland, the Basque region, Belgium and elsewhere indicate tendencies toward new and smaller national units’ (Poster, 2006, p. 76). For some, the fall of the Berlin Wall meant ‘the end of history’ (Fukuyama, 1992). For others, this was merely a replacement of the iron curtain of ideology with curtains of cultures that would ultimately lead to ‘the clash of civilizations’ (Huntington, 1996). The events of September 11 and subsequent ‘wars on terror’ may have played in favour of the latter argument, but political discussions in the last few decades were dominated by both arguments. While Beck (2004) claims that these arguments are simply two faces of western universalism (one focusing on the sameness, the other emphasising otherness), they are commonly distinguished as universalist and particularist arguments.

For those of us in Yugoslavia, this debate started in 1980s in the background of emerging problems that would gradually lead to the Balkan wars in 1990s. The death of Tito (a leading unification figure), the first protests in Kosovo, and later economic crises have all challenged a Yugoslav version of ‘unity in diversity’ and ‘socialism with the human face’. While those with universalist arguments, similarly to Fukuyama (1992), claimed that only liberal democracy and a free market would solve Yugoslav problems, those with the particularist arguments claimed that ‘the clash of civilisations’ was inevitable, as they challenged Yugoslavia as an ‘artificial creation’. But all these challenges were still in the background. In the foreground, Yugoslavia seemed to be in a ‘never better shape’ for the larger part of 1980s. We hosted the Olympic Games in Sarajevo in 1984, and the 1980s were seen as the ‘golden age’ of specific Yugoslav rock’n’roll. While we were aware of those background problems and the fragility of this ‘artificial beauty’, my generation was focusing on the foreground. We were having the time of our lives. We were fully conscious that we were the ‘lucky generation’ being in right place at the right time. For us, ‘for this specific last Yugoslav generation, the 1980s were a period of freedom, of a liberal form of socialism, of a position between the East and the West’ (Volcic, 2009, p. 12).

The position between the East and the West was probably the most important pillar of Yugoslav identity: not only that Yugoslavia did not take a side in the Cold War, but as a leader and a founder of Non-Aligned Movement, it was very active in building the peace between the two sides. Such a position was at the same time an identity marker (nor East nor West) that differentiated us from both sides, and a universalist position (both East and West). Yugoslav culture was acclaimed in European circles, and large international movie, theatre and music festivals were held in Yugoslavia. This trend of openness and identification with a European cosmopolitanism ‘was re-enforced by rising living standards, unrestricted freedom to travel and armies of western tourists frequenting the Adriatic cost’ (Draskovic, 2010, p. 80). At the same time, Yugoslav culture was also very popular in Eastern Europe, the USSR and China. The movie about socialist revolution and antifascist struggle Walter Defends Sarajevo was probably the most popular movie in China ever (Levi, 2007).

The position between the East and the West was particularly strong in Bosnia. We were never tired of explaining this unity of diversity and showing how only in Bosnia can you find Orthodox and Catholic churches, Jewish synagogues and Muslim mosques leaning on each other, and standing in beautiful harmony for centuries. Bosnia was a place, unlike any other in Europe, in which the great religions and great powers combined: ‘the empires of Rome, Charlemagne, the Ottomans and the Austro-Hungarians, and the faiths of Western Christianity, Eastern Christianity, Judaism and Islam’ (Malcolm, 2002, p. xix). We have seen Bosnia as a ‘bridge of civilisation’, and this view had been strengthened by identity markers of the last Yugoslav generation, such as liberal form of socialism, unity in diversity, specific brand of rock culture and free education (Volcic, 2007).

The turning point in the liberalisation of Yugoslav socialism was the fall of the conservative fraction of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (LCY) in the early 1960s. Soon after that Yugoslavia ‘became the poster child of socialism’ (Draskovic, 2010, p. 84). Yugoslavia gained considerable financial help from the West, and its corporations became competitive by western standards. The last travel restrictions had been lifted and open borders brought tourists from western countries, which resulted in rising income and living standards. There were few restrictions on intellectual freedom besides those directly related to the principles of the Yugoslav socialist system and the role of Yugoslav leadership. As a result, there were a number of papers, magazines, books, films, and television programmes which could not be distinguished from those in western countries (Pervan, 1978, p. 164).

Only a few years later, two movements even challenged the system and the leadership. The Praxis School was a Marxist movement that based its philosophy on the writing of young Marx and existentialist philosophy. Two basic activities of the movement were journal Praxis that was regularly published between 1965 and 1973, and running the Korcula Summer School, an annual symposium that was a meeting place for established philosophers and social critics including Erich Fromm, Jürgen Habermas, Herbert Marcuse, Ernest Bloch, Eugen Fink, Henri Lefebvre and Richard Bernstein. With this mix of existentialist and Marxist philosophy, the Praxis school was a major actor in the liberalisation of Yugoslav socialism.

The second movement was the student movement of 1968, which was almost a mirror of other students’ movement in the world in 1968. The important difference was that the Yugoslav student movement had no ambitions to change the system, but it rather urged implementations of the system’s proclaimed goals and principles. Puhovski (as cited in Karabeg, 2008) claims that both the Yugoslav and global student movements were failures in their primary intentions. For him, after 1968, socialism ceased to exist as an alternative idea for the West, while in Yugoslavia, 1968 could be marked as the beginning of the end of Yugoslavia. However, Puhovski also argues that the ideas of students completely changed the everyday life of generations to come. Everyday life changed on many levels from clothes and sexual freedom to popular culture. Life became more casual, hedonistic and universal. This ‘youth culture of 1968 brought us even closer to the world through rock music, demonstrations, books and the English language’ (Drakulic, 1993, p. 50).

Yugoslav identity has been built on a principle of ‘brotherhood and unity’, similar to the EU’s principle of ‘unity in diversity’ (Volcic, 2009). It was a collective statement that supported unification and at the same time respected diversity. While the modern Yugoslavia had emerged from WWII as a centralised country in 1945, the break-up with Soviet Union and Stalin in 1948 had enabled gradual decentralisation through the constitutions in 1963 and 1974. In the early 1980s, more than a quarter of the total population was made up of ethnically mixed marriages and their children (Petrović, 1985). These ‘ethnically mixed marriages, like their offspring, have always represented the most natural bridge over incited hatred, intolerance, disagreement, animosity, xenophobia, and the gap created in communication among nations’ (Kandido-Jakšić, 2008, p. 154). For us, the last Yugoslav generation, the slogan ‘brotherhood and unity’ was a bit pathetic and a subject for numerous jokes in early 1980s, but unity in diversity was a serious Yugoslav policy and a routine everyday practice. We did not have any problem belonging to several cultures and still being Yugoslavs.

Another unification pillar for the last Yugoslav generation was a specific brand of rock’n’roll. Yugoslav rock’n’roll essentially followed western rock music in 1960s, but during the 1970s, a number of emerging rock stars, such as Goran Bregovic and Vlatko Stefanovski, started to use ethno music and local culture in their songs. While Ljubljana, Zagreb and Belgrade remained the centres of vanguard rock music, Sarajevo became the centre of this specific Yugoslav rock, translating new world rock movements and styles into the Yugoslav context frequently using typical Sarajevo’s slang and humour. One of the most successful of such movements was ‘new primitives’, a local version of punk, that become perhaps the most popular rock style in Yugoslavia during the early 1980s. The founder of this movement, Elvis J. Kurtovic, jokingly explaining the popularity of ‘new primitives’ in a radio interview said that when John Rotten has invented punk, there were 10 punkers in London that night; and on the night when new primitivism has been invented, there were 20 millions