Jon M. Corbett
Community, Culture and Global Studies,
University of British Columbia-Okanagan,
3333 University Way,
Kelowna, B.C., Canada, V1Y 6A2
[email protected]
Peter Keller
Department of Geography, University of Victoria
PO Box 3050, Victoria, BC
Canada, V8W 3P5
[email protected]
Abstract
Community Information Systems (CIS) were developed by two rural communities in Indonesia. The paper reports on the empowerment impacts that resulted from this project. Empowerment related to CIS is examined at two social scales (individual and community), and related to four empowerment catalysts associated with the project (information, process, skills and tools). The paper concludes with general observations about the relationship between empowerment and CIS.
Introduction
Increasingly local communities and their intermediaries are using community mapping and digital Geographic Information Technologies (GITs) to communicate information to decision-makers. This information might be related to local spatial knowledge, traditional lands as well as community aspirations. There is an emerging set of principles and practices concerned with the use of GITs for personal, social, cultural or economic development within communities, this is referred to generically as Participatory Geographic Information Systems (PGIS) . PGIS is combined with a growing research interest in how different GITs can empower communities.
Claims have been made that the use of PGIS by disadvantaged groups can be empowering by enabling community groups and members to communicate local information and world views in a way which might influence decision-making processes related to land use and planning. However, others claim that PGIS is disempowering due to the complexity of the technologies, inaccessibility of data, restrictive representation of local geographic information, often-low levels of community participation, as well as cost. . This final point can be illustrated by the cascading costs of implementing a GIS, “for every dollar spent on GIS hardware, $10 must be spent on software and training and $100 on acquiring and updating data” .
This paper reports on a research project that facilitated the development of Community Information Systems (CIS) in two rural communities, called Benung and Tepulang, in the Indonesian district of West Kutai on the island of Borneo (see Figure 1).
Figure 1. Map of Indonesia Showing the Location of Community Sites.
The research described in this paper contributes to the debate regarding PGIS and empowerment. The primary focus of this paper is on examining the relationship between empowerment and the CIS intervention. An analysis of empowerment is used to make observations about the empowerment and disempowerment impact of the CIS project on both individual and community scales as well as gauge the significance of different catalysts related to the project, including the information, process, skills and tools in both communities.
The CIS project
The goal of the CIS project in Indonesia was to facilitate two communities to collect, store, manage and communicate their land-related information in a digital format, while avoiding the use of costly and highly sophisticated software. The project team selected low-budget, easy-to-use software solutions that would allow community members to master the technologies1. The focus was on enabling community members to document their own data, using the knowledge of expert community informants. A participatory process was employed to ensure that community members made all decisions related to the project and were trained in the necessary technological skills . Community members trained to use the tools were called the community’s ‘operators’.
CIS acts as a system for managing, referencing and accessing digital information stored in textual image, video and audio format, using an interactive Cartesian map interface as the primary organisational tool. The map gives spatial reference to the attribute multimedia components and allows the user to navigate through the community’s data; this is a style of information retrieval referred to as “hyper media” . Furthermore, the map is important because of contentious claims made on traditional territories of Indigenous groups throughout the region where this project took place. One of the potential applications of the CIS is to communicate this spatially related information to outsider groups using the CIS to negotiate with outsiders.
Observing and evaluating empowerment
For the purpose of evaluating the CIS project, the notion of empowerment is given two distinct definitions:
- Empowerment is a tangible increase in social influence or political power; conversely disempowerment is a decrease in social influence or political power, and
- Empowerment capacity refers to aspects of the deeper process of change in the internal condition of an individual or community that influence their empowerment.
These two definitions of empowerment clearly operate on two social scales, namely the individual and the community, and involve four catalysts including:
- the information, which refers to the information gathered during the course of the CIS project: this can be in diverse formats including maps, text, photographs and videos;
- the process, which refers to the specific participatory process used by the CIS;
- the skills, which refers to the new skills acquired by individual community members and communities as a whole through the training associated with the CIS; and
- the tools, which refers to the specific equipment used during the development of a CIS, including the hardware, for example a computer, video camera or digital camera, and the software used.
The next sections will present an analysis of how the different catalysts influence empowerment as well as changes in empowerment capacity at the individual and community levels.
Empowerment and the individual
In both communities, individuals closely associated with the CIS project experienced changes in their social and political influence and roles as a result of their involvement.
Increased social influence of female computer operators
The process used by the CIS project aimed to increase the involvement of women in the project as one facet of achieving greater participation of all sectors of the community. One intervention was to request that at least one of the computer operators in each village be a woman. Both of the selected women were empowered through becoming operators, but to different degrees.
The woman selected from Benung was married with a young family. She became an able and involved member of the computer operator team. As well, she began to be more involved in general community meetings, particularly those related to CIS project decision-making. She called and facilitated several community meetings and contributed substantially to meeting’s outcomes. This was a marked change from her previous role in the community. However, tensions emerged between this woman and her husband concerning her involvement with the project. He claimed that the computer training and information collection was detracting her from domestic chores.
Decreased social influence of male computer operators
In Tepulang a young male computer operator appeared disempowered by his increased skills. He was considered “too ambitious and put on airs of intelligence” (respondent Tepulang). This, plus his efforts to monopolise the skills and tools, contributed to his marginalization within the community and led to his resignation as the head of the village advisory committee.
It is hard to determine how much these changing social roles are a direct and exclusive result of the CIS project or how much they can also be attributed to other influences or pre-existing conditions.
Empowerment capacity and the individual
Changes in capacity for empowerment were noted in individuals in both communities, including individuals who were computer operators, informants, and community leaders as well as community members not as closely involved in the
