In the Arabic-speaking mahjar (diaspora), the plight of the working poor was the focus of women’s philanthropy. Scholarship on welfare relief in the interwar Syrian, Lebanese, and Palestinian diaspora currently situates it within a gendered politics of benevolence. This article reconsiders that frame and argues for a class-centered reassessment o…[Read more]

In the Arabic-speaking mahjar (diaspora), the plight of the working poor was the focus of women’s philanthropy. Scholarship on welfare relief in the interwar Syrian, Lebanese, and Palestinian diaspora currently situates it within a gendered politics of benevolence. This article reconsiders that frame and argues for a class-centered reassessment o…[Read more]

This chapter explores a case of activism to promote FM broadcasting in the USA at the turn of the millennium, using data drawn from a large ethnographic project. These radio activists provide a unique site for analysing new media adoption and resistance; as technologically savvy critics of Internet utopianism, they are not dismissible as mere…[Read more]

In the early years of the 21st century, as free software communities matured, they began to recognize that their contributor bases were overwhelmingly composed of men. A 2006 European Union policy report revealed that fewer than 2% of free software practitioners were women, which catalyzed attention to these matters (Nafus, Leach, & Krieger,…[Read more]

Both radio activism and gender advocacy within F/OSS illustrate how
technologies acquire political meanings within technical communities. In
examining these sites, we can observe how activists who are concerned with
expressing political beliefs do so through engagement with technologies. Geek
communities are important because they are situated…[Read more]

At the turn of the millennium, scholars and pundits reflected on how communica- tion systems could shape events and societies, often while basking in the perceived glow of the then-novel Internet. Others pled for reasoned engagement with the interplay between communication infrastructures and the social life of knowledge, a much-needed corrective…[Read more]