Presentation short abstract

We report preliminary insights on the types of strategies that experts in Grassroots Transformative Initiatives (GTI) reveal about GTI's engagement with digitalisation. Connecting with E. O. Wright's strategic logics of transformation, we articulate how relationality guides decision of engagement.

Presentation long abstract

Around the world, Grassroots Transformative Initiatives (GTI) defending biocultural diversity face a dilemma: Do they engage with digitalisation, and thus gain visibility and potentially become more effective in particular purposes (e.g., communication, environmental monitoring, outreach)? Or opposingly, do they refrain from digitalisation, and thus avoid costs, technical challenges, exposure to data theft and other political and personal risks?

A prevalent assumption is that these GTI, which occasionally occur in marginalized areas and involve vulnerable populations, lack technical competence, digital access, or the wish to engage with digital technologies. However, in the past, social movements seeking socioecological transformation have been successful in mobilising resources for social change. Current scholarship has not fully addressed to what extent this might also be happening with digitalisation. This is precisely the focus of the DIVERSE project (https://www.upf.edu/web/diverse).

Currently, we are exploring the types of strategies that experts in GTI identify in the way such GTI engage with digitalisation. We hypothesize that relationality, rather than enhanced performance, guides decisions on engagement, both when deciding the extent of such an engagement, and regarding the type of concrete digital practices that are implemented or that are excluded.

To explore this notion we conducted interviews with experts in GTI from several parts of the world identified through salient literature on pluriversal transformations. Their responses allow us to articulate a framework connecting dimensions of relationality (care, community and connection), with Erin Olin Wright’s (2010) strategic logics of transformation (ruptural, interstitial, symbiotic).