A NOTE ON THE DOCUMENTATION OF THE WORLD SOCIAL FORUM
A NOTE ON THE DOCUMENTATION OF THE WORLD SOCIAL FORUM - in preparation of the WSF event in Dakar 2011
by Mikael Böök (Network Institute for Global Democratization) July 2010
This note wants to elaborate on the need for a systematic documentation of the WSF process, to improve the outcome, expansion, communication and democratization of the WSF process. The documentation of the WSF also needs to be seen as a one of its most "strategic" issues.
The open space of the world social forum, the public library, the worldwide Internet network and the free digital software all belong together. In order to communicate effectively with the public, to expand its process into ever larger circles, and to continue its existence over the decades to come, the social forum must be connected to the library. The library, in turn, must move increasingly to the Internet. However, the more the public library and the worldwide Internet grow into one and another, the more the peoples of the WSF and the library profession will need each other.
The "WSF library project", started in 2006 by East African librarians and the NIGD, has laid a foundation on which we can build further on (about this project, see www.nigd.org/libraries). The website nwww.wsflibrary.org should then be updated before, during, and after the Dakar WSF.(The site is owned by the Kenya Library Association, and it runs on the MediaWiki software on a dedicated server in the Kenya Educational Network, KENET.)
Rationale
* To bring professional experience and skills to the documentation of the social forum, do the documentation together with librarians and archivists; photographers and videographers, researchers and WSF participants who want to take part in documenting.
* To have them all together collect physical documents, update the
website, and develop the documentation methodology during the WSF days in Dakar; to find a library which agrees to become before and website, and develop the documentation methodology during the WSF days in Dakar; to find a library which agrees to become before and during the Nairobi WSF 2007 the depository of the physical documents from the WSF event in Dakar.
* To engage librarians and other documentarists from West Africa (and from all over) in the documentation of the Dakar WSF event 2011. During the autumn 2010 and January 2011, arrange meetings and workshops for all who want to participate in preparation of the Dakar WSF at the beginning of February 2011. Key persons of the Senegalese library and adult education community, who were contacted in connection with the November 2009 preparatory seminar in Dakar, reacted positively on the proposal and promised to help; and, last but not least
* To ensure funding for the preparatory workshops and for the
documentation activities during the days of the WSF in Dakar.
Process and Methods
Just like the library need a "classification system" to organise and
extend the library collection of books and other materials, the social
forum needs a stable set of themes, around which the memory and continuity of its activities can be constructed. The IC of the WSF came up with a listing of 21 "actionable themesh in the weeks before the Nairobi WSF event in January 2007. That listing seems to us a viable starting point towards elaborating a classification of the myriads of activities of the WSF process.
Therefore, we should not start from scratch to invent a new set of themes for each new social forum event. Here below the listing of the 21 actionable themes, slightly simplified, and ordered alphabetically, by the East African librarians who took part in the Nairobi WSF:
* Alternative economies
* Children
* Culture
* Debt, taxation and public finance
* Dignity, human being diversity, discriminations
* Education
* Environment and energy
* Food sovereignty, peasants and land reform
* Gender issues and women struggles
* Health
* Housing and human habitat
* Human rights
* Knowledge, information and communication
* Labor and workers
* Migration
* Peace and war
* Political institutions and democracy
* Trade and transportation
* Transnational corporations
* Water
* Youth
These actionable themes are action-oriented and express vital
problem-areas of a certain historical epoch. They are interrelated and they will often overlap, but so do the contents of the shelves in any library, or the tasks of state departments.
The 21 actionable themes will be useful to document and, therefore, to organise (categorize, classify) the activities of the social forum in Dakar, and at other social forum events, for years to come.
Importantly also, the issue of documentation and its organization
according to the 21 actionable themes, will contribute to a
democratization of the Open Space of the WSF process, as it will
present all of its voices.
Additional note on the debate regarding "the 21 actionable themes"
by Matti Kohonen, current NIGD chairperson, 19 July, 2010
During June and July 2010, members of the mailing list of the NIGD nigd-list@nigd.org) have discussed the note which has been drafted by the board of the NIGD on the documentation of the WSF. All participants in this discussion endorsed the initiative and wanted it to be presented to the meetings and seminars of the IC of the WSF. There remains, however, some doubt regarding the quality and the usability of "the 21 actionable themes", which the note proposes for the documentation.
The debate itself split into several themes, such as:
- what considerations the listing of actionable themes should take into account, and whether the listing has been seriously discussed [1];
- whether the WSF, the social forum and/or the social movements should have an own (22nd) actionable theme;
- whether the listing is comprehensive enough; can sexuality, ethnicity, indigenous peoples, modernity, religion(s), the nuclear issues, etc. be subsumed under one or more of the 21 actionable themes?
- whether there are problems of overlap (example: both "Children" and "Youth"):
- whether the listing is future-oriented enough;
- whether finance or financial markets should be included as a sub-theme;
- whether the list of themes shows a problematic asymmetry between the actors which we often oppose like transnational corporations or political institutions, and popular/social movements.
I suggest that this list be taken to the WSF IC meeting taking place in Dakar 27th to 29th July as an official proposal by NIGD to be discussed by either the entire IC or a relevant working group.
Following the debate that we have had internally in NIGD, the list is also opened up for consultation before the WSF begins so that the eactionable themesf in particular reflect the diversity of the participants of the forum.
Consultation period could be proposed to the entire WSF community, starting from the 27th July, up until the next IC meeting, or no later than end of December, allowing enough time for the relevant website: wsflibrary.org and hopefully its mirror sites to be updated.
Footnote:
[1] The "21 actionable themes" and the project of creating a permanent link between the social forums and the existing libraries and archives have in fact been discussed for some years at various occasions. See Mikael Böökfs articles "On the documentation of the social forum(s) in libraries. Part 1, July 2008. Part 2, September 2008); http://www.wsflibrary.org/index.php/Image:Documentation1and2.pdf (retrieved 18 July, 2010), esp. pp 8-9.
FSM 2010, by: