Reviewer: Anonymous
1) Is the subject matter relevant?
2) Is the treatment of the subject matter intellectually interesting? Are there citations or bodies of literature you think are essential to which the author has not referred?
3) Are there any noticeable problems with the author’s means of validating assumptions or making judgments?
4) Is the article well written?
5) Are there portions of the article that you recommend be shortened, excised or expanded?
I appreciated the opportunity to read this paper. It is very strong in its rich empirical data and it ties the social life of CN’s to existing literature in fruitful ways. I am enthusiastic about its publication in JoPP, but I suggest doing a little more work to tighten up and foreground analysis before publication, as it is currently more on the descriptive end of the spectrum.
Author states: “Indeed, a brief search for ‘CNs’ in the ACM Digital library shows that the authors of all but one of the top 20 most recent papers about CN(s) studied in the Global South were about CNs that academic researchers helped to establish. …” (p. 2)
The mandate for a paper of interest to JoPP readers should be broader; unlike some other venues for this research, ideally the topic is not just CNs per se but the analytic topics that arise in this case and might have applicability beyond it. I think this comes out in other parts of the paper but I might suggest rewriting the section that begins here and/or footnoting some of the information that currently appears in the body. In other words, the point of the paper is not *just* to add to gaps in literature about CNs.
To achieve this, I suggest rewriting to foreground the “translation” matters the author raises and nesting the gender and commodification sections under this. (This is less a matter of organization—the paper reads well already—but more to highlight the analysis.) Currently, the matter of translation appears in the abstract and early on in the paper but then drops out, but it seems like it is/should be a main rubric.
To me, the sections on monetization and meshworking seem to be more or less on a continuum/very analytically related to the commodification section, so maybe integrate those three more? Or include them as subheadings under an umbrella heading? I’m agnostic about the main heading for this section, but these topics all seem to broadly concern the matter of community practices and understandings of CNs’ value, versus the market-based language that often accompanies technologies and ICT4D interventions.
One other matter—the paper does not include a word count (that I saw), but it strikes me as a bit on the long side. In a rewrite, it could be perhaps be streamlined slightly. Partly I am reacting to the fact that each of the author’s main points—the thingification of spectrum and the undervaluation of women’s work in CN contexts—could actually be its own paper (which again points to the richness here). I might also trim out the temporalization argument, which is interesting but so subsidiary that I wondered what it was doing here. (Another option would be to expand it and make three nested points, but as the paper is already long, probably that is not good advice.)
The remainder of my suggestions are additional literature the author may wish to review to strengthen the paper’s grounding in critical social studies of technology.
See Kat Jungnickel’s discussion of why does wifi stick to men? In her book DIY Wifi; and see Yuwei Lin on the systemic denigration of work done by women in FLOSS communities, which echoes exactly the author’s observations re. the valorization of tech work and undervaluing of other work like community building. (“Women in the Free/Libre Open Source Software Development.” In Encyclopedia of Gender and Information Technology. Hershey, PA: Idea Group, 2006)
Land as property: this is a more contested terrain (no pun intended) than author acknowledges. Many indigenous people do not believe that land can be propertized, so in that, the author’s argument that the spectrum doesn’t constitute a natural commodity like land starts to break down a bit; it’s not a natural(ized) state of affairs either. One reference, Tuck and Yang, Decolonization is Not a Metaphor for framework and references. It might be stronger to rewrite this around the idea that any instance ofstable or “natural” “thingification”/propertization represents social work and is contingent/subject to contestation. Thomas Streeter’s book Selling the Air does a very nuanced job surveying some of the author’s concerns about the process of naturalization of spectrum as a thing that can be commodified.
Lastly, at the risk of being “that reviewer”(!), I include a couple more citations from my own research:
Dunbar-Hester, Low Power to the People, MIT Press (2014): also discusses both the undervaluation of women’s work in (tech-valorizing) community tech circles (ch 3); the inadequacy of market metrics and frustration of community groups chasing market metrics to give value to their enterprises (ch 6)
And an article on stalled tech projects in East Africa that might also be somewhat relevant; the argument here has some resonance with the author’s observations regarding translation (and see the Woolgar piece in the references, which was main plank for this analysis): Dunbar-Hester, Frailties at the Borders: Stalled Activist Media Projects in East Africa. International Journal of Communication, volume 10 (2016): 2157–2178.
Review B
Reviewer: Stefania Milan
I want to start by commending the author on a very relevant piece of work that has the potential to
interest and benefit both the academic and the practitioner communities. The article is grounded
on an impressive amount of empirical data and fieldwork in various countries of the so-called
Global South. The author shows familiarity with the relevant literature and proposes an original
reading of community networks (CNs)—one which simultaneously departs from the many
techno-determinist and techno-solutionist interpretations of the phenomenon, and constructively
seeks to offer a set of variably actionable learnings. However, as it stands, the article is in need of
a number of revisions before publication. In what follows, I outline the main problems:
- i) The reference list shows how the author is well-versed in a number of disciplines. However, the author does not make explicit the disciplines she straddles. For example, the occasional reference to ‘socio-technical’ processes seem to indicate a connection with Science and Technology Studies; the methods recall an ethnographic approach; the literature review refers to ACM… But the audience needs pointers to situate the material and the findings in relation to one or more scholarly traditions and discourses.
- ii) The notion of “neanings” and meaning creation and the negotiations around it are evoked but need grounding (including in the abstract).
- iii) Throughout the article, a number of concepts are taken for granted, including ‘infrastructuring’, ‘socio-technical’, ‘community’, and ‘Global South’ (which is between inverted commas, which suggest a critical take… can you elaborate more on that?). While in the interest of word count one might have to leave a lot out, it would be good to situate at least some of the terminology used.
- iv) The ‘Global South’ is an important point of reference and part of the story. However, it remains little more than a geo-economic and socio-cultural descriptor. It would be good to reflect on ‘what it means to infrastructure in the Global South’: what is specific to it? The challenges of infrastructuring in the South are evoked here and there, but there is more to be said about, e.g., the inability of research to capture all of this when concepts and theories, for example, originate in the Global North. See readings suggestions below about the universalism of theory and the need to give voice to the specificities on the ground.
- v) The ‘Situating Insights’ section is very rich and detailed: perhaps this is where the text can be marginally shortened. Please be precise when indicating events (e.g., in the ‘Observation of Advocacy’, which IGF?). Also, what are ‘soft and hard documents’?
- vi) The ‘Analysis’ is of course the most interesting part. However, it should include a reflection on the process of ‘building meanings’ (which, e.g., in STS and in the sociology of social movement has a long tradition). Furthermore, the section needs some restructuring to facilitate the navigation of the rich findings.
- vii) I wonder how the author deals with anonymity. While for a quote a name is indicated (i.e., Peter Bloom), names of organizations and projects are not included. But given the small size of the community in question, the anonymity of interviewees and research participants more in general might be at risk anyway. A reflection on this point would be welcome. (One way to deal with it, if anonymity is important, is to reduce the amount of information linked to geographical markers).
- viii) The conclusions should be expanded, and should also include a reflection on ‘what is specific to the Global South’? (see point iii).
In addition, there are number of formal issues to take into account:
-
i) Structure-wise, the article is very dense, which occasionally makes it difficult for the
reader to follow. The manuscript would benefit for more signposting (including e.g.
enumerating the aspects the author touches upon). The reader needs further help to
navigate the wealth of material and the narrative more in general. -
ii) In the same way, the introduction to the article should provide a break-down of the
structure of the paper. -
iii) Please check carefully the reference list. Currently several inconsistencies, several items
are missing (e.g., Fournier 2013, Nightingale 2019…), and others are poorly referenced.
There are quotes in the text that would call for page numbers (e.g, the quote from Crabu
and Magaudda 2018 on pg 4: note here even the first author is wrongly indicated with the
first name instead of the surname). -
iv) Overall, the article is in need of a careful proof-reading to spot the many typos,
unfinished sentences and broken punctuation. Don’t forget to break down acronyms (e.g.,
MNOs) and potentially obscure references (e.g., Tekio).
1) Is the subject matter relevant?
Yes, the subject matter is of high relevance to both an academic and a practitioner public.
2) Is the treatment of the subject matter intellectually interesting? Are there citations or bodies of literature you think are essential to which the author has not referred?
Microsoft Word – Bidwell_review.docx
The approach of the author is certainly interesting. The empirical material it is based on is incredibly
rich. I recommend checking out the following contributions:
On CNs:
Crabu, S., Magaudda, P., Giovanella, F., & Maccari, L. (2015). A Transdisciplinary Gaze on Wireless Community Networks. Tecnoscienza. Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies, 6(2).
Maccari, L., Karaliopoulos, M., Koutsopoulos, I., Navarro, L., Freitag, F., & Lo Cigno, R. (2018, June). 5G and the Internet of EveryOne: Motivation, Enablers, and Research Agenda. Presented at the European Conference on Networks and Communications (EUCNC), Ljubljana.
On the Global South/universalism of theory:
Milan, S., & Treré, E. (2019). Big Data from the South(s): Beyond Data Universalism. Television & New Media, 20(4), 319–335. https://doi.org/10.1177/1527476419837739
Say Chan, A. (2013). Networking Peripheries. Technological Futures and the Myth of Digital Universalism. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.
Segura, M. S., & Waisbord, S. (2019). Between data capitalism and data citizenship. Television & New Media. https://doi.org/10.1177/1527476419834519
3) Are there any noticeable problems with the author’s means of validating assumptions or making judgments?
See above. In principle no, but some connections need to be made more explicit.
4) Is the article well written?
In the present stage, not sufficiently. The manuscript needs a careful proof-reading, as it contains many typos; many sentences are unfinished; references are sometimes incorrectly cited and/or inserted in the text.
5) Are there portions of the article that you recommend be shortened, excised or expanded?
Conclusions should be expanded (see above); methods& data section can be shortened.