Cooperation and Power

New technologies are not only transforming workplace practices in familiar settings. They are also finding their way into the types of "exotic" locales which have traditionally been of interest to anthropologists. This paper presents an ethnographic analysis of technologically mediated communication in one such atypical setting, among a grassroots group of activists from the Navajo Indian Reservation in the southwestern United States. As this case illustrates, mere access to technology does not solve all of the problems such groups face in terms of empowerment, access to resources for action, and coordination. The discursive practices embodied in technological design may perpetuate the relations of dominance and subordination which characterize interactions between "marginalized" groups and "mainstream" organizations, and force groups into forms of organization which they find inappropriate.

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